Shades of green: why is ecological degradation wrong?

Not all attempts to be ecologically responsible are the same. There are some huge differences between groups and individuals that are often simply lumped together as "environmentalists".

Sometimes these differences are discussed in terms of focus. For instance, Michael Northcott's The Environment and Christian Ethics identifies three broad approaches. Those who emphasise the intrinsic value of the non-human world and regret its destruction or transformation by humans he calls ecocentric. Those who emphasise the damage to human society represented by ecological degradation he calls humanocentric (others use the term anthropocentric, which keeps the Greek etymological theme). Those who emphasise God's glory and delight in the created order such that destructiveness is an affront to divine purposes he calls theocentric. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive and particular thinkers may draw upon multiple lines of thought. Each will lead in somewhat different directions at certain points, but the main difference lies in how they analyse the problem of ecological degradation. Why is it wrong for us to be clearing the rainforests, to be emptying the oceans of fish or to be dumping over 100 million tonnes of plastic each year? Is it because we lose species and damage ecosystems that are beautiful, unique and irreplaceable? Or because we're undermining our ability to feed and clothe ourselves, because the cost of replacing the lost ecosystem services is a drain on human society, because we're running up an ecological debt we can't possibly repay and so driving off a cliff? Or are they wrong because they represent a human attempt to uncreate, a perverse parody of God's original work?

Personally, I think any answer that doesn't draw on all three strands is likely to be deficient and lead to a poor response. Pure theocentrism could give the impression that as long as our hearts are in the right place, it doesn't matter if our actions are any benefit to our neighbour (human or non-human). Pure ecocentrism might imply that humanity itself is the problem and that any human modification of the "natural" order is wrong. Pure anthropocentrism risks becoming instrumentalist, and ignores the fact that God pronounces the created order "good" prior to the creation of humanity. These are caricatures, but all three reasons can find a place in an account that is attentive to the holy scriptures.

Struggling to breathe underwater

"Unless we find a way to rein in our carbon emissions very soon, a low-oxygen ocean may become an inescapable feature of our planet."

- Carl Zimmer, "A Looming Oxygen Crisis and Its Impact on World's Oceans".

Carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are destabilising the climate under which human civilisation has developed. That is well known and widely discussed. They are also acidifying the oceans ten times faster than during a mass marine extinct event 55 million years ago. That is less well-known, but possibly just as serious. But there is yet another global threat from rising carbon dioxide levels: a decline in oceanic oxygen levels. Not simply the local devastation caused in an increasing number of sites from fertiliser run-off creating marine "dead zones" starved of oxygen, but a global issue. Warmer water can hold less oxygen and warmer water is more stratified, making the mixing of surface oxygen with deeper water slower. Although the absolute drop in oxygen may seem slight (single digit percentages over many decades), this could have severe effects on many marine creatures for whom oxygen intake represents a primary limiting factor. The winners? Jellyfish and certain bacteria that thrive in oxygen-depleted conditions. The former are presently experiencing a population explosion (largely due to overfishing removing competition, amongst other causes). The latter are a source of yet more potent greenhouse gases.

Take a deep breath and read the full article.

"And God said, 'Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.' So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.'"

- Genesis 1.20-21.

Are we undoing creation and denying the blessing of God?

O'Donovan: Resurrection and renewal

Wonderful O'Donovan quote
"It might have been possible, we could say, before Christ rose from the dead, for someone to wonder whether creation was a lost cause. If the creature consistently acted to uncreate itself, and with itself to uncreate the rest of creation, did this not mean that God's handiwork was flawed beyond hope of repair? It might have been possible before Christ rose from the dead to answer in good faith, Yes. Before God raised Jesus from the dead, the hope that we call 'gnostic', the hope for redemption from creation rather than for the redemption of creation, might have appeared to be the only possible hope. 'But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead...'. That fact rules out those other possibilities, for in the second Adam the first is rescued. The deviance of his will, its fateful leaning towards death, has not been allowed to uncreate what God created.
...
"The resurrection carries with it the promise that 'all shall be made alive'. The raising of Christ is representative, not in the way that a symbol is representative, expressing a reality which has an independent and prior standing, but in the way that a national leader is representative when he brings about for the whole of his people whatever it is, war or peace, that he effects on their behalf. And so this central proclamation directs us back also to the message of the incarnation, by which we learn how, through a unique presence of God to his creation, the whole created order is taken up into the fate of this particular representative man at this particular moment of history, on whose fate turns the redemption of all. And it directs us forward to the end of history when that particular and representative fate is universalized in the resurrection of mankind [sic] from the dead. 'Each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ'. The sign that God has stood by his created order implies that this order, with mankind [sic] in its proper place within it, is to be totally restored at the last."

- Oliver O'Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 14-15.

Usually, my quotes come with a caveat, but not this one. This expresses very much where I presently stand. The picture is from a hill to the south overlooking Firenze.