nothing new under the sun

Peak when? We've already passed it

2012-02-02T01:49:00.000Z

ArsTechnica: When is peak oil? We've passed it. Welcome to the downslope.

CP: How much of recent global warming has been caused by human activities? Most likely more than 100%. How can we have caused more than 100% of something? Without human activity, it is likely that we would have experienced a slight cooling trend and so our activities are primarily responsible for both overcoming this natural trend and the observed warming.

NYT: A case study in overfishing - the collapse of jack mackerel in under a decade. A single super-trawler theoretically has the capacity to catch more jack mackerel annually than the most optimistic estimate of the global sustainable catch. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimated (based on 1998 data, now hopelessly out of date) that global fishing fleets "are 2.5 times larger than needed." The latest estimate of total global subsidies for fishing fleets (back in 2003) was US$25 billion to $29 billion per annum (mainly in fuels). Let us therefore choose between fish and the fishing industry; we cannot save them both.

Physorg: Wheat can't stand the heat. A new study published in Nature Climate Change found that "a 2.0 Celsius increase above long-term averages shortened the growing season by a critical nine days, reducing total yield by up to 20 percent."

NASA: Greenland, the world's northern mirror, is rapidly growing dimmer, with some areas seeing a drop in reflectivity of almost 20% in a few years.

Stephen Leahy: Toxic pollution is a public health problem on a similar scale to malaria. A new study claims that more than 100 million people have their productive life span shortened by an average of 12.7 years. Some of the causes may be encircling your finger, resting in your pocket or illuminating your eyeballs right now, though the victims may well live on the other side of the world.

Onion: Scientists reveal how to achieve sustainability overnight, though wisely leave open the policy questions.

130 Years in 30 seconds

2012-01-28T22:04:00.002Z

The changes displayed in this video represent average global surface temperatures warming by about 0.8ºC over a period of 130 years. On our current path (including current national and regional agreements to reduce emissions), we are heading towards something like five times that change in the next 90 years.

It doesn't have to be this way.

What do you really want?

2012-01-27T18:20:00.000Z

Very effective visuals on this short clip contrasting consumerism with our true wants. I'm not sure I buy the tagline (you'll have to wait for the end), but I like the overall effect.

Does Jesus love religion?

2012-01-20T15:58:00.002Z

A week or so ago, a spoken word video featuring a young man called Jefferson Bethke denouncing religion in the name of Jesus took the FaceTubes by storm, gathering over 15 million views in a matter of days. Here it is, for those remaining seven billion or so who may have missed it.

A mostly helpful analysis and response of the video by Kevin Deyoung can be found here (H/T Dominic). Deyoung says Bethke "perfectly captures the mood, and in my mind the confusion, of a lot of earnest, young Christians" who interpret the word religion to mean "self-righteousness, moral preening, and hypocrisy." Yet this is not what it means. Jesus did not come to abolish, but to fulfil. Deyoung's critique was read by Bethke, who subsequently contacted Deyoung and said "I agree 100%". The interaction is a good example of gracious constructive theological conversation.

And with a hat tip to Kyle, here is a very interesting Catholic response to the original video, also (I believe) done in a spirit of constructive dialogue.

Fifteen reasons to love the earth

2012-01-19T15:16:00.008Z

Why Christians take the extra-human creation seriously:

1. God declares all things good; he made them and blessed them. Even before the arrival of humanity, God declared his handiwork "good" and blessed it (Genesis 1).

2. God sustains and cares for all life, not just human life. Psalm 104 and Job 38-41 celebrate the created order in its bounty, complexity and divine providence outside of reference to human affairs. In Matthew 10.29 and Luke 12.6 Jesus teaches that not even a single sparrow escapes the caring notice of God. Why should we disparage or dismiss that which God cares for?

3. God's plan (intimated and initiated in the resurrection of Christ) is the renewal of all things through their liberation from bondage to decay. Why would redemption be of anything less than the scope of creation? We hope not for redemption from the world, but the redemption of the world.

4. "The earth is the LORD's and everything in it!" (Psalm 24.1). How we treat the creation is a reflection on what we think of the Creator. My parents built and own the house where I grew up; if I decided to ransack it to make a quick profit, that would reveal something deeply broken about my relationship with them.

5. Human economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. We depend on natural ecosystems for every breath we take, every mouthful of food, every sip of clean water. The "environment" is not simply the background to our everyday activities, the earth is our home. Even if we thought our obligations ended with humans, we would have pressing reasons to care for life beyond humanity.

6. Our livelihoods are a fraction of our current lifestyle. That is, we can easily thrive on far less than we presently consume, indicating that our culture generally accepts idolatry in the form of consumerism, where our purchases define our identity. We can easily repent of our idolatrous over-consumption without any threat to our livelihoods (though there may be some industries that need to shrink significantly or die altogether). Natural ecosystems are not a necessary victim of our flourishing; there is no ultimate competition between our well-being and that of the rest of the planet's living systems.

7. Human beings are not souls trapped in bodies, but embodied lives. Our future is resurrection like Christ's and any spirituality that ends up hating the body (and the natural world upon which it relies) is an expression of what Nietzsche correctly diagnoses as ressentiment.

8. The Scriptures repeatedly teach us that we are members of the community of creation, not demi-gods without obligations towards our fellow creatures.

9. We need the extra-human creation in order to fulfil our role (and they need us) in joining together in praise of the Creator (e.g. Pss 96; 148).

10. God has filled the world with beauty and only the hardhearted and blind ignore it.

11. God's saving purposes are not limited to humans. If God has not limited his gospel to one particular race, age, gender, culture or class, why would he limit it to one species? Jesus' death was for all creation (Colossians 1.15-20). In the archetypal salvation narrative of Genesis 6-9, Noah and his family are saved along with representatives of the rest of the community of creation.

12. Wisdom requires paying attention to the world beyond the human. Jesus enjoins us to consider the sparrows and lilies (Matthew 6.26, 28). Wise king Solomon spoke of trees (1 Kings 4.29-34) and Proverbs 12.10 points out that "The godly care for their animals, but the wicked are always cruel". Remember that the world's first animal welfare organisation, the RSPCA, was founded by William Wilberforce, the same man who helped lead the campaign to abolish modern slavery.

13. The journey of becoming a neighbour involves the ongoing expansion of our horizon of love. When we are gripped by God's love, we are freed from the echo-chamber of our own concerns into caring for our neighbour. But just who is our neighbour? The answer to that question can never be delimited in advance but must be discovered as we come across those in need. Are other creatures also (in some sense) our neighbours? In the end, I believe so. For instance, Deuteronomy 24-25 places concern for the needs of oxen amongst concern for poor labourers, the widowed, orphans and aliens. Compassion is not circumscribed by the human.

14. Our neglect is having dire consequences, but the freedom to repent is the first and most foundational freedom.

I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

15. The earth is our mother. Remember, anthropomorphism is distinct from deification and this particular one is ancient and scriptural (Genesis 1.24; Romans 8.22).

Which of these do you find most compelling? Least plausible? What have I missed?

UPDATE:
16. God has promised to "destroy the destroyers of the earth" (Revelation 11.18). Divine justice is not limited to our mistreatment of him and one another. God's transformative evaluation (otherwise known as his judgement) embraces all the deeds done in the body (2 Corinthians 5.10), not just those that directly relate to human interactions.

Not with a bang but with a sustained leak

2012-01-10T14:42:00.008Z

Real Climate: Why Arctic methane release is bad, not catastrophic. This is a very important post. Many have been deeply worried about the possibility of a so-called "methane gun" in which truly staggering volumes of frozen methane clathrates that sit on and under the ocean floor of the Siberian continental shelf are released in a runaway feedback as the Arctic Ocean warms. Since methane (CH₄) has something like 100 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a twenty year period, it has been hypothesized that a rapid release of large volumes of stored methane could cause a sudden and likely catastrophic surge in global temperatures. A variation or accompaniment to this scenario is the rapid release of methane from thawing permafrost in Siberia. In the linked post, a senior climatologist argues that it is far more likely that methane release will be chronic rather than acute, and given methane's relatively short atmospheric residency (about ten years), this will lead to a dangerous (though not immediately catastrophic) rise then stabilisation of methane levels, supplementing but not overwhelming warming from carbon dioxide. However, since atmospheric methane gradually degrades to carbon dioxide in the presence of oxygen, a slow release would not only give a bump to methane levels but would also see carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. Unlike methane, carbon dioxide is basically forever, with about half of any increase in atmospheric concentration we experience likely to remain for centuries and about a quarter likely to remain for at least ten thousand years. So a relief (of sorts) for us. It's a bit like finding that the Nazis don't, as feared, have a nuclear weapon, but they do have twice as many conventional forces as was thought.

CD: A recent NASA study suggests that climate change may modify 40% the earth's surface from one biome (e.g. forest, savanna, tundra, etc.) to another.

ABC Religion and Ethics: The New Evangelicals: How Christians are rethinking Abortion and Gay marriage. Despite being published by the ABC, this piece (an extract from a new book) has its eyes on the US scene. How applicable are the trends it identifies elsewhere amongst evangelicals?

Guardian: More farmers needed. Feeding seven, eight, nine, ten billion without strip-mining the soil, using the atmosphere as a carbon dump, squeezing out biodiversity, depleting finite fuels or overloading rivers, lakes and oceans with nutrients requires more organic poly-cultural farming, which can often be more productive per unit of land overall than present industrial monocultural farming. However, it is less productive per unit of labour, meaning more people employed (again) in growing food, which probably means higher food prices and a greater share of incomes devoted to food. This in turn may help address obesity, though at the risk of increasing malnutrition associated with poverty. Hence, addressing inequality is also critical.

Peter preaches on the parable of the talents (Matthew 25.14-30). This passage is often used as a key plank in a justification of usury. There are elements in the narrative and context that suggest a very different reading. Peter highlights the key theological question lying behind this hermeneutical issue: which kind of God do we serve?

McKibben: On being hopefully naïve about getting corporate money out of US politics and why being cynical is hopeless.

Guardian: What have trees ever done for us?

NYT: My Guantánamo Nightmare. There are good reasons due process has come to be highly cherished in all civil societies.

Monbiot: The limits of vegetarianism, in which George changes his mind and shifts to ethical semi-vegetarianism. The Conversation publishes an even more provocative piece against ecological vegetarianism, and a very interesting discussion in the comments ensues.

SMH: Energy and water. In the 20thC, global energy use increased thirteen-fold and water use increased nine-fold. The two are related and any future has to consider our water habits, which might be less about having short showers than having cold ones, since energy production is one of the most water-intensive things we do (though conversely, where water is scarce, desalination is one of the most energy-intensive things we do).

Defending our Christian heritage in parliament

2012-01-09T01:43:00.003Z

A conservative MP stands up in NZ Parliament to defend the Judaeo-Christian tradition as the basis of western society, politics and culture. It's not often you hear a parliamentarian retell the gospel narrative in order to ground an ethic of universal love which is then applied to social policy and sharing, economics and ecology. It's a stirring speech outlining the priority of justice over growth and the unconditionality of compassion.

Who is this conservative defender of the faith? Atheist and Green Party co-leader Russel Norman.
H/t Viv Benjamin.

The difficulties of climate ethics: space

2012-01-06T16:06:00.000Z

Human societies have faced many threats throughout history: wars, epidemics, natural disasters, mass migrations, famines, revolutions and more. Very few of these threats were truly global in scope. Climate change is one of them (along with the ongoing potential for nuclear holocaust, pandemics and the climatic effects of the very largest volcanic eruptions). Climate damage embraces not simply human society, but the entire biosphere, since our actions are altering the basic chemistry of atmosphere and oceans.

Not only are the consequences global, but the causes are also widely distributed, making the coordination of responses complex. Unilateral actions by a single society considered in isolation are unlikely to have a significant direct impact on the danger represented by rising global average temperatures and the associated disruptions this brings. Responsibility for changing atmospheric chemistry is unevenly distributed, with some nations possessing a much larger per capita carbon footprint than others. And the persistence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and active carbon cycle (much of it for thousands or even tens of thousands of years) means that historical emissions further complicate the picture.

The necessity of international cooperation to address a serious threat is nothing particularly novel, though the mixing of atmospheric gases means that mitigation efforts by some subset of the globe brings no added climatic benefits to those bearing the costs of such action. Thus, the threat of freeloading is high. Every country hopes that other countries will do the heavy lifting.
This is the second in a series briefly outlining some of the distinctive features of climate change that makes ethical reflection upon our predicament more difficult. The first post can be found here.

And don't come back

2012-01-04T22:10:00.002Z

This is the day that the LORD has made;
Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

- Psalm 118.24.

This time five years ago, I was receiving weekly doses of poison and daily radiation burns to my chest after being diagnosed with a rapidly growing malignant tumour just above my heart and invading my left bronchial tube. Today, I went into an oncologist's office and was told not to return, as five years of follow up is enough.

Although it is still possible for me to experience relapse, the chances are that any cancer now found in my body is more likely to be a new growth than a renewal of the one that was well on its way to killing me in 2006/07. I am obviously delighted to reach this milestone and continue to receive each day as a gift. I did not deserve to live, did not earn my reprieve, did not qualify for healing through the quality of my faith. Faced with a very rare form of cancer (numerous specialists have given me the impression that I'm one in a million), medical science took its best (highly educated) guess as to treatment and it worked beyond all expectations.

And so praise God for life, for health, for wonderful support from family, friends and even strangers, for medical specialists and all the care I have received over five years from dozens of healthcare professionals both in Oz and the UK and for public healthcare that has meant my total out of pocket expenses have been AUD $0 + GBP £0 for treatments that probably cost tens of thousands (thanks fellow tax-payers!).

Yet the experience continues to have its shadows. Given that the first side-effect mentioned on the consent forms I signed for both chemotherapy and radiotherapy is that those treatments are themselves carcinogenic, cancer is still quite likely to be part of my future, as is reduced life-expectancy. I am also aware of the costs the illness and treatment have brought to my health in other ways; being poisoned and burned are not generally conducive to good health (I've always thought that Nietzsche's boast that whatever did not kill him could only make him stronger was one of his sillier ones).

And I am not the same man I was. Being gravely sick has reconfigured my emotional and spiritual life, not to mention shaping my academic interests. For much of this I am grateful (and this is undoubtedly the true referent of Nietzsche's comment), especially for the reminder of my own frail mortality and the liberating realisation that survival is not our highest priority. These are important lessons that I hope always to keep close to hand. Has the experience also made me more pessimistic about our future prospects? Given that being ill significantly overlapped with the period during which I began investigating ecological and resources predicaments in greater depth, it is hard to tell whether the chicken or the egg came first.

The significance of my reaching this milestone was brought home powerfully to me a day or two ago when I came across the story of Kristian Anderson, a Sydney Christian man in his 30s with a wife and young kids, and who died from cancer two days ago. Kristian recorded more than two years of his physical, emotional and spiritual journey since diagnosis on a blog called How the Light Gets In (H/t Andrew Paterson). I ran out of tissues while reading it. I never met him, but I thank God for his life and witness, even amidst great darkness, and I pray for his widow and little boys.

Life is a precious gift. Let us rejoice in each day we receive.

Is environmentalism failing?

2012-01-03T15:12:00.004Z

Is Environmentalism Failing? from Australian Broadcasting Corporation on FORA.tv.
A fascinating debate held in Melbourne and broadcast by the ABC last year. It is 90 minutes long but worth watching in full as each speaker has important points to make. Speakers include: Clive Hamilton, David Suzuki, Christine Milne, Ian Lowe, Anna Rose and Philip Sutton. A number of the older speakers highlight just how far social attitudes, behaviours and policies have come in the last fifty years (i.e. since the birth of the modern environmental movement with the publication of Silent Spring in 1962). All of them emphasise the size of the task ahead, particularly in the face of climate change.

Apologies for the ad at the start.

2011: Some reviews

2011-12-31T17:39:00.003Z

At the end of last year, I posted links to the twelve doomiest stories of 2010 and fifty doomiest graphs and photos. Desdemona again offers his summary of 2011 with the fifty doomiest graphs and images and this time fifty doomiest stories of the year.

Not to be outdone, the ApocaDocs have compiled their 100 top news stories of 2011 relating to our global predicament.

The Conversation sums up the year in energy and environment news, containing links to dozens of interesting and significant stories throughout the year. They also summaries of their other major news headings.

And if all this is a little too bleak for your New Year's celebrations, then check out Charlie Brooker's take on 2011 available on BBC iPlayer (for UK residents only, I'm afraid). It's still somewhat bleak (it was that kind of year), but at least it has a few jokes.

Feel free to post links to other reviews of the year that are worth reading.

Mongabay: Top ten environmental stories of 2011.

May 2012 bring renewed hope, patience and illumination to face the gathering gloom.

The difficulties of climate ethics: time

2011-12-30T16:15:00.007Z

"[There is] a pronounced temporal dispersion of causes and effects. In the case of climate change, this is caused mainly by the long atmospheric lifetime of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, and by the fact that some of the basic physical systems influenced by the greenhouse effect (such as oceans) are subject to profound inertia, so that changes play out over centuries and even millennia. This is important because it suggests that whereas fossil fuel emissions have immediate and tangible benefits for present people, many of the most serious costs are likely to be substantially deferred to future generations."

- Stephen Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm:
The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (Oxford: OUP, 2011), 123.

This time lag is critical to grasping climate change (and, to a greater or lesser extent, many other ecological issues). Many people don't realise that the changes we are already experiencing (Arctic summer sea ice volume down by over 70%, shifts in timing of the seasons, more frequent heatwaves and intense precipitation events in some regions, poleward shift of ecosystems, thawing permafrost, rising sea levels and so on) are not the result of present greenhouse gas concentrations. We are merely reaping the start of the harvest of seeds sown decades ago. It will be decades more before the effects of today's levels begin to be visible, and centuries or even millennia before their full impact is known.

This temporal lag means that climate change occupies an intermediate position amongst future threats, too close to be safely ignored and too distant to avoid being perpetually trumped by the myopic focus on today's problem caused by the media and political cycle. Dangerous climate change is far more immediate than say, the heat death of the universe or even the death of our Sun (or the preceding gradual increase in solar radiation that will likely destroy all life on earth well before either of these), and yet not immediate enough to enter the horizon of political decision-making. That this is so can be seen in the frequent attempts to find proximate hooks of one disaster or another on which to hang the climate threat. Yet these are doomed to be of only ambiguous use since any single disaster always has multiple causes and climate change is about a shift in statistical distributions, rather than being the sole unambiguous "cause" of any given event. In this intermediate position, climate change is uncomfortably dangerous enough to be of real concern and yet always comfortably far enough away to ignore for one more day, lowering the chance that will anticipate with prudence such (slightly) distant futures.

Individually, we are frequently poor at responding to such delayed feedback. The causes of obesity, heart disease, lung disease, alcoholism and all kinds of other long term health problems are increasingly well-known and connected to various behaviours that are often deemed quite pleasant in the short term. Yet, despite the long term ill-effects frequently being catastrophic for our health, we continue to indulge.

And that is just for problems where the effects are on my own life a few decades in the future. But when we turn to issues where the worst effects are felt by others, separated from me by time, space, social distance and even species, then my ability to refrain from indulging in short-term pleasures becomes even more difficult.

And when we turn from individual responses to collective responses, yet another layer of complexity is added and the potential to pass the buck becomes even higher. And when these collective responses are required not only at communal, social and national levels, but also critically amongst all nations of any economic size, then the barriers can appear insurmountable. More on these issues in the days ahead as I begin this series looking at some of the reasons why climate change is a particularly knotty ethical issue.
As one illustration of the temporal lag, a new publication from NASA claims that, based on paleoclimate records, each degree Celsius of global temperature rise will, in the long run, be associated with something like a twenty metre sea level rise. For those who don't understand why it matters whether we rise two or three or four degrees, here is one example to clarify our thoughts. This is not saying that such rises will be immediate, but that we are committing our descendants to a very, very different world.

If you're having trouble commenting, blame Facebook

2011-12-28T20:40:00.003Z

Over the last few months I've had a few people tell me that they're no longer able to post comments here or on other blogs. Clearly, I've still be getting quite a few comments, so this puzzled me. I then found myself having the same problem from time to time, not even being able to get to the screen where comments are entered.

But I think I've now worked out what the issue is: Facebook. More specifically, the application known as Networked Blogs, which is an app that will automatically repost your blog posts to your Facebook page (and so to your friends' news feeds). Networked Blogs has been one of the main reasons I haven't (so far) given up on Facebook, since I know that quite a few of my readers come via this route. Until recently, if you clicked on a Facebook news feed item published by Networked Blogs this would take you to the actual blog post in question. But now Networked Blogs has changed its set up and creates a mirrored page identical to the original Blogger post, except that almost all internal links (apart from those in the body of a post) link to the mirrored site and links to comments are disabled. This very strongly encourages you to stay within the Facebook world if you want to post a comment and is another example of Facebook's attempt to become the internet within the internet (not that Google aren't also trying much the same thing).

I don't have a problem with websites expanding their range of services, but there is a significant difference between simple expansion and the parasitic exploitation of a competitor in an attempt to achieve or maintain hegemony. Another recent example of this is an application that enables you to scan barcodes on your smartphone from a physical bookstore and compare the price with Amazon.com.

In any case, if you want to post comments outside of the Facebook bubble, make sure your browser's address contains "nothing-new-under-the-sun". For future reference, click here to go to my actual blog and then set up a bookmark.
Another effect of this is that stat counters for visitors will systematically underestimate the number of readers. It has been some years since I've really looked closely at my stats, but this is somewhat annoying as well.

UPDATE: After posting this, the obvious solution hit me: post my own updates on Facebook and ditch Networked Blogs. Done.

The price of consumerism

2011-12-22T08:23:00.002Z

A new video I came across via the Breathe network. Not many bells and whistles, but it articulates an important argument: that less is sometimes more and if we are going to address our destructive lifestyles then we need to address the consumerist assumptions that drive them.

Where are the wise men today?

2011-12-16T22:31:00.004Z

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him.

- Matthew 2.1-3 (NRSV).

The Gospels are filled with characters whose reactions to Jesus serve as positive and negative examples to readers. The text invites us to reflect upon our own reactions and which characters we resemble.

The well-known story of the Magi (or wise men) often simply supplies so many more figures standing in the background of a nativity scene we have surveyed hundreds of times, or perhaps a brief gloss on why we give gifts at this time of year. But there is far more to them than their stunning generosity.

The Magi, whose precise origins are only gestured at ("from the East") and whose number can only be guessed from their threefold offering, were confronted with the emergence of something new and unexpected; they dropped everything and departed into the unknown, embarking on a long journey, whose dangers are compounded by the treasures they carry. They search for a figure who brings the future: a child born to be king of a nation presently under imperial occupation. Holding high status in their own society, they depart to where they will likely be misunderstood and mistrusted in order to offer a symbolic gesture of hope that points to new possibilities. They sit lightly to the status quo, dropping their various pressing responsibilities and disrupting their daily routine in order to acknowledge the new thing that has appeared and see where it leads. They are thus open and receptive to the future, and search for it beyond the boundaries of the comfortable.

As the story unfolds, the Magi's hope and faith inadvertently disrupt the political order. They are received at Herod's Court - perhaps the most obvious place to begin a search for a royal child: within the household of the one presently occupying the throne - and yet quickly discover that the new they seek is not simply the continuation of the present, but arises from an unexpected quarter. The royal child belongs outside of contemporary constellations of power and so represents a challenge and a threat to them. The Magi are willing to place themselves and the social order at risk in order to honour this new figure. Neither their own survival nor the preservation of the peace are sufficient to deter them from pursuing their quest.

When they reach their destination, they are overjoyed. Despite the humble surroundings and the great distance they have travelled, despite the incongruity of their wealth with Mary's poverty, despite the foreignness of the context and the difficulty in accepting an infant of no standing as the object and bearer of their hopes, they kneel and pay him homage.

There are many mysteries surrounding these Magi. Who were they? Where were they from? Why did they interpret a star as having significance for Judah? And why, having found the child and sworn fealty to him, did they depart from Bethlehem and from the pages of history? Yet their utter receptivity to the arrival of the messianic moment offers us a strange and disquieting model of faith and hope.

In contrast, King Herod presents a picture of suspicion, hostility, self-interest and the worst kind of deadly conservatism. Bearing the title "King of the Jews" through an act of betrayal that rendered its messianic symbolism largely impotent, Herod clung to the power granted him at Rome's pleasure. Faced with the arrival of foreign dignitaries with stunning and potentially explosive news, Herod's receptivity is pure pretense, his engagement with the traditions of holy scripture self-serving, his hospitality merely an opportunity to secure his own position and power. He does not want anything new to emerge without it being forcibly dragged within the sphere of his influence and benefit. The future must be made the servant of the present order and, ultimately, if that requires the sacrifice of future generations, then that is the price for stability. Suffering and violence are tools, justice and compassion secondary, honesty and integrity expendable: nothing must threaten my present comforts. The Herodian way of life is not up for negotiation.

Are we any less foolish today? Where are the wise men? And most importantly, where is the Christ-child to be found: amidst our comfortable status quo that requires the destruction of others' futures? Or as yet unseen, hidden in plain sight amongst the lowly and filthy and requiring a journey of faith conducted with little more than flickering starlight for guidance?

Obama is as bad as Bush

2011-12-07T01:23:00.003Z

Guardian: Obama is as bad as Bush at watering down or blocking environmental regulation.

UTS: Australian news coverage of climate change is seriously unbalanced. No prizes for guessing the worst culprit.

Monbiot: EU farm subsidies continue to give tens of billions to the wealthy, which isn't a problem because Europe is of course swimming in cash at the moment.

New Matilda: What is happening at Sydney University? Nothing other than one battle in an ongoing war for the soul of the university occurring in most societies dominated by current economic orthodoxies.

UN: New FAO report says that 25% of the world's land area is "highly degraded" from human activities.

Independent: The dying Dead Sea.

Guardian: UK government secretly supporting Canadian tar sands - yet another piece of disconnected thinking from the "greenest government ever".

Gittins: What does it profit a corporation to gain the whole world and lose the souls of all its employees and customers? Gittins thinks Michael Schluter from the Relationships Forum is a genius.

Two horizons of hope: justice vs economic growth III

2011-12-05T14:01:00.001Z

Guest series by Matheson Russell

This is the third in a three-part series offering theological reflections on some issues raised by the Occupy movement. The first can be found here and the second here.

In the previous posts I’ve explored the way justice is prized in the biblical literature. To conclude this short series I want to return briefly to the puzzle I started with: why is it that Martin Luther King’s (thoroughly biblical) demands for justice strikes us today — even those of us who profess to be Christians — as somewhat naïve and perhaps even deserving of suspicion?

Is it that we have fundamentally lost our moral bearings and no longer care about justice? I don’t think that’s quite right. We do still care about justice—both individually and collectively. (Even bankers, it turns out, have moral intuitions about fairness and desert.)

It’s not so much that we’ve forgotten all about justice; it’s just that justice has slipped down our list of priorities. This is evidence of a subtle reorientation of the basic theological horizons of society: In the place of divine justice and mercy, economic growth has become our primary source of hope. Our faith is now firmly in free markets (alongside scientific and technological innovation) to provide for us a happy and prosperous future. And as a consequence, economists have become our high priests, periodically prescribing for us the sacrifices required to ensure economic growth (bailouts, stimulus packages, austerity measures, etc.).

One consequence of this theological reorientation is that our imaginative grip on the role of government has changed. We tend no longer to demand that governments order their activity above all else to the goals of justice and righteousness. Indeed, such demands seem to us potentially irresponsible insofar as they threaten to curb economic growth. The imperatives of justice compete with the things we truly believe to be the source of life and happiness, and so we keep them on a short leash. The ideal of government as an agent of justice to punish wrongdoing and to prevent injustice has thus become marginal for us. In its place we now tend to imagine government first and foremost as the manager of the economy and as a provider of services.

The shift has been gradual and it remains partial — we haven’t given up the previous cultural paradigm entirely — but it has been a marked shift all the same. Indeed, it is so deeply entrenched in our thinking that it has become second nature to us to size up our elected representatives almost entirely based upon their performance as managers of the economy and providers of services. Come election time, every politician knows that it would be electoral suicide not to promise economic growth and better — or at least more efficient — provision of health care, schools, roads and so on. These are the fixed parameters of public debate.

It goes without saying that economic growth and technological development have in many ways been a great blessing and have brought about staggering improvements in the quality of life. And if (and this is a big ‘if’) we can find ways to sustain economic development within the ecological limits of our planet and the moral limits of care, respect and solidarity, it may continue to be a path that we can and should pursue. But this should not obscure the underlying issue. Claims of justice have been displaced from the position of primacy given to them by the Christian tradition, and this is no mere oversight but is entirely consistent with the new reigning theology of our ‘secular’ world.

For those of us who are Christians, then, we need to reflect soberly and honestly on where our deep faith lies. We who confess faith in God and claim to share his concern for justice and righteousness — practically, what do we put our faith in? What do we support with our money, our voice and our vote? Are we prepared to choose justice over increases in our own personal material wealth and wellbeing? Are we prepared even to countenance decreases in our wealth and limits on our lifestyles for the sake of justice? And do we ultimately believe that this is the more excellent way — not just for us but for everyone?

Managing the economy and providing services are important, of course. But before all else the gospel teaches us that we need our institutions of public justice to answer the muted cries of those who are exploited and cast aside; and, today more than ever, that we need them to respond to the silent groans of the creation whose capacity to extend hospitality to the human race and all living things is being over-taxed in myriad ways that we are only now beginning to understand. We cannot execute these tasks merely as private citizens; we must also execute them collectively through public institutions that act in our name.
Dr Matheson Russell is lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Auckland.

Two horizons of hope: justice vs economic growth II

2011-12-03T23:01:00.005Z

Guest series by Matheson Russell

This is the second in a three-part series offering theological reflections on some issues raised by the Occupy movement. The first can be found here and the third here.

The one essential and foundational task of government, according to the biblical texts discussed in the previous post, is the execution of justice and the promotion of righteousness. Contingency planning is expected; but, surprisingly perhaps, economic prosperity and even military success are not centrally expected of kings or governments. Such happy outcomes are typically attributed to divine providence and not to human skill or virtue; material prosperity and military victory are characteristically interpreted as the sign of God’s blessing or favour, but — importantly — they are never considered the automatic consequence of good government.

Nowhere is this priority of justice and righteousness over riches and security more forcefully and starkly proclaimed than by Jesus himself in the Sermon on the Mount:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

We can draw a straight line from the message of Jesus to the message of Martin Luther King. Both share a deeply-held conviction—let’s call it a faith—that the highest social good, the thing to be pursued above all else, is justice and righteousness; that in this lies true riches and security; that walking down this path is what demonstrates a genuine faith in God.

All of the great civilizations have esteemed justice and elevated it as an ideal, and contemporary Western nations are certainly no exception. But what is so profoundly challenging about the biblical texts for us today is how relentlessly they maintain the view that life without justice is barely tolerable, barely human, and that justice and righteousness are to be prized above all as the most fundamental social goods.

I’m not sure that we hold quite the same view today. But, again, why is that?
Dr Matheson Russell is lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Auckland.

Two horizons of hope: justice vs economic growth I

2011-11-30T22:40:00.006Z

Guest series by Matheson Russell

This is the first in a three-part series offering theological reflections on some issues raised by the Occupy movement. The second can be found here and the third here.

Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech begins, oddly enough, with a banking metaphor. From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that day in 1963 King thundered:

In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

Perhaps the Occupy Wall Street protesters could have used that.

In any case, I’m struck by the way King’s rhetoric has dated. It still moves me deeply, but I just cannot imagine a public figure today getting away with such bold and unqualified demands. We have come to expect a measure of realism, a curbed enthusiasm, a toned-down rhetoric from our political leaders. To our contemporary ears King’s words sound somewhat naïve, and his idealism might even evoke in us a hint of wariness.

Am I right? Why do you think that is? Can it be put down merely to changes in rhetorical style? What should we make of King’s demands for justice?

King returns in his speech to the theme of justice in the famous line: “we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream’.”

The quotation comes from the biblical prophet Amos. And, as Oliver O’Donovan explains, the prophet’s poetic metaphors express the longing for there to begin “a flood of judicial activity” in a society in which judicial activity has dried up: “Courts are to be held every day ‘in the gate’, appellants are to be heard quickly and without the need for bribes, verdicts are to be clear-sighted and decisive, and enforced” (The Ways of Judgment, 6).

This petition for renewed judicial activity is not unique to Amos. In fact, it’s a desire that is expressed repeatedly throughout the Old Testament. The moral imagination of Israel is marked by this posture of deep yearning for proper judicial oversight. The poor, the vulnerable and the exploited should have their cases heard; and those who have wronged them should be publicly exposed and held responsible for their misdeeds. Similarly, in the Hebrew scriptures the qualities most venerated in kings and rulers are not military prowess, rhetorical skill or political cunning but the readiness to execute justice and the determination to see that peace and righteousness are established and maintained. The Old Testament people of God were clearly convinced that nothing could be a greater blessing to a nation than to have a just and wise ruler, and nothing worse than to be subject to a corrupt or foolish ruler who has no concern for justice.

This guiding conviction is picked up again in the New Testament. In continuity with the message of the ancient prophets, both John the Baptist and Jesus come preaching against the rulers of Israel whose failings were precisely failures to exercise their authority with the appropriate justice and mercy; rather than teaching and applying the law of God without hypocrisy and without favour, they were exploiting and neglecting the people under their care and serving their own interests.

By contrast, Jesus is studiously portrayed in the gospels as one who demonstrates all the qualities of a just king or ruler and who will at last fulfill the oracle of Isaiah 9:

He will reign on David’s throne
    and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
    with justice and righteousness
    from that time on and forever.

Throughout the Bible, then, it is axiomatic that the primary purpose of government is to establish and to uphold justice; and that without institutions of justice a society simply cannot enjoy peace and lasting happiness. Whether they are politically naïve or not, King’s focus on justice places him squarely in the biblical tradition.
Dr Matheson Russell is lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Auckland.

Twelve days of carbon Christmas

2011-11-28T11:51:00.005Z

A very large part of our ecological impact is hidden in the stuff that we buy. We often overlook the resources required to produce our consumer goods. For instance, some people obsess over personal water use and are proud that they now turn the tap off while brushing their teeth (a no-brainer), saving a handful of litres each time, but ignore the hundreds of litres required to produce the dairy and meat products they consumed before brushing.

Now that Advent has begun, it may be fruitful to consider the ecological impact of our Christmas shopping. This infographic (click to see at a more readable size or go here) lists twelve kinds of presents which each involve about 50kg of carbon dioxide emissions (or equivalent) in their production. Some may surprise you (for instance the ecological impacts of gold mining are shocking, and carbon is not the worst of it. I am seriously reconsidering whether gold rings are a wise symbol of fidelity). For reference, the average annual Australian, Canadian or US per capita footprint is something like 18-25 tonnes of carbon dioxide (or equivalent), depending how you calculate it. The UK average is approximately 8-14 tonnes. The global average is around 5 tonnes. To minimise very serious climate consequences (which mean social, economic and political consequences), we probably need to be more like 1-2 tonnes each, so a 50 kg gift would represent up to 1/20th of one's total annual carbon budget.

If you're looking for ways to cut down the stuff you give and receive this Christmas (while enhancing the spiritual, relational and celebratory tone of the season), you might like to check out some suggestions I made last year.

Occupy (and) the church

2011-11-23T23:39:00.005Z

The recent emergence of the Occupy movement is a fascinating social and political phenomenon. The existence and persistence of this fledgling movement is an ongoing protest against the excesses and contradictions of contemporary hypercapitalism (particularly as it is embodied and enabled by the global financial system as underwritten by national governments after 2008). Yet the form is important since this is not simply an angry rally or creative media stunt; it is an experiment in a temporary alternative society run by direct democracy, a second society existing amidst a broader one and to which it appeals with both invitation ("This is what democracy looks like. Join us!") and critique. It is an anarchist meme drawing in a wide range of sympathisers and has rapidly spread via imitation and facilitated by the net beyond the national context that gave it birth (unlike, say, the Tea Party to which it is often compared). Much has and will continue to be written and said about it, and this is precisely what ought to happen, since such new forms call out for interpretation and the movement is if nothing else an opening, a chance for a fresh start to old conversations. What it may become remains to be seen.

The most frequent complaint regarding the movement is that it does not have a coherent message. There are three things to say about this. First, the willful inability of much of the mainstream media to report what Occupy camps are actually saying is depressingly predictable. Second, in a genuinely grassroots movement that has arisen from a primarily negative stimulus, a positive alternative may take time to emerge and the camps testify at once to the urgency of the need for such alternatives (through participants' willingness to camp out even amidst a northern winter) and to the patience required to seek them (as seen in the characteristic interminable general assemblies). Third, it remains an open question whether this movement is itself already in embryo the alternative it puts forward (that is, an anarchist non-hierarchical alternative model of a society based on trust and mutual care rather than our one mediated primarily by market exchange) or if its primary function is to highlight the public wounds inflicted by plutocracy in order to provoke reform and/or revolution (as Tahrir Square was, and appears to again be becoming).

An alternative community within the world that stands as both critique and invitation to the surrounding culture and structures, claiming to be a foretaste of a possible future while holding open that very future as essentially unknown in the face of forces that seek to maintain the ongoing catastrophe of the status quo: the similarities between the Occupy movement and the church are striking. Indeed, this whole post was really intended as a brief intro and recommendation to this very insightful piece by Luke Bretherton, theologian (and former student of O'Donovan).
H/T Andy Stiles.

When history was made and other stories

2011-11-12T21:26:00.003Z

The Economist: When history of made, a graph in which the historical novelty of the last six decades or so is made breathtakingly clear. H/T Michael Tobis, who offers his own reflections upon it.

SMH: Bob Brown, the most ______ man in Australia. Fill in your own adjective to complete the title of an interesting profile of a fascinating man.

Naomi Klein: Climate change, capitalism and the transformation of cultural values. Klein suggests that perhaps the insistence of the deniers that climate change implies the necessity of a left-wing cultural transformation ought to be taken with more seriousness.

Slavoj Žižek: Occupy First. Demands come later. Žižek answers the critics of the movement who claim it is a gathering of un-American violent dreamers. Speaking of Occupy (which surely deserves its own post or three at some stage), I found this summary (from a NZ perspective) useful, these images illuminating of protesters' motives and this warning (from an American in London) quite salient.

ABC: Anti-consumerism is the new democracy.

John Dickson: Art of persuasion not so simple. Dickson turns to Aristotle to gain some basic insights into how to be convincing: logos, pathos and, crucially, ethos.

Orion: The Consolations of Extinction. A reflection on how deep time affects our perception of the ongoing sixth extinction event and of our own mortality as a species.

Wait eleven seconds, then celebrate

2011-11-11T11:11:00.004Z

11:11:11 11/11/11.

If you're not on twenty-four hour time, then do it all again in twelve hours.

On supporting a friend with cancer

2011-11-10T10:46:00.001Z

After my own experiences of cancer diagnosis, treatment and remission, I more or less regularly receive requests from people whose friend, family member or colleague has just been diagnosed asking for advice on how they might best care for them. I thought I would post one of my answers (with permission) in case it is of some benefit to others.

Hi friend,

Good to hear from you, though sorry to hear about this news.

I guess the first thing I'd say, which may actually not sound very helpful at all, is that cancers are very different and the experiences of cancer patients even more diverse, so I would be quite hesitant to extrapolate too much from my own story.

Having said that, it is still possible to say a little more. Grief and suffering come in many forms (even in the same person) and bring with them various needs and opportunities. At times, silence is the best support; at others, the chance to talk to a sympathetic ear; at others, a word of comfort; at others, an act of silent service. In general, I guess I'd suggest that responsiveness is therefore key, being willing to play whatever role will be a blessing to those in need. While at times grief needs space, I suspect it rarely needs absence, so as a start, simply indicating your willingness to be there for them and to grieve with them is probably the best bet. If they have practical needs, then offers of help from trusted friends may well be appreciated (babysitting while parents go to some of the endless appointments these things seem to involve? Doing some housework? Frozen meals? The latter can probably be safely brought without being asked, as long as you stick to any known dietary requirements). Some people may find themselves with little energy for daily tasks like these. Others might throw themselves into them as a distraction and comfort.

Depending how wide and deep the pre-existing support networks of this family are, it may be that they are initially swamped with offers of help and sympathy. If you think this might be the case, you (or someone else) could perform the service of coordinating the practical support (putting together rosters for babysitting or frozen meals, etc.).

Don't neglect the partner of the patient, whose grief is double: grief for their partner's sake and for their own (potential) loss. And depending how old the kids are, they may need extra support from trusted family friends.

Again, depending how well you know them, then make your level and form of contact fit the relationship. If you are not close friends, then make contact through forms that can be ignored or noted and replied to later (email, letter, card, SMS). Only call if you know them well, because they might receiving a string of calls and probably don't want to be having the same conversation with dozens of people.

If my experience is anything to go by, they are likely to find themselves the target of more unsolicited advice than at any time outside of pregnancy. Although I know everyone meant well, I'd suggest keeping any crank miracle cures you've heard of or stories of amazing recoveries to yourself. It is actually not very encouraging to be told about someone's aunt who was cured simply by prayer and faith or someone's grandfather who drank only goji berry juice and lived to 100. Such stories are (a) irresponsible (I'm not a big fan of alternative medicine, nor of purely faith-based healing, for both scientific and theological reasons) and (b) sometimes contain an element of accusation in them ("if only you had enough faith, you too would be healed like my cousin").

Many cancer treatments become complex, and there is often a high volume of information to share with those concerned. One suggestion that a friend made to me (more unsolicited advice from a guy I didn't know well at the time, but of all that I received, almost the only piece of pure gold I got) was that it might be a good idea to set up a blog where interested family and friends can self-medicate on as much or as little information as they wish. This means that rather than having the same conversation fifty times after each appointment, I could simply write out a summary once and post it on the blog, then direct people to the blog. Mine is here (only updated very infrequently now).

I would also suggest keeping your theological comments minimal unless they raise it. I was probably unusual in that I'd just written my 4th year paper on suffering and the problem of evil just weeks before being diagnosed and so was (usually) quite happy to discuss theology with anyone who wanted. But not everyone is in that place, and for many, just retreating into survival mode is all they can handle for a while (once treatment started, my willingness to talk dropped rapidly as I just had little energy for anything).

I could write reams about my experiences of treatment, but here, the specifics of the cancer become most stark and what I say may bear little or no relevance to their situation.

They may or may not find it helpful to meet with other cancer patients, though I suspect that such groups will be available through the hospital, so you probably don't need to worry about that.

Finally, I'd suggest taking this tragedy as an opportunity to reflect upon your own mortality. Our society has hidden death and dying as far from view as possible and here is one place that the gospel truly does have good news (though not always easy news). Of all that I read, wrote and heard during the intense few months after diagnosis, the best was undoubtedly this talk by Stanley Hauerwas. It may or may not be appropriate to share with your friends (that is for you to judge), but it is almost certainly worth an hour of your time (if you can get past his braying cackle and Texan twang).

It hardly needs saying, but when words and wisdom falter, groans are also part of a faithful response to serious illness.

Grace & peace,
Byron

PS If you don't mind, I might post my reply (omitting your name and any other identifying details) on my blog since I have been asked this question quite a number of times (not that I mind being asked!) and putting it there will mean I can refer to it in future. Let me know if you'd rather I didn't.

Seven billion: too much of a good thing?

2011-11-07T23:55:00.003Z

According to the best available estimates, the global human population reached seven billion individuals last Monday (give or take a few months) and continues to rise by about 10,000 each hour. We took all of human history to reach one billion around 1800. We then took a leisurely 120 odd years to reach two billion in about 1923. The third billion came in 1959 after 46 years; the fourth in 1974 after 15; the fifth in 1987 after 13 and the sixth in 1999 after 12. Since we've just taken another twelve to rise to seven billion, it may appear that human population is growing faster than ever before in history. In absolute terms, it is. The cause is not rising fertility but declining mortality. We are living longer and more are surviving childhood to raise children of their own. Yet in relative terms, we have passed our peak growth back in the 1970s. The annual rate of growth has been slowing since then as fertility rates are plummeting. Sixty years ago the average adult female gave birth to six children, now it is only two and a half. Yet sixty years ago the global average life expectancy was 48, now it is about 68, with infant mortality having declined by two thirds.

Longer, healthier lives; fewer tragic losses for parents; smaller families (largely reflecting more educated and affluent women, greater social security for the elderly and less manual labour): these are all good things. More human beings created in the image of God, more neighbours to love, more brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. This is a thing of wonder.

And yet, seven billion of us live on a single planet, with a single atmosphere, single ocean, and finite land area with limited supplies of fresh water, fertile soil and biodiverse ecosystem. Is it possible that we have too much of a good thing? For some people, this issue is "the elephant in the room" of ecological discussions (for some reason, this seems to nearly always be the phrase that is used). More mouths to feed means more food, means more land devoted to agriculture, means more forests cleared, more fertilisers disrupting the nitrogen cycle, more stress on water supplies, more trawlers scraping the bottom of the oceanic barrel, more rubbish, more carbon into the atmosphere and more demand on finite resources. We are invited to conduct a thought experiment in which every square metre of the surface of the planet contains a human: a ridiculous impossibility. So at what point do we reach too much of the wonderful thing known as homo sapiens? We love water, but too much is a destructive flood. Have we, in our enormously successful filling of the earth, now become a human inundation?

Such questions are always controversial, not least amongst Christians who (rightly) cherish children as gifts from a loving Father. But raising such questions in a simplistic manner can actually serve a dangerous hidden agenda. When you start crunching the numbers, the key figure in ecological degradation is not seven billion, since seven billion are not created equal (at least in terms of ecological impact). A single affluent Australian may have a total destructive impact on the planet that is more than one hundred or even a thousand times greater than a typical rural African. Taking carbon footprints as an example, the average US baby will be responsible for more carbon emissions in their first year of life than an average Ethiopian in their entire lifetime. The Bangladeshi with ten children may still have a far smaller drain on the planet's resources than a childless European businessman. And so, if we only look at population and ignore consumption, then the problem becomes Africa, where birth rates are highest.

Yet Africa contributes a relatively tiny share of the total demand on the earth's systems. In absolute terms and especially per capita, the developed world still bears the lion's share. Again, to pick a single statistic (which turns out to be reasonably representative of other metrics): globally, the wealthiest 7% contribute 50% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions while the poorest 50% contribute 7%.

Therefore, the first issue is and must remain consumption, consumption, consumption, consumption, consumption. Or as Monbiot puts it, it's not sex, it's money. Too narrow a focus on population enables those of us who are wealthy to ignore the very real threat our lifestyles and economic system are to the planet and all its inhabitants. In some cases, a population obsession may even be a mask for xenophobic anti-immigration sentiments that have little to do with ecological concerns.

The much-feared "population bomb" is already being de-fused. As mentioned above, fertility rates have fallen rapidly across much of the globe to levels now only just above replacement (2.5 children per women; replacement is considered to be 2.1). While each billion has taken fewer years to add than the last, the rate of growth has been in decline for about four decades and the ongoing growth is largely the result of so many young people being born in the last few decades, giving the system a certain momentum. Where we end up is currently estimated to be around ten billion (give or take a billion or two, largely depending on how quickly African women receive access to adequate education and healthcare). As countries develop out of absolute poverty, first death rates decline, then birth rates, until population levels stabilise. This has been (or is currently) the experience of every nation thus far and is known as the "benign demographic transition". The demographic transition refers to the shift from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low fertility. It is labelled benign because it means that human populations will not continue expanding exponentially like bacteria in a petri dish (another image much loved by certain demographic doomers).

What is less often noted is that the benign demographic transition assumes that the nations currently still experiencing high fertility rates will see them decline as their affluence increases. Thus, we avoid a population explosion though a consumption explosion. The benign demographic transition may not be so benign after all if the model of development used to bring it about assumes that everyone ought to be living like us.

I do think that "the more the merrier" is true, yet on a finite planet, I believe it most prudent to pursue this diachronically, not synchronically. That is, the way to welcome the most humans onto the planet is probably not to try to do so all at once, lest we exacerbate the damage we are presently doing to the globe's carrying capacity and so reduce the possibilities of future generations. In considering this damage, population is a secondary issue, yet it is an issue nonetheless. Since we still walk a path of high consumption and great inequality (and are likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable future) then efforts to slow population growth sooner rather than later are one way of reducing the damage being done to the planetary conditions necessary for human flourishing. Of course, these efforts must remain subordinated to tackling over-consumption (which is the primary issue) and never be allowed to become an excuse to shift our own weighty responsibilities onto the poor.

Ultimately, it is possible to live a flourishing life not mired in stupid poverty without it costing the earth. A good life need not be a life of high consumption. The other alternatives are to abandon any notion of justice and expect the poor to stay poor, to institute draconian population controls or to abandon any attempt to pass on an earth anything like the present one to our children. Very significantly lower per capita consumption in the rich world is the only path that enables the simultaneous pursuit of both ecological responsibility and social justice for those living in absolute poverty in a world of seven billion and rising. Fortunately, it is also the path to greater joy.

Still here

2011-10-30T11:18:00.005Z

I plan not to make a habit of posts such as this, but the last month or two have seen a larger than average number of disruptions and distractions and diseases.

To signal my intention to return to slightly more regular posting, I have shifted my header image to something a little more Scottish. As always, I'd love constructive feedback on the change. Do the words need to be a different colour?

As I am now in (God willing) my final year of PhD, I am probably not going to be posting every day as I did for a year, but will aim at more like two or three posts a week. That may have to shift further as things progress, but hopefully there is still enough synergy between blog and project to keep both on the move.

Nerdgasm

2011-10-12T14:53:00.000+01:00

This has nothing to do with anything but is too good not to save here.
H/T Rod Benson.

Keeping alternatives alive

2011-10-11T15:34:00.001+01:00

"Only a crisis brings about real change. When the crisis occurs the ideas that are adopted are those which are readily available. It is part of the duty of the Church to keep alive alternative ways of thinking and living in preparation for the time when the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable."

- Richard Chartres, Green economy possible with political will.
H/T Liz.

Do you think this is a helpful way of talking about one of the political roles of the church, as a witness to and guardian of the idea that other ways of life are possible, that repentance is the most fundamental freedom, that there is nothing inevitable about the present political landscape?

Climate change: what is at stake?

2011-10-09T09:29:00.001+01:00

The more I talk with people about their attitudes towards and feelings about climate change, the more I have discovered that many (perhaps most) well-educated and socially-engaged people have only a somewhat vague idea of the nature, scale and likely timing of the various kinds of dangers we face on our current path. And so, when I came across this summary from Joe Romm, I immediately thought that many of my readers might find it a useful resource to peruse, bookmark, reflect upon and share with others. If you are not really sure what impacts mainstream scientific research currently considers likely from a middle of the road business as usual scenario (i.e. not worst case), then this post lays out many of the key issues in an accessible way.

The figure included above is from MIT research from 2009 and shows the likelihood of different temperature outcomes based on two broad scenarios. On the left is business as usual. This is not the worst case and does not include slow feedbacks. On the right is a world where we take aggressive global action to reduce carbon emissions. The temperatures are the average global difference between the world in 1990 and in 2100. Since most other discussions used pre-industrial temperatures as a baseline and the world had already warmed by about 0.5ºC by 1990, then this needs to be added to the numbers to compare with other publications. My main criticism of the image is in the choice of colour. A rise of 3.5-4.5ºC above pre-industrial temperatures can in no sense be understood as reassuringly green. Such a change in the space of a century would be unlikely to be compatible with industrial civilisation as we know it or the possibility of feeding anything like the 9-10 billion people projected to be around by then.

What has smoking got to do with climate change?

2011-10-07T23:43:00.001+01:00

DOUBT from The Climate Reality Project on Vimeo.

Do cigarettes contribute to the warming of the planet? Not really, but the deliberate manufacturing of public doubt in the face of widespread scientific evidence has been the hallmark of industry attempts to delay regulation in both cases. Not only has big oil used the same arguments and tactics as big tobacco, but in some cases, the same individuals. Certainly many of the same anti-regulation think tanks appear as sources of claims that are subsequently picked up and repeated in the mainstream media. Numerous publications have documented the history of these groups, who act as a PR smokescreen for industries in danger of serious public backlash over the dangerous activities from which they profit (for instance, Merchants of Doubt). The goal is not refutation of the science but merely the seeding of public doubt through the appearance of ongoing controversy on topics considered resolved amongst the experts. The question is how long they will be successful. For the link between cigarettes and cancer, such tactics effectively won the tobacco industry three decades of public confusion and regulatory hiatus in which to maximise profits. We don't have three decades in which to delay over climate.

Not dead yet

2011-10-04T13:18:00.000+01:00

The last ten days have included a fascinating conference (which I really should have plugged a few more times; more on that anon, probably), the arrival of some old friends in Edinburgh and a bout of unwelcome illness that have together conspired to keep me offline. The previous two posts were scheduled to go up ahead of time and I am only just back on very briefly today. It may be another day or two before I get a chance to post anything as I try to catch up.

That's got to hurt - right in the breadbasket

2011-09-28T23:03:00.001+01:00

Although somewhat dry and relying almost entirely on figures and maps, this video expresses what I take to be one of the key issues relating to climate change, namely, its likely impact on food production (and from there, on geopolitical stability and conflict). If you can't spare the few minutes to watch it, the key take-home message is that pretty much all of the world's main grain-producing areas lie in regions likely to be particularly susceptible to more intense and/or frequent heatwaves. This must be taken with a grain of salt, since the regional resolution of cilmate models does not have a high degree of confidence. Nonetheless, even the significant possibility of such an outcome can help to focus the mind.

Worship of a pedestrian god: seven reasons to ditch the car

2011-09-26T00:05:00.004+01:00

Perhaps the most memorable phrase in the quirky maritime novel The Life of Pi is when the eponymous narrator observes that Christians worship "a pedestrian god". Jesus, God amongst us, lived his entire life within the ambit of distances capable of perambulation, travelling at speeds commensurate with his gait, and never learned how to reverse park. Of course, with cars not being invented for another nineteen hundred years, it would be odd to draw a preference for pedestrianism from Jesus' example, yet he nonetheless demonstrates that a blessed and god-honouring human life can be lived on two feet (and perhaps the occasional donkey or boat). Humans are made from the dust (even the word human is etymologically related to humus, i.e. soil, a pun that also works in Hebrew), and part of humility (another related word) is to stay in touch with the ground. Perhaps if our habitual mode of transport makes us forget that we are bipedal, we may be tempted to arrogant flights of fancy concerning our fitting location.

We have become accustomed to the convenience and ease of traversing great distances with relatively little effort or cost in a tonne of steel moving with as much momentum as a speeding bullet (and capable of similar damage upon impact with a body of flesh). This hyper-mobility affects our perceptions of distance, our assumptions about location and our expectations of what is and ought to be possible. We generally deem it of little import that we live many days walk from our place of employment and feel no strangeness at the great distances travelled by the food on our plate prior to its final brief journey down our oesophagus.

Cars make us feel powerful; it is no accident that certain versions of masculinity in our culture have idolised these machines. Car ownership becomes status symbol, rite of passage and - in a contemporary landscape designed for drivers - right of passage, since there often is no other practical way to get between locations. This power to pick a destination and arrive at great speed is a powerful symbol of autonomy, of individual freedom. And so the odd thing about those who are so proud to declare that they stand on their own two feet is that these days they so rarely do so. Individualism has for the last few decades found perhaps its most powerful symbol in the private automobile (hidden from view are the myriad social relations embodied in our complex system of mechanised transport).

Like most of those around me, I got my license when I was sixteen, which means I've been a driver for longer than not. Yet I have never owned a car. Over the years, I've had various cars on loan for a couple of days or a couple of months (in one case, a couple of years). But since getting married, we have chosen to live in walkable urban areas with decent public transport. We currently live 193 steps from my workplace and within a couple of hundred metres of dozens of bus routes.

My adult life has almost exclusively been lived in an urban context. Outside of well-designed (which often means pre-20thC) urban spaces, the tyranny of the automobile is woven into the fabric of most suburban and rural life.

I am not saying that all cars are evil or that there is no place for advanced technology in travel. Nor is the combustion of fossil fuels in itself wrong. But with the level of car use in our society, we are like twenty-drink drunks about to pass out in the gutter trying to defend the goodness of alcohol. Wholesale rejection of useful technologies is not currently our temptation. And there is plenty of room for smarter and more responsible use of the technology we already have.

Since I promised in the title, let me conclude this slightly aimless reflective ramble with seven reasons to ditch your car (or at least consider using it less):

1. Doing so in many cases will save money. For instance, see this account of living without a car in Edinburgh, which has a great deal of resonance for us; it is one of the many reasons we love this city. Cars bring expenses at every point: purchase, petrol, insurance, registration, parking. Of course these are costs associated with other kinds of transport, but have you tried doing the sums? Both our apartments in Sydney had a secure parking space that we were able to rent out, which came in handy. If you are someone who begrudges the taxwoman her pound of flesh, then carlessness will also mean you can avoid a range of taxes, fees and tolls.

2. Leaving footprints cuts your carbon footprint. For many people, a car represents a significant slice of your carbon pie. Not just the petrol exploding in the engine and sending out its fumes, but the embodied emissions released during construction. The various metals and plastics and other materials that comprise a car take a lot of energy. For more efficient cars, this can be up to half the overall carbon emissions associated with the vehicle (and so, it is often better from a carbon perspective to run an old bomb into the ground rather than continually upgrading to slightly more efficient models).

3. Becoming less reliant on a car is good preparation for peak oil. Not driving saves a little petrol, delaying (very slightly) the peak and, more importantly, doing so is a good way of weaning yourself off relying on cheap petrol, which won't be around forever. Such behaviour also sends a message to politicians and policy makers that walkable public spaces and good public transport are desirable and desired. Poor town planning has a lot to answer for as we have invested trillions and trillions in infrastructure based on cheap petrol. But the good news is that it can also make a very significant contribution to a better world. Well-designed walkable urban spaces are safer, cleaner, more enjoyable and can foster stronger communities.

4. Walking is considerably healthier than sitting on your backside pumping the accelerator, even when you factor in the extra calories you burn during road rage. I discussed this at greater length back here in relation to this fascinating little book.

5. More drivers means more cars means less appealing footpaths and a greater perception of danger to pedestrians. Driving can thus become a self-perpetuating cycle where walking (or riding a bicycle) becomes less desirable the fewer pedestrians (or cyclists) there are. Choosing to break this cycle will make it that little bit easier for others.

6. Walking is wearing on the sole, but good for the soul. It slows us down a little, and makes us less ambitious about how much we try to get done. There is more opportunity to smell the roses, or sit on doorsteps, which is what Aurora currently loves doing while we're out walking. It is not that she is tired; she just likes to stop and take in the view. While walking, there is more chance of interacting with those who share your space, more opportunities to notice your environment (which can be dangerous if done too enthusiastically while driving).

7. If walking was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.

How do we feed the world without destroying it?

2011-09-24T22:55:00.000+01:00

I've said it many times, but food and water are where the action really is at. Of all our activities, nothing has done more to change the face of the planet over the last ten thousand years than agriculture. It is the greatest environmental threat to the biosphere and yet the most fundamental basis of human society. Can we get it right? This presentation consists of a twelve minute lecture followed by a four minute video that says much the same thing at a greater pace. If you want to cut to the chase, then start watching at about 14:15.

So long and thanks for all the fish

2011-09-21T18:47:00.002+01:00

I recently came across this summary of the state of the world's marine life after decades of industrial scale pollution, warming, acidification, trawling, nutrient runoff and overfishing. It is from this paper.

God wants you to be healthy, wealthy and happy

2011-09-19T11:19:00.002+01:00

How does God make our lives better? By calling us to poverty, persecution, fasting and the curiously patient "ineffectiveness" of prayer. How does God bring us joy? By teaching us to abandon false hopes, to mourn and groan and yearn for his kingdom. How does God bring us peace? By telling us to take up our cross. How does God give us life? By calling us to die.
I don't pretend this is a full account, simply a small counterweight to overly triumphalist baptisms of our present comfort.

Say yes to putting a price on carbon

2011-09-19T01:57:00.000+01:00

Despite the drawbacks of the proposed Australian legislation to put a modest price on carbon pollution, if you support the idea of doing so, then you might like to add your voice to this campaign.

Society for the Study of Theology Postgraduate Conference

2011-09-18T18:06:00.001+01:00

The UK's Society for the Study of Theology is holding a postgraduate conference in early December on the theme of Theologians and the Church. It will be here at New College and feature Graham Ward as plenary speaker plus a roundtable discussion involving Oliver O'Donovan, Janet Soskice, Harriet Harris and Graham Ward. Deadline for abstract submission is 31st October. The conference is free with a limited number of bursaries to cover travel expenses. More information can be found in each of the links above.

Our ecological crises: Wake up and smell the stats

2011-09-15T23:50:00.016+01:00

I'd like to put together a list of credible ecological statistics from reputable sources as a resource. Please post links to any such existing lists you are aware of or add any that have grabbed your attention (please make sure you include a source). To start us off, here are a few off the top of my head and in no particular order:

• Humans now affect over 80% of the world's land, 100% of the oceans and 100% of the atmosphere. Around 40% of the Earth's surface has been "strongly affected" by our activities, including about 40% of the oceans.

• Half of the world’s tropical forests have disappeared since World War II and roughly another 10 million hectares are being felled each year — the equivalent of 40 football fields every minute.

• Seventy-seven percent of global fisheries are fully exploited, over exploited or have been depleted. Based on 1998 data, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that global fishing fleets "are 2.5 times larger than needed."

• Marine apex predator numbers (i.e. large fish and sharks) have declined by 90% over the last 50-100 years, mainly due to overfishing (more stats on marine life decline).

• Deep-sea trawling damages an area of sea bed twice the size of the contiguous USA each year.

• We're removing 9-10,000 tonnes of fish from the ocean every hour.

• As far as we can work out (and there are wide error margins on this one), species are currently going extinct at something like 100-1000 times the background rate of extinction, faster than at any time since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It is likely that somewhere between 5,000 and 30,000 species become extinct each year. All the primary drivers of these trends are linked to human activities: land use changes, habitat destruction, pollutants, invasive species, anthropogenic climate change.

• Twenty-two percent of the world's plant species are threatened, and another 33% have an unknown status.

• Twenty-two species of Australian mammals become extinct between 1900 and 1960. Recently, mammal populations in Kakadu have gone into freefall.

• In the 1950s there were 450,000 lions worldwide and now there are only 20,000. Leopards are down from 700,000 to 50,000, cheetahs from 45,000 to 12,000 and tigers from 50,000 to just 3,000. And in the last forty years, elephant numbers have halved across protected areas in West and Central Africa. Globally, since 1970, wild vertebrate numbers have declined by almost one third.

• One study in 2001 put the annual cost of alien invasive species to the global economy at US$1.4 trillion annually, or about 5% of total GDP.

• Overall, current ecological damage is estimated to cost the global economy US$6.6 trillion annually (yes, with a "t").

• An area of arable land roughly the size of Greece or Nepal is lost to soil erosion and desertification each year. Since 1950, 1.9 billion hectares (4.7 billion acres) of land around the world has become degraded.

• By 1995, humans consumed 20% of the global net terrestrial primary production. By 2005, it was 25%.

• Earth overshoot day occurs earlier each year. This is a notional measure designating the point in the year where global consumption exceeds the annual renewable biocapacity of the planet. In 2011, it falls on 27th September. Another way of saying this is that in 2010 the worldwide human population used about 135% of the resources the earth can generate in a year.

• Between 2000 and 2010, the number of cars and motorcycles in China increased twentyfold and there are now one billion cars in the world.

• As we burn 196,442 kilos of coal, 103,881,279 litres of natural gas and 150,179 litres of oil a second, we're dumping 62,500 tonnes of heat-trapping emissions into the earth's atmosphere every minute. Since the industrial revolution, we have increased the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than 40% and increased the acidity of the oceans by 30% (a rate faster than anything seen before in Earth's history). The radiative forcing of the carbon dioxide human activities have put in the atmosphere is the equivalent of adding the energy of more than ten Hiroshima bombs every second and is likely the most significant contributing factor in Greenland losing around 9000 tonnes of ice every second (and accelerating), in about 90% of glaciers globally retreating, in precipitating the largest marine migration in two million years due to warming oceans and in ensuring that the last 318 consecutive months have had a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last month with below average temperatures was February 1985.

• Arctic summer sea ice has declined by 40% in extent and more than 75% in volume over the last three decades and 2011 saw new records for lowest extent and volume since records began. The North West passage in the Arctic ocean has been open due to melting ice only five times in recorded history: 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007.

• Nearly 5.5 billion people (about 80% of global human population) live in an area where rivers are seriously threatened.

• The rate at which we are extracting groundwater has more than doubled between 1960 and 2000.

• In 1960, the Aral Sea was the world's fourth largest lake yet by 2000 it had shrunk to 20% of its original size due to over-irrigation on its feeder rivers.

• We put more than six million tonnes of plastic in the oceans annually, which is something like eight million pieces of litter each day, and over 119,000 items floating on every square kilometre of ocean.

• It is likely humanity has had a greater effect on the nitrogen cycle than any other phenomenon for the last 2.5 billion years.

Note that none of these are projections of present trends, they all relate simply to our present condition. This is currently an unsystematic sample; I have not (yet) tried to cover all of the various ecological and resource crises. This post may grow as I continue to gather more information.
I also posted some further statistics back here, though have not had a chance to post links to all the sources of those, and their credibility is something of a mixed bag.

24 Hours of Climate Reality

2011-09-14T23:54:00.002+01:00

Over the next 24 hours, Climate Reality Project is hosting twenty-four consecutive sixty-minute presentations from locations around the world highlighting the present reality of climate change as it is manifest in a wide diversity of locations. If you check out the site, you'll probably find a location near you. All the presenters are experts in their field and thus have a higher-than-average chance of being grounded in the reality of what is actually happening to our planet. Each hour will feature a presentation that addresses both the global and local picture.
Disclaimer: this is another project by Al Gore. His An Inconvenient Truth certainly helped to put the issue on the public agenda, but it also probably contributed to making it fiercely partisan in the US. Gore is far from perfect and is not himself a scientist, but he is a good communicator and worth listening to because he generally has his ear to the ground, listening to the real experts.

Ecological legalism and Christian freedom

2011-09-13T15:45:00.003+01:00

Some questions: What is your carbon footprint? How does it compare to the global average? To the global required average? And what are you doing to reduce it?

Dig beneath the surface of ecological issues and for many people, apart from fear, the second most significant factor driving our responses is guilt. So much of the discourse around ecological responsibility has the feel of a new legalism, a set of norms available to external quantification and verification that can at best provide useful guidance and at worst either crush motivation or provide an open door to self-righteous superiority (depending on the size of one's footprint). Indeed, the whole concept of an ecological or carbon footprint is ripe for interpersonal comparison and when linked to moral judgements of the necessity of reducing it, the full range of contemporary ecological psychoses becomes manifest: holier-than-thou accusation, desperate performance, pious self-denigration, tokenistic conformity, resentful rejection, weary indifference, paralysing despair.

If we are nonetheless to take our ecological concerns seriously (as the scriptures, reason and a passing familiarity with our present condition suggest), then do we have to live with such legalism? Of course not.

Basically, we need a way to talk about the good life to which Christ calls us that speaks in the tones of grace not law (apart from the law of love). This good life may well often look like taking up a cross and denying myself, but I walk it in hope and faith that the path of love is ultimately the path of life, even if I have to wait for God to raise the dead to see it.

We are set free by Christ to live as servants of God and neighbour. This is the only path to life, and at times it can feel narrow, and yet the content is actually quite flexible. Andrew Cameron speaks of the ethical life as being like a river - there is a strong current in one direction (love), but within that, there is water moving in all kinds of ways, at different speeds and so on. Yet there are still river banks. This is his attempt to speak of how the scriptures can be quite specific in their prohibitions ("do not lie"), but general in their exhortations ("love your neighbour").

The question for us as Christians seeking to follow Christ amidst a world of ecological degradation is therefore: what is the space of Christian ecological freedom? Where are there hard lines that we ought not cross? And, much more importantly, how do we talk about (and live) the strong current of love? Complicating matters is the fact that many aspects of our ecological crises are cumulative, involving too much of an otherwise good thing, rather than the commission of acts that are in themselves always wrong. In this way, I think that ecological irresponsibility has a somewhat similar structure to drunkenness, or gluttony. I may know that once I have had ten drinks, then I am in disobedience to the warnings of scripture against inebriation, but there is not necessarily a line we can draw in the sand and say that up to this many drinks is I am simply enjoying the fruit of the vine. Perhaps legal blood alcohol limits for driving might give us a ballpark estimate, and perhaps contraction and convergence models of carbon emissions might give us a ballpark estimate for our carbon footprint, but the law of the land is always going to be both too precise and too blunt an instrument for forming the mind of Christ within us.

If our goal is defined too narrowly in terms of certain emissions levels or atmospheric concentrations or personal footprints, then the complex world of goods and the discernment required to navigate it can become oversimplified. Even amidst the grave perils we face, Christian obedience is a path of freedom and joy, of trusting the goodness of God under the weight of a cross, of dying to self and receiving new life being granted as a gift.

Some better questions: How does new life in Christ lead into delightedly sharing my neighbour's burdens? In what ways are my neighbours threatened by ecological degradation? Which parts of my life and the life of my community contribute to this path of destruction? How can I discover new patterns of thankfulness, contentment and engagement to express the abiding peace I have received from Christ and the deep concern for my neighbour this grants me?

Beyond personal inconvenience: climate as a moral issue

2011-09-10T00:48:00.002+01:00

"Much of what passes for even the most progressive discussion of climate change these days is devoted to persuading us that dealing with the problem will not be costly in terms of our current lifestyles, and so is compatible with ways of living that many take to be in their best interests. This is comforting talk, and I am hopeful that it may turn out to be substantially true. Still, it seems to me that this is the wrong discussion to be having. Our reasons for acting on climate change are not (or at least not primarily) that doing so will be good (or at least not bad) for us; they are deeper and more morally serious than that. In my view, seeing this should make it easier for us to act. To dither when one might prevent moderate harm to oneself by taking modest precautionary action is folly to be sure, but its moral import is limited. By contrast, to engage in willful self-deception and moral corruption when the lives of future generations, the world's poor, and even the basic fabric of life on the planet is at stake is a much more serious business. We should wake up to that fact, and demand more of our institutions, our leaders, and ourselves."

- Stephen Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm: The ethical tragedy of climate change (Oxford: OUP, 2011), 10-11.

Much of the public discussion of climate policy (and most notably that surrounding the Australian government's proposal to put a very modest price on carbon) has focused upon the costs and benefits of action from the perspective of the commentator and those like him or her. Australia shouldn't hold back our coal-fired extractive economy (so the argument goes) when doing so will have virtually no appreciable difference in the global scheme of things, given the scale of Australia's contribution to the problem. Quite apart from the fallacies involved in thinking that Australian contributions are irrelevant (a post for another day), such thinking only considers the implications for us in Australia, during this generation, and for human society. Since the burden and threat of a more chaotic climate falls disproportionately on the poor, the young and unborn, and other species - three groups with the least political voice and almost zero responsibility for causing the issue in the first place - then our actions which contribute to that ought to be evaluated in a moral context, not merely an economic calculation of personal (or even national) costs and benefits. Doing so requires a degree of moral imagination, of seeing how our habitual actions are affecting those beyond the boundaries of our everyday vision, whose distance from us is measured in space, time or DNA.

Once such a vision has been engaged, then we immediately confronted with a question we cannot avoid. Are we really okay with asking those without a voice or responsibility to face the greatest dangers for the sake of our illusory dream of endless economic growth? Until we recognise climate change as a deeply moral issue that raises confronting questions about our identity and common humanity (and even of our membership with the broader community of life on earth), then we are merely playing a game. The game may have stakes conceived in either political or economic terms, but it is a game that comes at huge cost to others.

Built to last?

2011-09-08T17:29:00.000+01:00

If a comedian gets it, why don't our politicians?
H/T Dave.

The impossible hamster

2011-09-06T02:36:00.001+01:00

There is a reason that there are limits to growth. It is not hard to understand. Even hamsters get it.
H/T John.

Refugees and responsibility: boat people are not going away

2011-09-05T12:01:00.000+01:00

Like many other topics, that of refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons, internally displaced persons - in short, all those who are gathered together by the UNHCR under the phrase "persons of concern" - is a complex one. Yet political discourse (and blogging, for that matter) is all too often impatient with complexity, preferring communicative modes reliant upon slogans and conflict.

Having followed a few recent online discussions concerning Australian immigration policy, I don't think I'll surprise anyone by suggesting that such exchanges frequently generate more heat than light. In lieu of having neither time nor expertise to put together a post (or series of posts) that could begin to do justice to the topic, I thought instead I'd start gathering some links to significant contributions which may then be of benefit to others in the ongoing debates about this topic. I'm interested in both primary sources with relevant data and ethical/political analyses that attempt to understand and respond to it.

Here are a few to get started. This is not at all intended to be comprehensive, and so please add more in the comments.

• United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is the peak international body that has been doing everything from compiling data, to coordinating governmental responses, to working on the ground in partnership with NGOs. UK is here.
• UNHCR Global Trends 2010 report. One of many such reports. Finding specific statistics can take a little patience, but these reports have a wealth of information.
• Australian Parliamentary Library background note on boat arrivals in Australia since 1976, which introduces many of the key terms and history behind present debates. Ought to be required reading for Australians participating in such discussions, though needs to be updated to include recent events, such the High Court decision last week.
• Julian Burnside's reflection on the High Court decision
• A statistical analysis of push vs pull factors in Australian asylum seeker numbers. Again, it would be useful to have this extended to include the last couple of years.
• And some more links can be found on previous posts here and here.

Given my expectation that coming decades are likely to be quite bumpy ecologically (and so geopolitically), debates about immigration policy are set to continue for some time. "Boat people" won't be going away anytime soon.

Planetary liposuction

2011-09-03T08:08:00.000+01:00

Monbiot stole my analogy. I have had a post drafted for the last couple of months based on the idea that geoengineering attempts to rapidly modify the climate with techno-fixes are the equivalent of liposuction for an obese planet, retrospective attempts to undo slowly accumulated damage overnight that may bring temporary cosmetic improvements (and perhaps mild benefits of more valuable kinds) at significant risk of their own.

I intend to say quite a bit more about geoeingeering, as I suspect that it is not going to go away, but will only become more significant in and ethical and political debates about climate change. This is another topic that Christian ethicists will need to contemplate, and once again, there are no shortcuts to learning about the details of the various proposals, which range from putting millions of tiny mirrors in space to reflect a small amount of incoming sunlight, to seeding the ocean with iron filings to generate algal blooms that soak up carbon dioxide and fall to the ocean floor, to adding sulphur to aviation fuel (a substance that we've been trying to get out of the atmosphere for other reasons for some time) to reduce solar radiation entering the atmosphere, to crushing certain kinds of rock into powder and scattering them on the ground to accelerate a natural carbon sink (this last proposal may have some merit, by the way).

WikiLeaks is making a mistake

2011-09-02T22:02:00.001+01:00

Despite earlier stating my support for the work of WikiLeaks in cooperation with major newspapers to publish only those cables that were in the public interest and after redaction of names to protect informants and whistleblowers, I do not support their recent unilateral decision to publish all the raw cables. It is a mistake, both ethically and strategically, and is very likely to distract from their previous good work.

Many of the critical comments from politicians and pundits when the first documents came out assumed that they had already done this, and so much their criticism was (at the time) incorrect and fell wide of the mark. But this latest move means they have earned some of the recriminations they didn't deserve a few months ago.

Going green without the dreadlocks

2011-09-02T01:13:00.007+01:00

Guest post by Mark Stevens

Average white Australian male seeks sustainable way of life without hugging trees, giving up deodorant or growing dreadlocks.

In my early twenties I imagined I would live out my life in the concrete jungle in a swanky apartment somewhere in the inner city. I would spend my time sipping lattes and networking. An apartment was the perfect choice for me. No garden meant no outside work and more time for networking and coffee. I cared little for the environment and had almost no concern for the earth beneath my feet. My theology was firmly entrenched in the heavens. I gladly ignored the "on earth" part of the Lord's prayer.

I recently turned thirty-five. Last week my family and I installed solar power and we are two years into a five year project to produce half of our food needs through our veggie patch, chickens, fruit trees and vines. I am a minister, a pastor. Every spare moment I find is spent in the garden with my wife and two children. If I cannot get into "the patch" as I call it a few times a week I begin to get restless. Gardening forms my Sabbath day and my Sabbath rest. Fifteen or so years later I love being outside. I love the earth beneath my feet and between fingers. I never knew espresso could taste so good as it does sitting in my patch perusing the coming harvest.

So what happened? How does an average white Australian male fall in love with gardening and desire to live sustainably? Well, I cannot speak for everyone but for me it all began with my wife and Jamie Oliver.

My wife’s influence is a no brainer. I love my wife. I like spending time with her. She likes gardening and being outside therefore I like gardening and being outside. As I began to spend time digging holes for her, weeding with her, planting with her and our children, the practice of gardening grew in me. The snip of the secateurs as I pruned roses and the smell of fresh compost drew me in. As I undertook these most basic of garden chores I discovered a rhythm, a spiritual rhythm. I found myself praying “leisurely”; I found myself relaxing.

I also discovered how much I appreciated the feeling of accomplishment which came from gardening, especially the veggie patch. At the end of the day as the sun began to set, I could see what I had accomplished. My work had shape and form. Much of what I do in ministry is mysterious and unknown to me. With gardening it is apparent. I have proof that I have "done" something. As the seasons roll on, I see the reward of our labour. In fact as I write this I can see the thirty or so jars of preserves, bottled sauces and other dried goodies all grown and harvested in our garden. (Don’t get me started on how much hospitality the garden has produced!)

I realise that coming to gardening and an understanding of sustainable living through Jamie Oliver is the equivalent to arriving at a theological degree by studying with Pentecostals (tongue firmly planted in cheek) - something else which I did - however, it was Jamie Oliver’s television series, Jamie at Home that began to develop in me a vision for life which grew up out of our own land and not the land of others. I loved the way he grew food and then cooked with it. As I saw the way he lived, I found myself longing for a different kind of life, one which revolved around the seasons and flavour and not the shops and my consumer-driven tendencies. Jamie may not be everyone’s cup of tea (something else we can grow in our patch) but he has, for me at least, opened the realm of my imagination.

More than anything I have discovered gardening has helped me slow down, reflect more, pray more and spend time with those I love. In all honesty, I am unsure about the science of climate change (for no other reason than I am not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination) and I could never see myself leaning left and voting Green. But why shouldn't conservatives also care about conserving a livable planet? As a Christian, I believe in creation care and creation stewardship and it is on this topic that conservatives like me have remained silent for far too long! I am very concerned at how worried we are about the financial bottom line and yet give little to no thought about our environmental bottom line. I believe my generation is using the environmental credit card to rack up a debt which makes the US debt ceiling seem like a parking fine. I worry about the future for my kids.

As a family we have made the decision to "do what we must" (as opposed to what we can) and live in a way which reflects the hope we have in Christ for a renewed creation alongside a renewed humanity. It has cost us money and time. It has meant we have had to adjust (not change) our thinking. I doubt our small effort will achieve anything on a large scale, nevertheless, we believe we are doing the right thing. The rest is in God’s hands. By the way, I haven’t worn deodorant for years but don’t tell anyone!

Rev Mark Stevens is minister at Happy Valley Church of Christ in Adelaide, South Australia. He is a regular contributor at Near Emmaus and has his own blog at The Pastor's Patch.

What would you recommend? Books on ecotheology

2011-09-01T12:42:00.001+01:00

I frequently get asked for recommendations of which book(s) to read on ecotheology.* If Christians want to start thinking more seriously about God amidst our ecological crises, where should they begin?
I use ecotheology fairly broadly to mean the study of theology from an ecological perspective, or the study of ecology from a theological perspective, rather than a particular movement within those fields.

I have a few ideas, though am very open to finding new texts as I've only read a tiny fraction of what is out there. Obviously, different books will suit slightly different purposes. Some might do better at introducing the major intellectual debates, some relate ecology to major theological themes and scriptural passages, some aim to persuade suspicious Christians of why we might bother with ecological matters, some give better grounding in the science and ethics of the key threats and challenges, some give a greater sense of direction and application regarding what we can do in response to them. All are needed for their various purposes.

Jesus and climate change (series links)

2011-09-01T00:01:00.001+01:00

Some time ago, I published a series ambitiously titled "Jesus and climate change". It was basically the text of a talk I gave once or twice. I've just realised that I never posted a series of links to be able to find parts of it more easily. I would probably approach a talk like this a little differently now, and I've certainly learned a great deal more about climate in the meantime, but the last six posts are not a bad exposition of some of my basic theological convictions that remain important to me today. The highlights are probably XIII and XV.

I. Introduction and a caveat concerning scepticism
II. What's happening?
III. Discussion questions
IV. Why God cares - it's his world
V. Seeing Creation
VI. Matter matters
VII. Alternatives to Creation: a brief tangent
VIII. But what's the problem?
IX. Guilt and fear
IX(b). So what's God doing about it?
X. Jesus' life: God with us
XI. Jesus' death: liberation
XII. Jesus' resurrection: renovation
XIII. The renewal of all things
XIV. But what's God doing now?
XV. Conclusion: what does the church have to do with climate change?

Hope for Creation: a day of prayer for climate issues

2011-08-31T00:16:00.002+01:00

Following on from my previous post, an even larger event currently being organised by and for Australian Christians concerned about climate is a national (and international) day of prayer on Sunday 6th November under the banner of Hope for Creation. Hope for Creation is a worldwide prayer movement co-ordinating a day involving an increasing number of churches, Christians and organisations who have committed to pray for our rapidly changing world, for ourselves amidst our fears, guilt and impotence, and for the church and its proclamation of good news.

When I first arrived at New College a few years ago, one of the friendly faces welcoming me to the city was Cathy Cook, a Masters student who has since returned to Australia. Cathy explains what led her to join in and help organise this event. You can read some endorsements here, but do we really need permission to pray?

Of course, prayer is the heart and start of Christian action, without being isolated from other actions that express our faith, love and hope in the God who hears our cries. Yet it is in prayer that we are grounded afresh in the grace of God and call upon the Father's goodness. It therefore seems appropriate that this action, which consists first and foremost of patient waiting, an expectant silence and yearning groans, might become a unifying experience of trust in a listening Father.

The goal is simply to commit oneself - and if possible, one's church family - to pray for issues related to climate change on 6th November. You can find an invitation with more information on how to join in and get your church or local group involved. The website also has many resources available for download (and more here) to help plan for the day. Participation can be as detailed or simple as is appropriate for your context.

And of course, you don't need to wait until 6th November to start praying.

Christian climate symposium in Melbourne

2011-08-30T15:24:00.000+01:00

I asked recently what kinds of discussions and actions were already happening amongst Australian Christian about climate. Kara sent me this flyer for a one day symposium in Melbourne that looks interesting.

The Cove: would you eat a dolphin?

2011-08-29T17:39:00.002+01:00

Continuing my recent run of excellent documentaries (see Food Inc and Inside Job), I also recently saw The Cove. For what it's worth, all three were nominated for the Academy Award for best documentary feature, and two won. All three currently receive over 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Unlike the other two, however, The Cove has a more local focus. Focussing on a small cove on the Japanese coast, the film is paced as an mystery thriller in which the dark secrets of a place are gradually brought to light. The film's heart and central voice is Ric O'Barry, a former dolphin trainer turned activist. O'Barry was responsible for catching and training the five dolphins who played the title character in the popular 1960's TV series Flipper. Yes, you now have the music stuck in your head. It was catchy. Yet when his favourite individual committed suicide (this is how O'Barry describes it), he was forced to reconsider the ethics of keeping wild dolphins in captivity. By the next day he was being arrested for attempting to liberate other dolphins from the marine park where he worked. O'Barry's years of marine animal activism led him to Japan, the premier supplier of dolphins for the multi-billion dollar marine amusement park industry. And from there to a single small cove where most of the wild dolphins for sale are caught. However, apart from the cruelty and stress experienced in captivity by these intelligent creatures, the darker secret of the place, initially only hinted at and deliberately concealed by local fishermen and police, is slowly revealed to the viewer as the film crew risk arrest to get footage. Hidden cameras placed under cover of darkness record the grisly fate of the ten thousands of dolphins who are rounded up annually and yet are not suitable for exploitation as marine entertainers. The film's denouement is not for the queasy or faint of heart.

This is a film that deliberately seeks a significant emotional engagement with the viewer. Our sympathy for the dolphins is carefully cultivated and righteous outrage stoked. The perspective of the fishermen is noted, yet there is no attempt at impartiality here. We are called upon to take sides. The role of villain is left to the Japanese, and there is significant danger of being invited into an all too easy condemnation from a distance. The violence and cruelty done to animals in our name closer to home is only passingly noted. Nonetheless, this film is worth seeing as another step in developing a deeper affinity for creatures beyond the human, and for thinking again about how we treat other members of the community of creation.

For those in Australia, it is freely available on ABC's iView for the next two weeks.

Is the fish on your plate older than your grandmother?

2011-08-27T02:27:00.003+01:00

The Conversation: The real cost of taking fish out of the water. This excellent piece gives a good snapshot of overfishing (the carbon footprint of fishing was something I didn't realise until reading this). It also suggests one of the ways we can be part of the solution: by eating less fish, and eating smarter, which means either checking sites like Good Fish Bad Fish (an Australian version; UK readers can use the Good Fish Guide) or asking questions of potential fish meals such as: "Are they older than your grandmother? Did catching them kill tonnes of other innocent species? How much carbon was used to get it onto your plate?"

Al Jazeera: Overpopulation is not to blame for famine. The causes are famine in the Horn of Africa are complex. Simplistic analyses that blame a single factor do not help.

Guardian: Salty rice is not so nice - rising seas, rising salt in the Mekong. Concerns about sea level rise are not limited to infrastructure damage or coastal erosion; salination is the big issue in many places and especially for the densely-populated Mekong delta.

Grist: The great oyster crash. This is where ocean acidification is starting to bite.

CP: S&P Downgrades Planet Earth and Humanity. This will only make sense if you have been following recent US economic news.

Larry Elliott: The global economy is not in good shape. The crisis from 2008 has not gone away; it has simply shifted form.

Mongabay: Conflict correlates with warm weather, at least in the tropics. This isn't good news in a warming world.

Guardian: One billion cars. "Between 2000 and 2010, the number of cars and motorcycles in China increased twentyfold. In the next 20 years it is forecast to more than double again, which means there will be more cars in China in 2030 than there were in the entire world in 2000."

Economics and ethics: does everything have a price?

2011-08-25T15:16:00.002+01:00

Fox News is not usually considered to be a great source of ethical insight. So when a friend sent me an article titled almost everything we're taught is wrong, I was dubious. The piece argues that child labour, price gouging, ticket scalping, selling kidneys and blackmail are all deemed morally reprehensibly and illegal in many countries, but when we consider them from an economic point of view, we see that each ought to be considered socially beneficial.

Child labour in poorer nations contributes to the economy and keeps children from prostitution. Price gouging during an emergency reduces hoarding and gives an incentive to distant vendors to supply what is missing, even if this means travelling long distances. Ticket scalping provides a service that adds value, namely, allowing those prepared to pay extra to avoid the time they would have spent waiting in a queue. Making the sale of kidneys legal would save lives by increasing the supply. And if blackmail were legal, then there would be more reason for people to behave; in asking for money to not exercise free speech, the blackmailer is engaging in a form of "private law enforcement" by putting a price on not gossiping.

Each of these arguments needs to be addressed on its merits. Child labour: I agree that simply banning it is insufficient, but any ethical analysis worth its salt is not going to be content with mere legislation. The same argument could well be used against the abolition of slavery: what are the slaves going to do once they are freed? It is worth looking more broadly at what forces have created an economic situation in which the alternative to child labour is child prostitution.

Price gouging doesn't mean prices rising when there is shortage, but dramatic and extortionate price rises during a crisis. Should prices rise in an emergency? Yes, but not too much for essentials, since access to the means to stay alive ought not be contingent upon wealth. Far better for essentials to be rationed.

The argument for ticket scalpers I actually have some degree sympathy for, though where ticket sales are online, then there is no waiting in line.

The sale of bodily tissues is problematic for multiple reasons. First, it commodifies one of the sites that ought to be most resistant to the logic of the market, one's own body. Second, if people are able to sell irreplaceable bodily organs, then why not their freedom? Thus there is a economic justification for slavery here. Third, if there is a legal price for kidneys, then the price is going to be high and this is almost inevitably going to mean that a black market will develop, incentivising criminal and coercive surgery. The antipathy to the sale of human tissue actually arises partly from Edinburgh history, where in the eighteenth century there was a black market in fresh cadavers for the famous medical school, and it lead to a very famous case of serial murder, which, incidentally, occurred just a few metres from where I sleep.

Blackmail has the same problem; making it legal would incentivise further and worse criminal behaviour. We only need to look at what happened to News of the World (and probably other UK tabloids) when gossip became commodified to see the dangers of encouraging breaches of privacy for profit.

The fundamental failure of the article appears in its opening lines. Economics is not a substitute for ethics. Any society that treats them as commensurate is inviting the thoroughgoing colonisation of all human relationships by market forces and the logic of commercial transactions. Christians of all people have the most reason to be suspicious of this, since we are taught that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6.10) and that our lives are ransomed not with silver or gold, but the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1.18). Not everything can be translated into a single numerical language.

Five ways to beat the banks

2011-08-24T02:21:00.004+01:00

On Monday, I mentioned the documentary Inside Job, which detailed the ways greed, shortsightedness and ideology caused a partial meltdown of the financial industry in 2008. Despite official reassurances, the radioactive material from these events is not safely secured, but continues to poison an ever wider part of the world.* If you have seen the documentary and share something of my anger, you might also share something of my feelings of frustration and impotence. When the scale of the problem is so large, and the corruption of key institutions so widespread, there is no single silver bullet. Especially for those of us outside the US, the issues in the documentary feel even more distant, as we can't vote for a representative promising change.**
*I realise I haven't written on Fukushima yet. A post on nuclear power is coming, one day...
**And who then does nothing about it. On this, as on many fronts, Obama has been deeply disappointing. I can't say I didn't warn myself.

So what can we do? We may not singlehandedly reform or overthrow the vested interests that created the mess, but we can live lives that point to another way. I have listed a few random suggestions, but would also love to hear more.

1. Repent of the love of money. Delight yourself in the goodness of God and open your eyes to the false promises made by wealth. Reject the idea that gaining more is at the heart of your identity or life, or ought to be at the heart of our political vision of life together. This one is foundational to all the others.

2. Reduce your debt. The apostle Paul tells us to "owe nothing to anyone" (Romans 13.8). The power of the banks is debt-fuelled, and never more so than in the last couple of decades. Perhaps there may be times when certain kinds of debt can be justified; but not when debt is used to fuel needless consumption, or goes beyond one's likely means to repay, or results in driving major life decisions ("I need to work long hours to pay off my mortgage"). For us, this has meant deliberately stepping off the property ladder and not using credit cards - almost everything is now paid in cash or, if we have to, then with a debit card.

3. Join the global movement calling for a Robin Hood Tax - also known as a Tobin tax, after the Nobel laureate who first suggested it forty years ago - that would place a tiny tax on financial transactions in order to make short-term speculative transactions less attractive. The money raised would ideally be earmarked for development aid and climate action, but the existence of the tax as a disincentive to rampart speculation is a distinct question and doesn't depend on where the money would be spent. This campaign is gaining significant traction in Europe, though relatively little in the US. The UK response is key as to whether it grows (and would likely pull in the US, if the previous link is correct) or stagnates. This point can be expanded to include supporting any other genuine attempts to reform the financial system.

4. Take your money from a big multinational bank and put it somewhere else, such as a local credit union or co-op bank. In the UK, try The Co-op Bank. I'd love to hear any recommendations in Australia, since we'd like to switch banks there too. Of course, not all banks are equally bad, but it is difficult to find a large multinational bank where your money won't be financing the arms trade, fossil fuel expansion, environmental degradation and so on.

5. As a church, let us not neglect to encourage, disciple and discipline our members who work in major financial institutions. I asked a while back whether Christians can be bankers, and my tongue was only slightly in cheek. Usury is condemned in scripture and throughout Christian tradition (until the last couple of centuries, when it has been redefined as lending at extortionate interest, rather than simply lending at interest). This is a large topic (and the subject of an upcoming post), but the church needs to ask these questions once more today, particularly in the context of the systemic abuses found in such enormous concentrations of power. When tax collectors asked John the Baptist "Teacher, what should we do?", he didn't tell them to quit their job, but gave the radical advice, "Collect no more than the amount proscribed for you" (Luke 3.12-23). What is the radical advice the church is to give our present day "tax collectors", that is, bankers?

Waking up from our illusions

2011-08-23T15:09:00.002+01:00

"How much of this is real? How much of the economic growth of the past 60 years? Of the wealth and comfort, the salaries and pensions that older people accept as normal, even necessary? How much of it is an illusion, created by levels of borrowing – financial and ecological – that cannot be sustained? [...] To sustain the illusion, we have inflicted more damage since 1950 to the planet's living systems than we achieved in the preceding 100,000 years."

- George Monbiot, Out of the Ashes.

Monbiot again is making the case that the church ought to have been making all along (and in some cases, is making). Material prosperity is not the route to the good life; the more stuff we accumulate, the more anxiety crowds out our joy, the more social bonds are weakened, the more the living spaces of the planet are degraded. Of course, a certain basic level of material well-being is required, the scriptures acknowledge as much - "if we have food and clothing, we will be content" (1 Timothy 6.8) - but our society has long surpassed the foolishness of the rich farmer Jesus warned about in Luke 12.13-21. We are missing the plot, messing about with the shallows of life while the depths remain unplumbed. Personally, we could be plunging into more through having less stuff to worry about, and collectively we could be pursuing things that are better than growth.

Go and read Monbiot. Then listen to Jesus tell us how to be truly alive:

He said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

- Luke 12.22-34 (NRSV).

Inside Job: what's the deal with the credit crisis?

2011-08-22T23:49:00.001+01:00

Yesterday we finally got around to watching Inside Job (despite having recommended it all the way back here). If you, like me, often feel out of your depth in discussions of banking, finance, stock markets and the global economic instability of the last few years, then this is the film for you. Bringing dry and complex details into vivid comprehensibility, this film cuts through the bafflement factor and, via a series of fascinating and jaw-dropping interviews with key players, lays out many of the key threads that that led to the headline-grabbing events of 2008 and its aftermath (which continues to play out today).

The film won best documentary at the 2010 Academy Awards and currently sits at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. It is easy to see why. Tackling an important subject with insight, emotion and sensitivity, this film is pure outrage mixed with damning evidence of systemic problems in the US financial industry from traders to CEOs, from regulators to investors, from president to ratings agencies, from academic economists to congress. There is plenty of blame to go around. And yet, somehow, no one is in gaol for the greatest inside job in history.

And very little has changed.

Analogy is the best medicine

2011-08-21T19:59:00.000+01:00

Ben doesn't appreciate his doctor's alarmist advice.

It would be quite possible to push this image further: "I can't afford healthy food!"; "Are you telling me to starve to death?"; "The cheap calories I get from high fructose corn syrup means I have more money to help others"; "Think of how many jobs would be lost if the fast food industry were to shut down"; and so on.

Are all foods clean? A review of Food Inc.

2011-08-18T22:37:00.003+01:00

"The way we eat has changed more in the last fifty years than in the previous ten thousand."

- Food Inc., opening line.

"'Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?' (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, 'It is what comes out of a person that defiles.'"

- Mark 7.18b-20 (NRSV).

Jesus' words were a radical challenge to the Jewish practice of his day, overturning the Old Testament food laws and the traditions that had grown around them. Jesus' redefinition of purity as a matter of the heart and what comes out of it rather than the mouth and what goes into it has left an important mark on our eating habits; we don't think twice about tucking into a crab soup or creamy bacon pasta.

But perhaps sometimes, as a result of this very passage teaching us to see food as a non-issue, Christians can miss the ways in which our hearts may be deceived even as we eat food that Christ declared clean. In particular, there are ways of eating that fail to love our neighbour and fail to adopt a properly human, humane and humble attitude towards the rest of the created order. Our hearts may be defiled, even as we consume delicious feasts.

For anyone who is largely ignorant of contemporary industrial agriculture and its practices, Food Inc. is a good place to start to investigate where our food comes from. It is primarily a US perspective, and some of the details do differ elsewhere in the industrialised world, but not always by a great deal. Most urban dwellers are unaware of the social, ecological, animal and economic realities that get our typical diet into the supermarket. And most are surprised to find just how far we have departed from the stereotypical pictures of rural life still found in children's books and on food packaging. As in all kinds of other ways, the last fifty years or so have been truly revolutionary in this regard. I will not attempt here to summarise the various threads followed by the film, tracing the damage done to workers, animals, soil, waterways, other nations and farmers themselves by contemporary methods of industrial food production, though I was a little surprised to note that there were significant points still left unsaid, even after a string of unpalatable revelations.

But the film is not all ugliness and disgust. Having lifted the lid on the true cost of our cheap food, it moves on to explore two somewhat contradictory approaches to an alternative. On the one hand is an attempt to fight fire with fire, to build an organic and ethical food industry that can compete with factory farming by building a market for organic products in mainstream distributors at a competitive price. On the other is the pursuit of regenerative farming that moves beyond merely being organic to question the broader economic and political structures that govern the whole business. One asks us merely to change our consumption patterns and has faith in the market to deliver the goods that we demand; the other questions the very forces that help to (de)form those demands. The former, more pragmatic, approach is making significant inroads when measured by market share, but does it represent a form of greenwash, a slight improvement that actually serves to dull the necessary critique of a deeply flawed economic and political system? Or is the latter too idealistic and risks missing out on making small but real gains that are actually available for the sake of goals too radical to ever gain widespread acceptance?

This tension is a frequent one in ethical thought, where compromise needn't always be a dirty word, but where the possibility of self-deception via superficial changes is also ever present. This documentary is worth seeing, whether you are blissfully unaware of the origin of your next meal or already struggling with the ethical questions raised by contemporary food practices.

Jesus, who taught us that all foods are clean, also taught us to pray "give us this day our daily bread", and identified his body and blood with elements we take into our mouths. He was not seeking to remove food from the realm of faithful living before God, but to deepen our perception of what joyfully wholesome food might look like. It cannot be identified merely by its flavour or appearance, but depends on the relationships with our neighbours (human and otherwise) that it represents.

Can you give thanks for what will be put in front of you today?

The end is nigh? Apocalyptic thought and our present distress

2011-08-17T21:26:00.004+01:00

Apparently, the apocalypse has already come and gone. Did you miss it?

The relation of apocalyptic thought to our present and likely future distress is an interesting and complex question, not easily answered in a few sentences. I've recently been reading a book edited by Stefan Skrimshire titled Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination, which I mentioned back here. As is usual in an edited collection of essays, quality and relevance vary considerably, but the theme is an important one. How do our images of "the end" shape our understanding (or misunderstanding, as the case may be) of climate change?

For some activists, the pace and scale of anthropogenic climate change on our current trajectory represents an existential threat to the present order of the biosphere, including the human order of a globalised industrial civilisation of almost seven billion and rising. The language of apocalyptic is borrowed in order to try to gain some traction with policy-makers and the public. It matters not whether this borrowing represents a reflexive reliance on a thread of thought with its roots in religious discourse or the deliberate appropriation of concepts and tropes that still inhabit our imagination and so which will resonate widely. The goal is to induce an emancipatory shock, a recognition of our situation as extreme, a justification for emergency measures that disrupt the usual flow of commercial, political and social life with a radical reordering.

Some Christians, noting the borrowing of apocalyptic language by activists, are inclined to ignore the whole thing as another human attempt to claim control of even how the world is going to end. Instead, affirming that the end is in God's hands alone, they argue that any claims of humanity bringing about the end by our own efforts (even inadvertently) must be treated with extreme suspicion.

Personally, while it is difficult to get a good grip on the magnitude of the threat represented by climate change without recourse to some very strong language, I think that it is best to remain agnostic about the relationship between our preset distress and threats and the divine promises relating to ultimate realities. It may be that there is some link, but there is no particular reason in my opinion to think so. Even if our actions lead to the downfall of our way of life and the utter transformation of our society into something so different that in hindsight it is appropriate to speak of industrial civilisation having experienced a self-induced collapse, this need not be the end of the world. To use a line that is growing increasingly common, the end of the world as we know it is not necessarily the end of the world.

And where this cuts the mustard for me is that sometimes apocalyptic thought can become a lazy way out of ethical deliberation. Apocalyptic becomes lazy where it is in the service of a fatalism that assumes our destiny is doomed by the greater power of nature (whether acting blindly, under its own authority as a personified (and angry) mother earth, or as the instrument of God's inexorable judgement) or which conversely rejects the possibility of social self-destruction in principle. In each case, the future is seen as closed and human actions as ultimately irrelevant, in which case, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. It can also be lazy where it is used to create panic and a desperate acceptance of whatever medicine is closest to hand. This is a kind of non-emancipatory shock that stuns the hearer into passive acceptance of the salvific social, economic and/or political solution that swiftly follows the apocalyptic account.

Denying knowledge of the relationship between our time and time's telos keeps open the space for neighbourly care. It does this not by rendering apocalyptic inscrutably distant ("since we can't know when the end will come, then let us ignore the coming of the end altogether"), but constantly relevant. In Christian apocalyptic, the hidden meaning of history is revealed to be the stage of divine action, not in competition with human action, but as the previously unknown judge and liberator of human action. Since the day of divine judgement approaches like a thief in the night, unbidden and unobserved, the wise servant knows that her actions are made more weighty, not less. Instead of paralysing fear or enervating schadenfreude, she is liberated to conduct her faithful service in reverent hope of divine vindication. By such acts, she is not heroically securing the future; saving the world (or the present world order) is not her motive or modus operandi. Instead, she trusts that because the hour of her vindication approaches, she has time to prepare, to reflect with prudence on her ability to be a blessing in the limited time she has received. Waiting patiently, she need not dread the outcome of history, but is free to love her neighbour as an instantiation of her wholehearted love for the master with what strength and wisdom she has received. It may be that the immediate future holds suffering, even vast suffering, but not yet the end of all things. In which case, her actions undertaken in hope are not in vain; they are secured by the promise of the resurrection, and thus they are freed from the impossible burden of having to deliver her own life or the continued existence of her society.

And so, there is a sense in which the apocalypse has indeed already come, in the sense that apocalypse means "revelation", an unveiling of what was hidden. After Christ's coming, Christian believers now see the world and its future in a new light. No longer do the dark shadows of anticipated difficulties leave us blindly stumbling along in denial, distraction, desperation or despair. Once relieved of the responsibility to pursue survival above all else, we see the future as a stage on which faithful words and deeds may witness to the redemption of history through the cross and resurrection, and to the coming renewal of all things.

Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary

2011-08-17T00:02:00.002+01:00

Warren Buffett, the 3rd richest man in the world, asks legislators to stop coddling the super-rich in this New York Times op-ed where he welcomes higher taxes.

Justice and love: why this Christian cares about climate

2011-08-16T16:29:00.001+01:00

"The crux of climate change for Christians is the poorest, most vulnerable countries are those hardest hit by global warming. The poor are least able to adapt to the impact of climate change and ironically, have contributed least to it. The carbon footprint of the poorest 1 billion people on the planet is estimated to be around 3% of the world’s total footprint. This is the social injustice of climate change: poor, developing countries will suffer because of the fossil fuels emitted by developed nations. We are commanded to love our neighbour. [...] God requires that His people oppose social injustice and open their hearts to the poor and vulnerable. For the church to turn a blind eye to the injustice of climate change is to turn our back on God’s heart for the poor."

John Cook, founder of the justly famous site Skeptical Science, has written a short piece in Eternity magazine explaining why he takes climate change seriously as a Christian. You can read the rest here.
H/T Liz.

If Jesus had studied economics...

2011-08-15T10:15:00.002+01:00

...instead of the Law.

The dead wolf cannot bite you

2011-08-13T14:11:00.000+01:00

Stop The Environment from Ed Asner

Language warning. H/T Michael Tobis.

A Christian voice on climate in Australia

2011-08-12T22:28:00.000+01:00

This piece from John McIntyre, Anglican Bishop of Gippsland, is an example of a genre that appears only very occasionally: an Australian Christian speaking directly about the ethics of climate change in the mainstream media. Does anyone have other examples? Please provide a link in the comments.

Twenty seven planet Earths by 2050

2011-08-11T21:04:00.001+01:00

AlterNet: Do we need a militant movement to save the planet (and ourselves)? Three writers say yes. By this, they mean a committed small minority willing to go beyond even civil disobedience to direct destructive action against key industrial infrastructure. While such ideas remain on the fringe today, I suspect that the coming decades may well see debates shift from "do we have a problem?" to "just how radically and rapidly do we need to change?".

IPS: Growing Water Deficit Threatening Grain Harvests. This isn't a problem confined to one area. Water stress is already affecting agriculture in parts of the USA, China, India, Middle East, Mexico, Pakistan and large areas of Africa.

Mongabay: Protected areas not enough to save biodiversity (a.k.a. life on earth): "Humans now impact over 80 percent of the world's land and 100 percent of the oceans. Around 40 percent of the Earth's surface has been 'strongly affected' by our consumption. [...] According to recent estimates, about 1.2 Earths would be required to support the different demands of the 5.9 billion people living on the planet in 1999 [...] if global society continues down the road we are on, we will need 27 planet Earths to sustain our consumption by 2050. [...] We're talking about losing 50 percent of species in the next half century—that's faster than any previous mass extinction event—and anybody who thinks we can go through a mass extinction and be perfectly fine is just deluding themselves." This is perhaps the most seriously dark paper I have come across in some time. And that is saying something.

Scientific American: Will 10 billion people use up the planet's resources? "The human enterprise now consumes nearly 60 billion metric tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and plant materials, such as crop plants and trees for timber or paper. [...] Hundreds of millions of people in Europe, North America and Asia live a modern life, which largely means consuming more than 16 metric tons of such natural resources—or more—per person per year. If the billions of poor people living today or born tomorrow consume anything approaching this figure, the world will have to find more than 140 billion metric tons of such materials each year by mid-century. [...] Between 1980 and 2002, the resources required to produce $1,000 worth of consumer goods fell from 2.1 metric tons to just 1.6 metric tons and global per capita income has increased seven-fold. The bad news is that trend will not necessarily continue and—in absolute terms—resource consumption has increased 10-fold since 1900 [...] already it takes three times as much total mining material to produce the same amount of ore as 100 years ago [...] Nor is it clear that "decoupling"—rising economic growth paired with reductions in resource consumption—actually is now taking place; most gains to date, such as those in Germany or Japan, may simply have been achieved by outsourcing resource-intensive manufacturing and the like abroad to countries like China."

NYT: Profile of a (very rich) Cassandra: "The prices of all important commodities except oil declined for 100 years until 2002, by an average of 70 percent. From 2002 until now, this entire decline was erased by a bigger price surge than occurred during World War II. Statistically, most commodities are now so far away from their former downward trend that it makes it very probable that the old trend has changed — that there is in fact a Paradigm Shift — perhaps the most important economic event since the Industrial Revolution.”

MWH: Ten things you didn't know you owned.

DD: Unemployment in the USA. A scary graph.

Mongabay: The glass is half-full: conservation has made a difference.

The Critical Decade

2011-08-10T23:09:00.002+01:00

Australia's Climate Change Commission recently published a very readable report entitled The Critical Decade. In sixty pages it does a very good job of answering all kinds of common questions and addresses the issue from an Australian perspective. If you don't have time for the full report, you can get a good impression of the gist by reading the bold paragraph at the stage of each section and the purple box underneath it (which turns the 60 pages into more like 5). The takeaway message is that what we do in the next ten years is critical to the path we will find ourselves on later this century.

The report cites this (far more technical) 2009 study, in which it is pointed out that if we want to have a 75% chance of keeping warming by 2100 below 2ºC, then we can burn less than half the current proven economically recoverable oil, gas and coal reserves. That is, we don't need to do any further exploration, cannot employ any non-conventional sources (such as shale gas or tar sands) and of those that are already considered recoverable, more than half need to be left in the ground. That is a very pithy summary of the challenge, and gives a basis for attempting to focus the minds of decision makers.

The argument that the next ten years are the critical decade for climate has been made pretty consistently since the late 1980s. This has not been inaccurate, though as a message, it can become confusing when it keeps getting repeated with new goalposts. It is not inaccurate because the question is "critical for what?". Back in the 1980s, we had perhaps a decade to address the climate issue at relatively low cost and with relatively minimal consequences. Each decade of business as usual makes the costs of mitigation higher, the benefits lower and the chance of reaching results beyond our ability to adapt more likely. The time for action was long ago, but today is better than tomorrow.

London's burning: any clues?

2011-08-09T16:32:00.002+01:00

Having not followed any news over the weekend or yesterday, I discovered today that there have been three days of rioting in London (and now elsewhere in England), with one man dead and over five hundred arrested and perhaps £100 million worth of property damage, including widespread arson. The discussion boards are alight with people calling for water canons and baton rounds (a.k.a. rubber or plastic bullets), curfews and the deployment of the army, none of which have been used on the mainland UK in living memory. Last time I was in London a couple of months ago, I stayed in Hackney, not far from the area where the trouble started.

Has anyone come across any good analysis or does anyone have any personal insight into this situation? Please include links in the comments.

Giving vodka to a drunk

2011-08-05T20:22:00.001+01:00

Do not try to prove your strength by wine-drinking,
     for wine has destroyed many.
As the furnace tests the work of the smith,
     so wine tests hearts when the insolent quarrel.
Wine is very life to human beings
     if taken in moderation.
What is life to one who is without wine?
     It has been created to make people happy.
Wine drunk at the proper time and in moderation
     is rejoicing of heart and gladness of soul.
Wine drunk to excess leads to bitterness of spirit,
     to quarrels and stumbling.
Drunkenness increases the anger of a fool to his own hurt,
     reducing his strength and adding wounds.

- Ecclesiasticus 31.25-30 (NRSV).

Going to the pub for a drink with mates can be a very enjoyable experience. A pint or a dram, some good conversation, some laughs, maybe another drink and some time soaking up one another's company. Another drink? Why not, we're having a good time. With a proper sense of proportion, alcohol can make the heart glad (Psalm 104.15). But before long, drinking becomes drunkenness, and repeated drunkenness makes one a drunkard (cf. Ephesians 5.18; Galatians 5.21). By the time someone is seeing relationships fall apart and their liver, brain, heart, pancreas, nervous system, kidneys, bones, skin and/or sexual function give way from abuse we are well past the point at which enjoyment has turned into self-destruction. Alcohol use represents a gradual progression from a good blessing into a significant evil, without necessarily a clear line where one becomes the other.* The physical and social ills of alcoholism are vindications of (or at least corroborations of) scriptural warnings against drunkenness, yet spiritual injury can occur even prior to obvious relational or physical damage and the believer does not require sociological or medical research on the effects of alcohol abuse to trust the biblical witness on this matter. The latter are helpful confirmations of what has already been revealed, illustrating the principle that we reap what we sow and that part of God's present judgement upon human wickedness is to allow us to experience some of the consequences of our misdeeds.
*Many jurisdictions create such markers through legal limits on blood alcohol levels, but all such lines must be somewhat arbitrary when extended across a whole population with quite different physiological and mental reactions to alcohol.

But this is not really a post about alcoholism.

Seeking more economic growth* for developed economies is like offering vodka to a man already lying a pool of his own vomit. Justifying it by pointing out secondary benefits misses the point; the extra waitstaff will be out of a job unless enough booze is sold, but why should the security of someone's job justify aiding the dissolution of life? With a proper sense of proportion, some kinds of economic growth can be a good blessing on a society. But the pursuit of growth in all circumstances by all means at whatever cost is ultimately self-destructive. There is no hard and fast line between the one and the other. Attempts to calculate ecological footprints and planetary boundaries may give a ballpark idea of where growth starts being suicidal, but that doesn't mean that it is where the problem starts. The desire for growth without reference to the rest of the body is wrong in principle, not just once the symptoms of overshoot start to appear. The ecological and resource crises that are increasingly manifest may illustrate the ruinous trajectory of the desire, but from inception, the desire for growth without reference to context is already based on some combination of greed, myopia, lust for power and a reckless disregard for creaturely limits.
*There is some debate about just what is meant by economic growth. Most definitions at least strongly imply the increasing extraction and exploitation of physical resources for economic purposes, which is my primary concern in this discussion.

Who killed economic growth?

2011-08-04T01:26:00.001+01:00

Whether economic growth is over now or in another decade or three is a matter for debate, but the point of the video remains valid. Endless growth on a finite planet is a dangerous delusion. In its place, we have the opportunity to imagine a future that doesn't rely on more and more stuff - more and more water, fish, trees, soil; more and more finite energy from under the ground making a more and more unstable climate; more and more advertising for more and more unnecessary toys bought with more and more debt; more and more fear, greed and frustration.

Sometimes less is more.

Sanctification: an Edinburgh dogmatics conference

2011-08-03T22:24:00.001+01:00

At the end of this month Rutherford House are organising a theology conference here at New College on the topic of sanctification (i.e. the why, what and how of holiness). Speakers include Oliver O'Donovan, Bruce McCormack, Henri Blocher, Kelly Kapic, Michael Horton, Ivor Davidson, Julie Canlis, Grant MacAskill and Rick Lints. Given the programme, in which all but one of the main papers are happening prior to lunch (over three days), I may find it difficult to attend,* though I commend this event to the attention of any theologians or ethicists within the UK.
*This is not a comment on my sleeping habits (not anymore!), but is because I look after Aurora most mornings while Jessica works.

Tattoos

2011-08-02T17:16:00.000+01:00

As a bearer of three tattoos myself, I particularly enjoyed this xkcd. The extreme measures we take to address unrestrained growth in the body may be a good inspiration for tackling unrestrained growth in the body politic (or at least the body economic).

Rethinking growth: bigger is not always better

2011-08-01T01:54:00.001+01:00

Do you think that in the future all economics will necessarily be ecological economics?
That’s what I expect. I mean, we’re faced with two impossibilities. On the one hand, it’s politically impossible to stop growth. On the other hand, it’s biophysically impossible to continue it ad infinitum. So, which impossibility is fundamentally impossible? Well, you know, I’ll take my chances with trying to change the politically impossible, because I don’t think I can change the biophysically impossible.

- - Interview with Herman Daly.

This very readable interview is undoubtedly the best brief introduction I've seen as to why endless economic growth is a problem. You can read the whole interview here.
H/T Jin.

Wisdom in the wild, and other stories

2011-07-31T15:44:00.000+01:00

Orion: Wisdom in the wild. What are the effects of removing the aged from a population? Are our hunting and fishing habits not only decimating numbers, but also breaking the cultural continuity of animals?

Guardian: My son, the terror suspect. A father tells the brutal and moving story of his son's conversion to Islam, travels to Pakistan, experiences fighting for the Taliban and eventual capture and suffering at the hands of his own government.

Common Dreams: One more reason why mountaintop removal is really stupid - along with poisoning rivers, destroying forests, levelling mountains and contributing to the destruction of a livable climate, it also doubles cancer rates in the local area.

Bright Green: What's happening in Somalia is no natural disaster.

And the prize for best rant on the Australian carbon price goes to this piece of inspired prose (which comes with a language warning).

This is what hope looks like

2011-07-30T21:38:00.000+01:00

Read this moving final statement from environmental activist Tim DeChristopher to the court before he was sentenced to two years in prison for a creative protest he made in 2008 against the illegal sale of federal US land to fossil fuel interests. Rousing stuff. If you read to the end, you'll find why I thought of Archbishop Tutu.

If you're not familiar with DeChristopher's story, then you can get a summary here or much more detail here.

Prisoners of hope

2011-07-29T23:33:00.000+01:00

The former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu used to say, "we are prisoners of hope", echoing the prophet Zechariah (9.2). That is, in the midst of apartheid South Africa, the archbishop and the Christians with him felt that they were hemmed in, restricted, compelled, prisoners – but not prisoners of the racist laws that saw black people treated as less human than white people – Tutu was a prisoner of hope. It was hope in God that hemmed him in, restricted him, compelled him. He was not free. He was not free to give in to despair, to give up, to lie down, to blend in. He was not free to live his life in fear, because he was a prisoner of hope.

Now this might sound like mere pious sentiment, but it was powerfully expressed one day when Archbishop Tutu was preaching in St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town. Suddenly, during the middle of the sermon, a large armed squad of the notorious South African Security Police broke into the Cathedral and surrounded the congregation, whom they outnumbered. They did not attack, but instead, some of them pulled out writing pads and tape recorders to record whatever Tutu said, thereby threatening him with consequences for any bold prophetic utterances or political comments he might make. They had already arrested Tutu and other church leaders just a few weeks before and kept them in gaol for several days to make the clear point: religious leaders who speak out about apartheid will be treated just like any other opponents of the regime.

What would you do in such a situation? Stop the sermon? Just keep going? Continue criticising the regime and get arrested or worse? Now maybe even the thought of standing in front of a congregation giving a sermon is scary enough, but what would you have done if you were a congregation member? What would you have been hoping Tutu would do? One misstep could land you all in gaol.

According to eyewitness Jim Wallis, the Archbishop looked intently at the intruders for a few moments as they stood there with their guns, notepads and tape recorders then he said, “You are powerful, very powerful. But I serve a God who cannot be mocked. Since you have already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side!” He said it with a smile on his face and enticing warmth in his invitation, but with a clarity and a boldness that took everyone’s breath away. The congregation was transformed by this extraordinary challenge to political tyranny. According to Wallis,

“From a cowering fear of the heavily armed security forces that surrounded the cathedral and greatly outnumbered the band of worshippers, we literally leaped to our feet, shouted the praises of God and began… dancing. (What is it about dancing that enacts and embodies the spirit of hope?) We danced out of the cathedral to meet the awaiting police and military forces of apartheid, who hardly expected a confrontation with dancing worshippers. Not knowing what else to do, they backed up to provide the space for the people of faith to dance for freedom in the streets of South Africa.”

- Jim Wallis, God's Politics (Oxford: Lion, 2006), 353.

This is an extract from a sermon a few years ago. My next post will make clear why I thought of this story recently.

With friends like these...

2011-07-28T20:28:00.005+01:00

The great big tax on everything* based on absolute crap science* that has put the Greens in charge of government policy* and which will result in economic armageddon* has been given the thumbs up by the most powerful conservative leader in the world. Will David still get his Christmas card from Tony this year?
*These are all direct quotes from the opposition leader.

However, the endorsement also highlights the weakness of the plan. The UK is aiming at a 50% reduction from 1990 levels by 2025 (and has already managed a 28% reduction between 1990 and 2009, though with this important proviso). Gillard (and Abbott, officially) are aiming at 5% below 2000 levels by 2020. As I have said before, I think there are serious problems with the proposed Clean Energy Scheme. Criticising the opposition ought not be confused with uncritical endorsement of the government.

It is of course quite possible to pay too much attention to governments, and to find in their failures a salve for our own consciences or in their dramas a welcome distraction from our own inaction. But the reverse is also possible.

John Stott (1921-2011)

2011-07-27T23:55:00.001+01:00

John Stott, the grandfather of evangelical Anglicanism, died today, aged 90. I grew up being taught by people whose vision of Christian theology and discipleship was more often than not significantly shaped by Stott, and my own introduction to theology included a number of his books; The Cross of Christ made it into my top 20 theological influences a couple of years ago.

His death and the many tributes flowing in from all over the world have prompted me to consider again the question of how we honour our parents and ancestors (spiritual as well as biological and cultural). I hope to pull together some thoughts on this at some stage in the coming days. But for now, I will simply join my voice to those who thank God for John Stott's life and ministry. May he now rest until the day when death is no more.

UPDATE: this site has been set up as a hub for online memorial and contains a growing number of useful links to his life and work the various ongoing ministries that he helped establish. Feel free to post more links to obituaries or interesting articles in the comments.

A sense of proportion

2011-07-25T12:46:00.001+01:00

The problem is not capitalism.

It is not the exploitation of fossil fuels. It is neither corporations, nor government taxation and spending. It is not wealth. It is not political donations and special interest lobbying. It is not economic growth. It is not consumption (though consumerism is always wrong, no matter the ecological situation). It is none of these things per se. The problem is a loss of our sense of proportion. All these things may have their place in a healthy society. But we have lost a sense of their appropriate place and scale. We have taken good things and thought that by maximising them, then the common good would enlarge. We have thus enabled each of these things to become hideously deformed, metastasizing throughout the body politic at a pace and scale that threaten our collective life. We have taken certain goods and ideas and fashioned them into idols.

What horizon of reference can help us to regain our bearings and a feel for the relative weight of different claims upon our attention? When our actions and hubris have ballooned into reshaping the sky and oceans and earth, what backdrop can highlight our grotesque distortions of priority and probity? Against whom can we measure a life that is properly creaturely, aptly humble, truly human?

Take the mic away from the speakers...

2011-07-24T21:56:00.001+01:00

Here's another climate feedback: More frequent and severe heat waves, such as the one breaking all kinds of records in the US at the moment, are one of the most likely effects of continued climate change. More severe/frequent heat waves mean higher peak electricity demand, which means more power stations being built, which means more capacity in the system, which means more impetus to use it, which means (barring widespread and rapid implementation of cleaner energy) more greenhouse gas emissions, which means - well, you get it by now.

Collective responsibility

2011-07-23T00:12:00.002+01:00

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

- Voltaire (attributed).

"Australia produces less than 1.5 per cent of the world's carbon emissions but will pay the world's biggest carbon tax."

- Claim of recent Australian ad campaign
funded by the Australian Trade and Industry Alliance.

Is Australia but a bit player in the carbon game? Are our emissions irrelevant on the world stage? I intend to write more in the coming days about this line of thinking. So far I have identified twelve possible faults with the statistical or ethical assumptions behind it. So, for a little exercise over the weekend, I'd love to hear how readers respond to the ATI ads (see below) and this claim about Australia's role in particular.

I am mainly interested in the first half of the claim (with its implication that Australian emissions are too small to be worth causing any economic pain). The second half of the quote ("the world's biggest carbon tax") is refuted here without even mentioning the fact that Sweden has had a carbon price since 1991 that is now around 150 AUD per tonne (the price in the proposed Clean Energy Plan starts at 23 AUD per tonne).

This blog is my filing cabinet

2011-07-22T23:29:00.000+01:00

In the absence of anything more organised, I have for some time now been using this blog as a filing cabinet for links to posts, news stories and relevant publications that relate to the topic of previous posts. Many posts continue to gather dozens of such links in the comments. If this is useful to others, then good. It is useful to me. I don't necessarily endorse everything said in every link; they are just things I have found interesting. Sometimes, they include significant arguments against something I said in the post.

Corporate failure: more than a few bad apples

2011-07-22T01:52:00.004+01:00

With all the current discussion about News International and its parent company News Corp, many pixels are being devoted to a discussion of just how things went so wrong. After a string of recent revelations, the claim, maintained by News executives for years, that it was one (or then a few) bad apple(s) in an otherwise honest company now appears as either deluded, deceitful or the result of seriously deficient oversight. Since it is nearly always better to assume incompetence rather than conspiracy, at best Tuesday's parliamentary inquiry revealed a string of failed leaders - spanning media editors, senior corporate executives, police and politicians - who remained dangerously out of touch with what was going on around them. At worst, collusion, corruption and cover up on an industrial scale dwarf the significance of the original criminal data acquisition. Whatever the true nature of the rot, it goes beyond a couple of apples, whether at the top or bottom of the pile.

When confronted with misdeeds on this scale, a common reaction (which I notice in my own instincts) is to seek to put a face on the problem, a single individual who can be held ultimately responsible. We want the buck to stop somewhere. The legal pursuit of the questions of who knew what when is important and such investigations are likely to take some time. In the meantime, an impatient public desires visible signs of justice. If we cannot get convictions just yet, we will settle for resignations.

We so desperately want to be able to find someone to blame, some focus for our fury at the damage caused by a system of corruption in which media, police and politicians were too close and saw their own good in terms of a small circle than the national interest they claimed to be representing. We want to know that our violated trust is being taken seriously. Resignations serve as symbolic steps in this direction; they speak to a collective desire to start again and are a metaphor of what it looks like for an organisation to repent.

But there are deeper questions at stake. Individuals did indeed commit crimes and moral failures (either of commission or omission). Many participated in looking the other way, being willfully blind to what was going on because it was more convenient to maintain deniability (or perhaps they continue to mislead political authorities). But to leave the analysis at the level of individuals fails to take account of the dynamics that can exist at a supra-individual level. The whole can often be greater than the sum of the parts. If the only lessons we take away from this saga involve the need for greater personal integrity, we miss the opportunity to ask how the very structures might have served to sideline, subvert or dilute integrity.

There are individual failures, but also failures of structure, failures of collective imagination. They are failures of systems that are based on seeking the wrong kinds of inclusion, systems that punish those who speak up while rewarding those who conform without questioning the quality of what is shared. Whether a for-profit corporation can simulatenously claim to be serving its shareholders and the common good is an interesting question, as is whether a political system in which an MP is required to win more votes than any other candidate every five years encourages a myopic and image-driven politics.

When a corporation is accountable to its shareholders' interests and those interests are understood in narrow financial terms (as they usually are), then the only place that ethical considerations enter into it is the impulse to avoid anything unethical insofar as it hurts the bottom line. Therefore, the recent fall in News Corp shares is the real crime Rupert and his various officers have committed.

But of course that way madness lies, and the reaction of the public to this scandal is partly media-driven hysteria (the very same hysteria that News have used to successfully to drive sales) and partly genuine moral outrage that speaks to a standard other than the bottom line. There is more to living well than making a profit and there is more to a flourishing nation (or world) than a growing GDP. Therefore, there must be more to a healthy company than a rising share price. Let us resist the colonisation of our ethical thought by cost-benefit risk analysis that seeks to put a price on everything. The language of money cannot adequately translate the full complexity and richness of our moral existence and to rely on it to do so is to abdicate our responsibility for pursuing good and shunning evil.

Amidst the repeated failure of not just scattered individuals but of our most trusted social institutions - of corporations and parliaments, banks and police, sensationalist newspapers and a reading public that buys them - it may be worth considering again the apostle Paul's exhortation to his readers in Rome, who were at the heart of a vast empire with powerful cultural incentives to fit in: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds (Romans 12.2 NRSV). This is addressed not simply to the individual believers, but to the church as a whole. It is an invitation to a way of corporate existence based on the good news of God's mercies (verse 1). The church, of course, is not immune from moral failure. Yet the good news here is an invitation to discover anew a source of belonging that does not require us to narrow our moral vision lest we stick out, but which gives us permission to find fresh ways of thinking and seeing amidst a culture that has lost its way. The church has no monopoly on wisdom, has not cornered the market in corporate governance or collective integrity. Yet in its practices of humility, confession, forgiveness and love of neighbour to the glory of God, in its memory of Jesus accepting the outcast and breaking bread with the traitor, in its grasp of the promise of a Spirit who leads into both honesty and new begingings, it has something that is genuinely different and worth rediscovering and sharing by each generation.

The theology of Harry Potter #7: book vs film

2011-07-21T23:01:00.001+01:00

Brad Littlejohn has an excellent exposition of the theology of the final Harry Potter book in comparison to the final film (which doesn't stack up so well). If you ever wanted someone to demonstrate that there was much more going on christologically in Rowling than the all too common and wearily superficial assumption that her depiction of magic equalled a nefarious seduction of young minds into Satanic arts, then read his piece.

Warning: film plot spoilers.

Two naughty (Aussie) boys

2011-07-21T00:04:00.006+01:00

In the last twelve months, two of the biggest news stories* have had some remarkable parallels. The best known character of each was male, born in Australia, worked in journalism and widely perceived to be arrogant and controlling. Both published secret information (allegedly) obtained by illegal means that others wanted kept private and which proved controversial and explosive. In both cases, the original source of the secret information was incarcerated. In both cases, the events opened the lid on the seedy underbelly of power acting in its own interests. In both cases, the Guardian played a major role in bringing the story to light and in both cases the subsequent legal drama played out in the UK (and to a lesser extent, the US).
*Biggest in terms of media attention they have received, not necessarily the most important at either an immediate or protracted scale.

But the two cases could also not be more different. In the first, an almost unheard of nobody took information that was leaked to him for free, which was of obvious public interest and revealed the double standards, corruption and abuses of power associated with some of the most world's most powerful polities. In the second, a household name and one of the most powerful people in the world owning and leading the world's largest media group was in charge of a newspaper in which a significant culture of double standards, corruption and abuse of power was rife, and which systematically stole and paid bribes for information that was very frequently not in the public interest from thousands of individuals and which was published for titillation and profit. The first, for all his faults, was holding power to account for its manifold abuses. The second, for all his strengths, is responsible for an immensely powerful organisation guilty of manifold abuses, repeatedly denied and (allegedly) illegally suppressed (and he apparently pays no tax). And yet some continue to compare or conflate the two as though they are both simply stories about "illegal hacking".

The outcomes in each case could also not be more different. Julian Assange was quickly labelled a terrorist, pressure from the US government on PayPal, Mastercard and Visa cut off WikiLeaks' funding, there were widespread calls - even from senior US politicians - for his assassination, he was condemned by his own Prime Minister without trial and, ironically, Murdoch media joined in and helped magnify the character assassination on multiple continents. Yet, as far as I am aware, none of those whose abuses he revealed have been charged or resigned. In contrast, so far, Rupert Murdoch has had his next plaything taken away, fielded some embarrassing questions, received professional PR advice to eat humble pie, and taken another kind of pie in the face. Arrests and resignations continue to happen to other people. If we take his repeated professions of ignorance at face value, then my conclusion is that a corporation that has grown too large for the boss to take responsibility for a culture of systematic abuses within it is a corporation that is too large. Julian Assange is not the Messiah; Rupert Murdoch is far more than just a naughty boy.
Image by ALS.

A parable

2011-07-20T16:28:00.001+01:00

Every day while walking up the 193 steps to my desk I pass the smallest nature reserve in the country, a tiny locked garden that thrives with all manner of wee, sleekit beasties.

Today as I walked past, a man, slightly inebriated, climbed over the fence, stumbled through a couple of low bushes, exclaimed loudly to his two friends who had remained behind "It's beautiful! No, I mean seriously, it's really beautiful!" and then proceeded to unzip his pants and relieve himself.

Whether the point of this parable is as an illustration of so many of our interactions with the created order, or is related to the fact that I kept on walking, thinking this was someone else's problem, I am not entirely sure.

Exorcism at the Tate: BP and the pollution of the arts

2011-07-19T23:16:00.001+01:00

This occurred yesterday afternoon at the Tate Modern Art Gallery in London. Rev Billy and his "church" have been developing this kind of protest against various abuses of consumerism for the last five years or so. Combining street theatre with the discourse and imagery of gospel revivalist preaching and song, they encourage people to think about what our consumption is doing to our ecosystems, society and souls.

I would love to hear what people think of this as a form of creative protest. Is it effective? Distracting? Humourous? Counterproductive?

Every second of every day

2011-07-18T17:06:00.004+01:00

Greenland is losing around 9,000 tonnes of ice every second. But we're doing our best to mitigate this problem by removing 9-10,000 tonnes of fish from the ocean every hour. And, of course, by dumping 62,500 tonnes of heat-trapping emissions into the earth's atmosphere every minute. The radiative forcing of the carbon dioxide human activities have put in the atmosphere is the equivalent of adding the energy of more than ten Hiroshima bombs every second.

Climate Central: Extreme events related to climate change threaten three US nuclear facilities.

Guardian: UK oil and gas rigs creating spills at least once a week in 2009 and 2010. Remember, the UK claims to have some of the world's highest standards in regulation of off-shore drilling safety. Now take these operations into freezing Arctic waters, where microbes won't be so quick to deal with spills as there were in the tropical waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and where extreme conditions prevent the kind of response available there. Arctic drilling is doubly suicidal: It brings new risks to relatively untouched ecosystems and ensures more greenhouse gases in our atmosphere for thousands of years. And the only reason these waters are opening up to this exploitation is the decline of the sea ice caused by the combustion of fossil fuels in the first place.

Grist: In the worst drought in Texas history, 13.5 billion gallons of water used for fracking. Fracking is the controversial process used to exploit reserves of shale gas, a fossil fuel touted in some circles as a cleaner alternative and as a silver bullet solution to US energy security, but which is worse than coal or conventional oil when gas leaks are included (since natural gas is a very potent greenhouse gas and degrades over time into more carbon dioxide), has been associated with the poisoning of groundwater, and which may well prove commercially unviable much faster than expected according to a recent NYT report (while Stoneleigh offers an even bleaker outlook).

Independent: The plight of the big cats. According to Dereck and Beverly Joubert, leading big cat conservationists, "There were 450,000 lions when we were born and now there are only 20,000 worldwide. [...] Leopards have declined from 700,000 to 50,000, cheetahs from 45,000 to 12,000 and tigers are down from 50,000 to just 3,000."

CP: Food prices hover at historic highs.

IPS: Rising temperatures melting away food security. The impacts of climate change on food production are not limited to heat stress on crops (which may suppress global yields by 5-10% per degree of warming), but also include disruptions to precipitation patterns (i.e. floods and droughts), inundation (or salination) by rising sea levels, loss of glacial melt water (a critical factor, according to this article), increased erosion and shifting distribution of pests and invasive species.

Yale360: Wasting phosphate. "It takes one ton of phosphate to produce every 130 tons of grain, which is why the world mines about 170 million tons of phosphate rock every year to ship around the world and keep soils fertile. [...] We could hit “peak phosphorus” production by around 2030. [...] Presently, there simply are no substitutes for phosphorus."

Reuters: As CO2 levels rise, land becomes less able to curb warming, claims new study in Nature.

Mongabay: The unexpected effects of removing top predators. Another new Nature paper claims that "The loss of these animals may be humankind’s most pervasive influence on nature".

Energy Bulletin: Dilithium crystals and tomorrow's energy needs.
Image by CAC.

Evangelicals ought to be greener than the Greens

2011-07-15T21:01:00.009+01:00

Guest post by Mick Pope

What does the gospel say about caring for creation?
Evangelicals should be at the forefront of creation care, regardless of the issue. The Bible is far greener than the Greens can ever be precisely because we don't "hate humanity" (as the Greens are sometimes accused of doing) but should have a proper biblical anthropology in which humanity is made by God from the good dirt and called by God to the noblest of tasks. However, one of the problems with some strands of Evangelicalism at various points of history is that it hasn't taken biblical anthropology seriously enough. Because we belong with the dust from which we were made and will be bodily resurrected, matter matters, including matter that isn't human.

Genesis 1 makes it clear that the Earth is the divine temple and that humans are the idols/images in that temple (interestingly, the word used for "image" in the ancient Greek translation of Genesis 1.26-27 is the same word elsewhere used for pagan idols), representing God to the rest of creation. This rules out any negative views towards the dominion mandate, since it is in God's image that we are to rule.

Psalm 104 is oft neglected and makes a couple of things clear. Firstly, God cares for creatures that (at the time) lay outside of the human economy, indeed for creatures like lions that were often harmful to the human economy, because he took delight in them for their own sake. It is a Psalm in praise of God's own creative wisdom. Notice too how the Psalmist places human economic activity alongside that of his care of the rest of creation. It is a small step to see that if God cares for and tends the wild places, we have no right to interfere with that, and as we carry out dominion in his name we should be also caring for wilderness, not to our own detriment but not to its neglect either.

The third important passage is Romans 8:19-25, which shows how intimately our future and that of the non-human creation are tied together. Creation groans for its own liberation as it has suffered under human misrule because of our idolatry. Note a solid biblical critique of materialism and paganism - we can't afford to leave creation care to atheists or pantheistic Greens since it is our calling. Still, when those groups take caring for creation more seriously than us they shame us. Note too that if creation waits for liberation we don't "save the Earth" but we do act in hope for the future. Just as when we seek to be more holy we don't save ourselves but live in hope of our final sanctification.

So caring for creation matters for Evangelicals.

What about climate change? Is it disingenuous for Christian organisations like Ethos to support the mainstream scientific view without giving equal time to those who are sceptical? As a meteorologist and a PhD who has followed the debate I'd say the science is pretty sound, and that we at Ethos are following the understanding laid down by one hundred and fifty years of direct observation of temperatures, at least a thousand years of proxy data from various independent sources, the best models of the day that can only reproduce the twentieth century trends with greenhouse gases included in the model, and a whole slew of research based on various observations of temperature extremes, changes in rainfall patterns, melting glaciers, spreading tropical diseases and so on.

Addressing climate change is part of a much larger project. Evangelicalism has much to repent of (in my opinion) and has and continues to miss its mission of creation care and opportunities to live out the gospel.

Dr Mick Pope is a meteorologist and coordinator of Ethos Environment. An earlier version of this post appeared as a comment on the Ethos site.