Beyond Denial or Despair: Eco-Justice

By Rev. Marcia Moret Sietstra

April 27, 2008 Spirit of Peace UCC

The world is an odd place. Christian Science Monitor reported last week that a quarter of the world’s people are overweight; in our country we spend $1 billion a year trying to lose weight. At the same time, we are seeing serious food shortages, even food riots around the world, from the Caribbean to SE Asia. Joseph Chamie, former head of the United Nation’s Population Division, says, “You couldn’t write any stranger fiction.” [i]

This is not a temporary event. Oh sure, we can use emergency measures to ease the food shortages that caused food riots in Haiti a few weeks ago, and caused the resignation of their prime minister. But what do we do about the price of food, which, according to the World Bank has increased by 83% in the last three years?[ii] Other experts along with Mr. Chamie predict that food shortages will get worse in coming years. The current food shortage is due to several things.

First, we’ve reached a tipping point in world population growth. I read in a newspaper article that in 2000 the population was 6 billion people and at the end of this year, it will be 7 billion. We’ve added a billion people in 8 years? I couldn’t believe it so I checked the US Census Bureau website. Their conservative estimate is that it may take a year ot two longer to add the 7^th billion.[iii] According to the Population Institute, to reach a population of 1 billion, took all of human history until approximately the year 1830. The second billion was added in 100 years; it took 30 years to add the 3^rd billion people; 15 years to add the 4^th billion, 12 years to add the 5^th billion.[iv] It took about 12 years to add the 6^th billion, and 10 or 11 years to add the 7^th billion. By 2050, when the children sitting here for children’s message are my age, estimates are that we can expect to have 9-12 billion people on this planet. The earth is under tremendous stress.

A second reason for food shortages is the growing middle class in India and China. As their population becomes more prosperous, their diet improves; they eat more meat and eggs. It takes more crops to feed the animals that become their food than it did to feed people directly with the grain crops. The middle class in China and India is also buying cars for the first time, and consuming more products generally, which increases their use of fossil fuels not only for gasoline, but fuels used in the production of the things they buy, and in the transportation required to get the products to the stores.

The third reason for food shortages is the increase in the price of oil. When oil costs go up, the costs of energy to produce everything, and to transport it to the store goes up too. And the end result is a higher price for the product, including food.

A fourth reason for food shortages is changed weather patterns caused by global warming, creating more frequent and severe droughts. There are now areas in southern Africa where corn has been the main food crop for centuries, but years of drought are turning corn into an increasingly unsustainable crop in southern Africa. People can no longer feed themselves with regional food products.

Some experts suggest there is one other reason for the current food shortage, the production of biofuels like ethanol made from corn. At a conference in early April, finance ministers and central bankers of 7 leading industrial nations met in Washington to deal with food prices. Several of them demanded that we reconsider the diversion of crops like corn to make fuel, like ethanol.[v] Using corn to make ethanol fuel has driven up the price of corn, so more farmers switched their fields to corn production, reducing other crops like soybeans. So not only is there less corn available for food, there is less soybean crop available for food. When there is less food on the market, the price of food goes up. Have you noticed that Breadsmith store is out of bread by 5 pm lately, when they have always stayed open until 7 pm? I asked why and the clerk told me the price of wheat has gone up so much that they don’t want to risk having a lot of leftover bread anymore, so they are baking less. Their leftover bread used to go to the Banquet. Now there are no leftovers, because of the price of wheat. Even here, the poor are affected in a variety of ways when grain prices go up.

The irony is this: our government is paying farmers to grow corn, paying $21 billion in farm subsidy payments. Those used to go to small farmers, now 70% of those subsidies go to huge agribusinesses.[vi] Recently I saw a video that we will be showing in Adult Forum next Sunday entitled King Corn. It explains one reason we Americans have such a weight problem today: because genetically modified corn is used in the majority of prepared foods on our grocery shelves. Corn used to have protein in it; it has been modified so now it is even more starchy and sweet, thus more easy to convert into high fructose corn syrup, used in soft drinks, chips and snack foods, but also in things one might think would be healthy like spaghetti sauce, soup, deli meat, even in some yogurt. High fructose corn syrup has no nutritional value. How crazy is this: Our government pays subsidies to huge agribusinesses to grow genetically modified corn to be turned into high fructose corn syrup which has become a leading cause of obesity in this country. Healthier foods like fruit and vegetables are not subsidized, so when we go to the grocery store junk food is cheaper than healthy food, thanks to our government subsidies. Come and see the video next week in Adult Forum.

Certainly the issues surrounding food are complex, and I do not mean to suggest that they are simple nor that I possess solutions. But I believe that as Christians, we need to be knowledgeable about these things, because the availability of food is a moral issue that we will need to be increasingly aware of as the world’s population grows and the climate changes.

But let’s get back to the food shortages that have made so much news recently. There are other implications of food shortages besides famine and food riots. Paul Collier, an Oxford University expert on global poverty, researched the connection between food shortage and civil unrest. He found that in Africa “a drought one year increases by 50 % the risk that a…country will slip into civil war the next year.”[vii] Robert Zellick, president of the World Bank, warned this month that 33 nations are at risk of social unrest because of the rising prices of food.[viii] Unless the food-shortage situation is tackled seriously, the world faces more political instability. Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, says, “Civilization is now at risk.” [ix] The age of denial is over. The planet-altering effects of climate change have begun, and the prophets of the 1970s have been proven correct. The planet is stressed.

Once again, the Bible proves eerily prophetic as well. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans that the whole creation has been groaning,” and he looked forward to the creation being set free from its bondage to decay as human beings were freed to follow their true calling. I think he spoke in figurative language about creation. Yet, when I read that text recently, it occurred to me how true it is today, that when human beings are restored to their true destiny as caretakers of God’s creation, nature will share in some release from its bondage to terrible stress.

The writers of the Psalms remind us that the earth belongs to God—we have no right to destroy it. Christians are called to love our neighbor as ourselves; we now know that means we need to live in harmony with the planet. We are called to be responsible for our neighbor; this will require practicing justice and mercy toward the world’s poor, who are already suffering disproportionately the effects of climate change. It is a sad irony that people in undeveloped parts of Africa, who contribute the least carbon emissions that damage the atmosphere, are the ones already suffering the most devastating effects of drought caused by carbon in the atmosphere. It is industrialized countries like the U.S. that account for about 80% of that carbon buildup in the atmosphere.

Religious leaders are saying that we must change our lifestyle, not just to be nice or even just to save our own hides, but because we are guilty of contributing to the suffering of people around the globe. Our consumptive lifestyle is using too much fossil fuel, and spewing out a disproportionate amount of carbon emissions. Ecology may prove to be the greatest moral challenge of the 21^st century.

I will confess that I have done little more than recycle and buy a hybrid car. Many of us have despaired, saying that personal reduction in energy use is only a drop in the bucket, so shouldn’t politicians take care of this problem by passing tough environmental laws on big corporations where it will make a big impact? Waiting for politicians does not seem to be working. Churches are uniquely positioned to start a movement that can inspire people of conscience to make changes, both at a personal level and a corporate level. Anne Lamont says, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don’t give up.” We need to stop giving in to despair, first because Christians are people of hope, and second because our children deserve better than what we are leaving for them on this planet.

Where do we begin? First, you can assess your lifestyle. I invited one of the guys in our sound booth, Marlin, to take a quiz at a website you can find at www.myfootprint.org, which Ed & Marlin will put up on the screen right now. This 3-minute quiz evaluates your lifestyle and estimates how much land it takes to maintain your consumptive lifestyle and to absorb your wastes. This is called your carbon footprint. It ask questions such as #3 How many people live in your household? #9 Enter the number of miles you travel per year for each mode of transportation (automobiles, bus, rail, air travel). Air travel hurt Marlin’s score because he flies often for work, and flying is a huge contributor to carbon in the atmosphere and thus to global warming. #10 Which energy saving features and habits you have in your home. Marlin did pretty well here. #13 measures Marlin’s food footprint, including the area of land needed to grow crops, graze animals and absorb carbon emissions from food processing and transport. You get the ides.

We are going to skip the rest of the questions and go to Marlin’s quiz results: If everyone on the planet lived Marlin’s lifestyle, we would need 9.92 planets to sustain life. Now, granted, his job accounts for a lot of air travel that pushed his numbers up, but I took the quiz too, and I fly only for vacations and continuing education. My lifestyle, if everyone practiced it, would require 7 planets to support.

Obviously I need to do a lot more than recycle. One simple thing we can do is to buy local food that hasn’t been trucked 1500 miles to get to our grocery store, which is the average distance our food travels to get to the store, again using fuel. [x] That means a return to primarily eating food that is in season. Barbara Kingsolver and her family did this for a full year; you can read about it in her excellent book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. They each chose one food that wasn’t local; hers was coffee.

Something we can do is shop less, which will not only reduce driving to the store, but will reduce the energy used to put those items on the store shelves. The less we buy, the fewer products that need to be manufactured and transported. Experts tell us that Americans need to transition from a lifestyle based on acquisition and consumption to one based on more thrift and discipline in how we treat nature. If enough of us do this, it will become embarrassing to waste energy and a matter of pride to cut back, as people’s moral consciences become sensitive to the environmental effects of having so much.

Realistically, how much good can we do in a world in which the glaciers are already melting, the sea is already warmer, and climate patterns are already altered? Some estimates say lifestyle changes can reduce carbon emissions by 25%, and if we can turn this into a matter of conscience, politicians will have to address it on a larger scale. Truly, we must, because there is no longer any doubt about it: our lifestyles are hurting other people, especially the poor who are already suffering the effects of global warming, and our lifestyles are going to hurt our grandchildren in devastating ways if we don’t change the way we live.

The term for this is eco-justice. You will hear a lot about it in the years ahead. It connects social justice with ecology, using nature responsibly. Justice now includes ecology. To unalterably damage God’s creation is not a moral option; it is neither fair to our neighbors around the world, nor is it merciful toward future generations. We can no longer be in denial. Neither should we be in despair; because Christians believe in a God of hope, and because there’s too much to do.