September 29 2013
Ten Ideas for Saving the Planet: John B. Cobb, Jr.
Quite the pretentious title.
John B. Cobb Jr. (born February 9, 1925) is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist and the author of more than fifty books. Recently the older of my two younger brothers in Holland sent me Cobb’s 30 page essay “Ten Ideas for Saving the Planet”.
These Ten Ideas are:
1. Reality is composed of interrelated events.
2. There are gradations of intrinsic value.
3. God aims at maximizing value.
4. Humans are uniquely (but by no means exclusively) valuable and uniquely responsible.
5. Education is for wisdom.
6. The economy should be directed toward flourishing of the biosphere.
7. Agriculture should regenerate the soil.
8. Comfortable habitat should make minimal demands on resources.
9. Most manufacturing should be local.
10. Every community should be part of a community of communities.
My preliminary thoughts
There’s nothing really striking about these Ten Ideas. They simply reflect the way Cobb thinks, influenced, of course, by his theology, just as my comments are influenced by my theology.
When two people engage in a dialogue, they usually start with something positive, accordingly I start to state that we both agree that we must live as if it were possible to save the planet. In everything I do I try to keep that in mind, and pray for forgiveness when I am unable to do so, which is the case quite often.
I miss in Cobb, the theologian, a biblical approach. He is what is called a Process Theologian, people who teach that God has limited knowledge, lacks foresight of what is going to happen, and so God doesn’t know the future nor can he predict its outcome. Process theologians deny the truthfulness of Scripture which clearly declares that God’s purpose is “unchangeable” (Heb. 6:17) and that he himself is the only constant in creation. His name is Yahweh which means One Who Is and Was and Always will be.
I am fully with Cobb when, in his introduction, he writes that “I realized that theology must be eco-theology if it is to be helpful to how we live in the world. The world, after all, is not simply a human world. It is a web of life.”
Excellent, but then he fails to implement this approach. Unless theology takes into account the ‘oikos’ the entire ‘house’ we live in, the outcome tends to be mere words. “Faith without deeds is dead” writes the apostle James. I see these deeds primarily relating to love the ‘oikos’, our earthly abode. When we do that we automatically love all it contains, including our neighbours.
I also agree when he writes: “We must be honest. We live in a terrible time. We know that our actions are destroying the ability of the Earth to support us, but we seem incapable of changing direction. We plunge blindly ahead, either ignoring the reality of what is happening or hoping that some technological miracle will save us. It will not. The modern world has overshot the limits of what the Earth can bear, and our civilization will collapse.”
To me this sounds contradictory. How can we save something that will collapse anyway?
Ah, here comes his Process Theology! He writes: “But the powers of God are not absolute. God cannot reverse the past or manipulate the present like a puppeteer. God’s power is that of persuasion not coercion, of love not manipulation. In many ways it is too late. Too much has been lost. Too much is being lost. The poor are the first to suffer.”
I see God’s powers as absolute. I also believe that we will see a New Beginning, that our present polluting life will become pure living: our mourning turn into dancing.
Again something I like: “One reason we behave so badly is that the modern world has a misleading understanding of the nature of reality. What is mis-leading leads astray, and humanity collectively has been led far, far astray.”
I headed this section with the comment of “Quite the pretentious title”. Cobb’s Ten Ideas remind me of the Ten Commandments, rules to live by if God gives us the grace to abide by them. God also laid down conditions that would have kept us from destroying the world. The Year of Jubilee comes to mind, where, in every 50th year all property sold would go back to the original owners, forever preventing people from becoming too rich.
It is true that we are incapable to save us from ourselves, and the paradox is that we don’t have to, for the simple reason that the world – and us – has been saved already. It was saved on Golgotha when Jesus gave his life as a ransom to buy the world back – redeem – from the Satan who had been able to lay hands on it.
I compare this act of salvation to a real estate transaction. (I was a real estate broker for a while). After all, our planet is essentially ‘real estate’. The price to buy it back has been paid – Jesus’ blood was the principal sum, his life was sacrificed – by which all the conditions of sale were completed and – as we say in Real Estate terms – the sale is final. The closing date, the transfer of the property, the planet and all it contains from Satan to the new owners – the followers of Christ – will take place when Christ returns.
Now to the meat of the matter: since I found the first four ideas too theoretical I will skip them and start with number 5 and give my comments only.
Education is for wisdom.
Cobb claims to be an eco-theologian, so it is surprising that he nowhere mentions that “The fear of the Lord is the start of wisdom”. For an eco- theologian this is a gross oversight because wisdom can only come when we look at creation in awesome wonder and study its intricacy and marvelous composition. Then and there we are at the start of amazing discoveries. Wisdom begins with wonder in the double sense of the word.
6. The economy should be directed toward flourishing of the biosphere.
The biosphere includes the air we breathe, now being polluted because of energy use. Today the economic world is synonymous with energy: it takes energy to make anything, from a piece of steel to a loaf of bread. It takes energy to transport anything. Humans need energy in the form of food to continue to live. In general, the more external energy used, the more humans are able to control their environment. We are now reaching energy limits on two fronts: we running low on external energy and we are damaging the environment with it.
We can’t save the earth and continue to use energy as we are doing. The only way to save the earth is to use human and renewable energy- sun, wind- only.
Today we have more than seven plus billion consumers in the world, all striving to better themselves by using more energy. The only way to do that is to exploit everything for a while, until the entire structure collapses. No way can we keep the economic system we have devised going at the current rate. This past week the IPCC report came out: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It recommends cutting back on energy use. Will you? Nobody I know is driving less or plans to become self-sufficient and attempts to live a carbon-free life. Fracking is postponing Peak Oil for a while, the most terrible way to delay the inevitable. Rather than cleaning the air, the hard-to-get fuels, including Alberta’s Tarsands, will accelerate cosmic collapse.
7. Agriculture should regenerate the soil.
To meet the need for greater food supply, humans began using agriculture about 10,000 years ago which increased the amount of human food available per acre, and also made population growth possible. The world did not reach one billion people until 1812. Then doubled it to two billion in one century and tripled it in my life time thanks to oil. It also meant that pesticides and fertilizer run-off and the use of heavy machinery added to erosion, all leading not to regenerating, but degeneration.
Frankly the only economy that is totally sustainable is the hunter-gatherer one. It had little need to “save for tomorrow,” because it was difficult to carry anything during travels. The amount of food an individual could eat was pretty much limited by appetite, so having “more food” for one individual wasn’t particularly helpful. The Garden of Eden comes to mind.
Today, even with water shortages looming, a major portion of agriculture comes from irrigation, which leads to salt deposits. If we really love the land – See John 3:16 – we must let land lay idle, use crop rotation, grow organically, which is much more labour intensive but will put a lot of people to work!
8. Comfortable habitat should make minimal demands on resources.
Europe was built with two legs in mind. North America was built for four wheels. No wonder Europe does well on 50% less energy than the USA.
Cobb recommends people moving to well insulated high rises. Toronto is going that way, except that these condominiums are mostly clad with glass, a very poor insulator, which brings me to energy use.
Soon after agriculture began, humans began to use resources of other types, such as wood from forests and metals such as iron and bronze. With any of these resources, there is a tendency to use the “cheapest” (easiest to extract, closest at hand, highest ore concentration) first. If extraction is to continue, increasing amounts of energy per unit extracted are likely to be required for later extraction. Take Europe. By 1500 Europe was on the edge of a fuel and nutritional disaster. It was saved in the sixteenth century only by the burning of soft coal and the cultivation of potatoes and maize. The use of coal allowed more energy per person, and took pressure off of limited forest resources. After coal came oil and natural gas. Once these sources are exhausted, we have nothing to fall back on except sun and wind, and thus we are back to Square One, the hunter-gathering society and a greatly reduced population. The world today can never support 7 billion, let alone the projected 10 billion in 2050.
9. Most manufacturing should be local.
The availability of fossil fuels, starting around 1800, has allowed much of what we now call “technology.” Without fossil fuels, our ability to make materials such as metals and glass is severely restricted. Without fossil fuels, we are also lacking for the basic building blocks for plastics, synthetic fabrics, and even modern medicines. Technology provided ways to use fossil fuel resources in ways that helped overcome many human limits. The desire to use more technology led to increasing use of fossil fuels in the 19th and 20th centuries. Cobb’s point to keep manufacturing local, rather than use China, is well taken.
10. Every community should be part of a community of communities.
We have created a society where it is exceedingly difficult to be part of a viable community. We live far too spread out, in subdivisions away from the core and in exurban homes far from work and recreation. The long drive to work, the two-jobs to make ends meet, makes life so busy that there is little or no time for anything else but eat-sleep-work.
Look at the churches, the prime example of community: “I believe in the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints,” the only article in the Apostles’ Creed that needed a qualifying statement. Almost all churches are suffering, perhaps, with the exception of mega-churches, so big that community is hardly possible.
General remarks.
Looking back I have noticed that when civilizations collapse, it was generally for financial reasons. Here’s a possible scenario – evident today. Shortages of resources lead to falling wages for the common worker. The government must provide more and more services such as welfare, unemployment insurance and medical service, leading to a need for higher taxes. The increasingly impoverished workers cannot pay these taxes and this clash between needed taxes and ability to pay these taxes brings about the collapse. We already see many resource wars and revolutions, leading to deaths of workers. Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Kenya, all recent examples of desperate people. The coming financial turmoil in the USA is another symptom of decline.
There’s no way that we can save the world as it is today: not a John R. Cobb, not an Obama, not the United Nations. The world is hell-bent to destruct itself. We know our society and economy must soon change. We will not do anything seriously to prepare for that change. So it will be even more damaging when it comes.
And that’s the way it was ordained to be from the day when humanity in a paradise setting decided that going without God was the way to go.