In a previous post, I discussed the clear relationship between Christianity and the environment that is expressed throughout the Bible. Here are some more thoughts, including slightly more controversial ones.
A comment on one of my posts last week gave me the idea of writing on the relationship between Christianity and the environment. Generally, when we think of this connection, many of us think about the “Religious Right” and their strong conservative beliefs and anti-environmental policies.
What is at the root of Christianity, though? Can anti-environmental language and beliefs be found in the Bible?
The Bible seems to proclaim that nature was made as it should be and is something that should be respected and protected. In Psalms 104:25,30, it is written: “In wisdom you made them all, the earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number - living things both large and small…. When you send your Spirit, they are created and you renew the earth.” The general spirit is one of positivity and love here.
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GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily talks subject with Sara Ost, blogger, founder, and Editor-In-Chief of EcoSalon.com, which covers fashion, wellness, and lifestyle topics for women and garnered 60,000 subscriptions in its first 6 months.
[Courtesy of our friends at GreenLivingIdeas.com]Click Play Below,
or
We are influenced throughout our life by the company we keep, the groups and issues we engage in, and the people we respect and learn from. But is there anything that compares to what we learn from our parents as children?
We can see the way children imitate their parents, even as adults. Children learn habits (small and large ones), beliefs, likes and dislikes, interests, manners, and even deeply engrained ethics from their parents. It may seem superficial at times, but when you get to know someone closely, and their family, you can get to see how deep what they learned actually goes.
We put a lot into the future of our children. We want them to have a good education, good friends, want them to be polite and respectful. We hope they will learn what’s important in life and what’s not as important, and we do our best to help them learn this.
All of this being said, what do we do to educate them about the environment? We do some things on a superficial level — we might recycle and tell them how to recycle and what recycling is; we might be conservative in the use of lights and water and such resources. We give some passing mention of the importance of the environment. But is this a true environmental ethic and are we doing what we should in this field?
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GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily talks with green blogger and ecofashionista Starre Vartan of Eco-Chick.com. Starre founded Eco-Chick in October of 2005 with the idea that women who cared about the planet needed a place of their own on the web. At the time, most environmental blogs were guy-oriented, and very serious, and Starre thought that while discussion of scientific issues was important, consumer action would be second only to policy shifts in protecting the environment and creating a more sustainable culture.
[Courtesy of our friends at GreenLivingIdeas.com]Click Play Below,or
Pope Benedict XVI added to his growing reputation as the “green Pope” on Tuesday with the release of a new encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth). A call for sustainable development in the broadest sense, the Pope’s letter addressed the human and environmental costs of “business as usual,” and established “doing well by doing good” as the business philosophy most consistent with Church doctrine and Biblical teaching.
In previous posts, I discussed the “Sustainability Prism”, the link between personal happiness and the economy, and the link between personal happiness and equity. In this post, I am exploring one more connection in this prism — the connection between personal happiness and the environment.
A common awareness all over the world now is that a major problem causing worldwide pollution, loss of natural lands, and extinction of species is overconsumption in the United States, and the developed world, in general. What is at the root of this overconsumption? Is it cheap production, and technology ‘improvements’ allowing for mass-production? Is it television and superb advertising of products? Is it the greed of rich and comfortable people?
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The Mother Nature Network has just published their list of the ten greenest cities in the United States.
There is as yet no official criteria set by the EPA for determining a city’s “greeness,” MNN considered key areas to measure the effectiveness of a municipality’s efforts at carbon footprint reduction, including air and water quality, efficient recylcling and management of waste, percentage of LEED certified buildings, acres of land devoted to green space, use of renewable energy, and easy access to green products and services.
And the MNN winners are:
What is the source of equity?
The source of equity, I would argue, is believing that all people deserve the same. In actual fact, though, who believes that others deserve what they deserve? More often than not, people don’t believe that others deserve what they deserve. But, this comes from people who are not happy with what they have. People who want more believe they deserve more, even if they are already making 99 times more than the average man.
Who is happy for others to receive happiness, and to receive, in general? And who is happy to give? Those are happy to see others happy who are happy themselves. Those want others to receive who receive themselves, and want others to deserve who deserve themselves.
This is the important point — this is all referring to a deep receiving and happiness, not to a superficial happiness and receiving. If one is deeply happy, one wants everyone to receive that happiness. One who is rich (with money) may want others to share in that or may not. One who is poor may want to share her or his only provisions with a stranger in need, or may wish everyone in the world had the peace and provisions of their own shelter and daily food. It is not a matter of having, physically, or not. The matter for those who are happy (which makes them want to share with others) is the happiness they find in their own soul or inner self.
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In my previous post, I brought up the sustainability prism and the link between personal happiness or peace and the other three, traditional components of sustainability theory — economy, equity, and ecology. In this article, I explore the link between personal happiness and the economy in greater depth. Of course, this is just a taste of the full connection between the two since there are enough layers here to write a book on it all, but here is a start and there is plenty of comment space below!
Economy is at the forefront of society’s consciousness these days. It is always a, if not the, major societal issue for most people. With the current economic crisis, it has stepped up even another level of importance. We all have to wonder, these days, if we will be able to return to the affluence of just one or two decades ago, or, if, on the other hand, the whole economic system of America, and the world that depends on it, will collapse as a house of sand built on a thin board of wood on the ocean’s waves.
We can look to the specific failures of banks and immoral business practices to explain all of this. But these failures, and much more, were built on much more widespread and much less questioned norms than these.
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Sustainablog
Since July 2003, sustainablog has been providing information on environmental and economic sustainability, green and sustainable business, and environmental politics. The blog regularly features environmental leaders, experts in alternative energy and green technology, and real people trying to lighten their environmental footprints.
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