Environmentalism, Science and Spirituality

In a recent issue of Harper's Journal, there was a fascinating editorial called "The Idols of Environmentalism". The author's (Curtis White) main point is that the reliance of those who care for this world on science to solve our problems is misguided at best and stupid at worst. We have foolishly believed that the way out of our current environmental crisis is through scientific methods. He rests his argument that science (which in the West is inherently tied to Capitalism) has a completely different value set than is positive for any forward direction in care of the earth. He calls us forward to a worldview centered on spiritual values (not religious values mind you). Some quotes:

"In accepting science as our primary weapon against environmental destruction, we have also had to accept science's contempt for religion and the spiritual. This is the unfortunate legacy of science...but this attitude is myopic; it is science at its most stupid."

"Environmentalism should stop depending on its alliance with science for its sense of itself. It should look to create a common language of care (a reverence for and a commitment to the astonshing fact of Being) through which it could begin to create alternative principles by which we might live."

"The establishment of those principles by which we might live would begin with three questions. First, what does it mean to be a human being? Second, what is my relation to other human beings? And third, what is my relation to Being as such, the ongoing miracle that there is something rather than nothing? If the answer to these questions is that the purpose of being human is "the pursuit of happiness" (understood as success, which is understood as the accumulation of money), and if our relation to others is a relation to mere things (with nothing to offer but their labor), and if our relation to the world is only to "resources" (which we should exploit for profit), then we should be very comfortable with the world we have. It if goes to perdition, at least we can say that we acted in good faith. But if, on the other hand, we answer that there should be a greater sense of self-worth in being a human, more justice in our relation to others, and more reverence for Being, then we must either live in bad faith with capitalism or begin describing a future whose fundamental values and whose daily activities are radically different from what we currently endure. The risk I propse is simply a return to our nobility."

"We should refuse to be mere functions of a system that we cannot in good conscience defend. And we should insist on a recognition of the mystery, the miracle, and the dignity of things, from frogs to forests, simply because they are."

"There is a problem more fundamental than a perverse power standing opposed to us. That deeper problem is our own integration into an order of work that makes us inhuman and thus tolerant of what is nothing less than demonic, the destruction of our world. A return to the valuable human things of the beautiful and the useful will only be accomplished, if it is ever to be accomplished, by the humans among us."

Some very deep, refreshing, and sometimes disturbing points that come awfully close to home. I am certainly challenged to think of my own responsibility in building humanity rather than power. It also strikes me that these questions posed may be valuable not only for the work world, the democratic world, the capitalist world, but also for the church to wrestle with. Are we a people who first and foremost treat the world with the reverence of Being? In what programs, methods and structures do we use the world and those around us for pursuit of power or personal "gain".