environmentalism

Patriarch Bartholomew Coddles Environmental Extremists

21 Comments

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line 388

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line 394

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line 400

– Taking care of the environment involves more than clean air, clean water, recycling and the other factors that we usually associate with responsible stewardship. It also involves ideas about the economy, human relationships, structuring communities, the meaning and value of work, the value of the unborn and aged and so forth. Every environmental program incorporates ideas about these factors even if they are not explicitly stated.

In order to think clearly about environmental care, we have to look past the surface and examine the ideas that make up any environmental program. We have to ask ourselves do the programs promote human flourishing or impede it? Are trees and animals valued at the expense of the human person? Is man a blight on the earth who should be restricted from meaningful work and prosperity, or is his role as steward of creation a blessing to it?

Below is an essay written for AOI by an anonymous author (I agreed to withhold the author’s name) that describes the ideas of presenters at Patriarch Bartholomew’s recent two-day Halki summit. I find the choice of speakers troubling. You may too. The speakers proceed from premises inimical to our Orthodox moral tradition — especially the precepts that protect human flourishing and freedom.

As always, comments are welcome.

By Anonymous

Sometimes Orthodox Christians develop a sense of inferiority when they compare themselves to the Roman Catholic Church. When we contrast the actions of the Holy See to those of the Ecumenical Patriarch before this week’s United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development it is easy to see why. The Papal delegation issued a statement putting the human race at the center of creation. The Patriarch of Constantinople however, hosted a conference praising environmentalist extremists and population control advocates.

Before Rio+20, the Vatican’s permanent observer mission to the UN issued a position paper reminding the global negotiators that, “Human beings, in fact, come first.” The papal delegation charged the world’s leaders to adopt “a way of life which respects the dignity of each human being” and promote “technologies which can help to improve its quality.” Mankind represents the crown of creation they argued, and the world’s leading economies should assure that technological progress continues to serve mankind’s well-being.

The Phanar took a different approach. It hosted a two-day conference on the island of Heybeliada, co-sponsored by Southern New Hampshire University. Its PR material referred to the “Halki Summit” as “a distinguished group of activists, scientists, journalists, business leaders, theologians, and academics” committed to inducing “healing environmental action” through “a fundamental change in values as manifested in ethics and spirituality.”

In his keynote address, His All-Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew I said, while he had “witnessed the positive changes over the last decade,” he remained “deeply frustrated with the stubborn resistance and reluctant advancement of earth-friendly policies and practices.”

The Ecumenical Patriarch, Metropolitan John Zizioulas, Archdeacon John Chryssavgis, and other clergy alternately spoke with and heard from a panel of environmentalist polemicists such as Bill McKibben, James Hansen, and Jane Goodall.

Bill McKibben author of the book, Maybe One, encouraged his readers to have, at most, one child In his book, McKibben implied our likeness to God is most reflected by our use of contraception. He wrote that mankind’s “ability to limit ourselves…makes us unique among the animals.” He went on to belittle the traditional concept of the Deity and man’s place in the created order:

And though it galls the apostles of technology, this idea of restraint comes in large measure from our religious heritage. Not the religious heritage of literalism and fundamentalism and pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die. The scientists may have drowned the miracle-working sky gods with their five-century flood of data. Copernicus and Darwin did deprive us of our exalted place in the universe…

According to McKibben, “this older, deeper, more integral religious idea” – which he traces, appropriately, to Yama, the Hindu god of death – survived:

In this long tradition, meaning counts, more than ability or achievement or accumulation. Indeed, meaning counts more than life. From this perspective, Christ’s resurrection is almost unnecessary: it is his willingness to die, to impose the deepest limit on himself for the sake of others, that matters (emphases added).

It is telling that McKibben received one of two prizes from The Nation Institute, the institutional arm of Nation magazine, in 2010. The other went to Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. Why was he elevated by the Phanar?

McKibben suffers for his beliefs – as misguided as they are. He spent days in jail for leading the demonstrations that single-handedly killed the Keystone XL Pipeline – which would have created between 20,000 and 250,000 jobs in the midst of a flatlining economy – a move the Halki Summit described as a “courageous act of ‘civil disobedience.’”

The activist discussed his courage with Dr. James Hansen, a former NASA scientist turned Chicken Little who once said global warming skeptics of “are guilty of crimes against humanity.” He suggested President Obama tax the price of gasoline to “$4/5 gallons again.”

Hansen exposed his view of mankind when he endorsed Time’s Up, by Keith Farnish, a blurb Farnish has written he never solicited. The book set a modest goal: “Getting rid of civilization.” “Industrial Civilization may have produced new and innovative ways of human disease,” Farnish wrote, “but at the expense of tens of millions of other animals each year.”

He suggested that to facilitate the creation of a world with “no cities, no paved roads, no pylons, no offices or factories” that “[n]ot having children could be a very useful strategy.”

Other speakers also shared the priorities of the Green Left.

Jane Goodall, the famed primatologist, called the Catholic Church “quite a major problem” in her quest to impose population control.

The clergy also heard from Pratrap Chatterjee, a political and economic radical who heads an organization known as “CorpWatch,” which describes itself as a project of the George Soros funded Tides Center.

Other distinguished experts included a public radio host and the former CEO of a yogurt company.

Why is the Ecumenical Patriarch shrouding an ideology that demeans the dignity of mankind? Why is he using his moral authority as chief shepherd of the New Rome to sanctify anti-life ideas?

One day we might see the Pope and the Patriarch meeting at a UN Climate Conference on opposing sides, one standing with Al Gore and Paul Ehrlich, the other waging a lonely campaign to uphold the value of human life.

Then, faithful Orthodox Christians will find themselves united with the See of Rome, if only until the close of the summit.

Christian Environmentalism that ‘Costs me Nothing’

27 Comments

By John Couretas

In his June 18 keynote address at the opening ceremony of the Halki Summit in Turkey, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew looked forward to the start of the Rio +20 United Nations Conference on Sustainability, June 20-22. He noted that attendees at his environmental gathering were “deeply frustrated with the stubborn resistance and reluctant advancement of earth-friendly policies and practices.” He called for greater sacrifice and personal responsibility (emphasis added in the quote below):

Permit us to propose that perhaps the reason for this hesitation and hindrance may lie in the fact that we are unwilling to accept personal responsibility and demonstrate personal sacrifice. In the Orthodox Christian tradition, we refer to this “missing dimension” as ascesis, which could be translated as abstinence and moderation, or – better still – simplicity and frugality. The truth is that we resist any demand for self-restraint and self-control.

[ … ]

Each of us is called to draw a distinction between what we want and what we need, or – more importantly – what the world needs. Greed and gratification reduce the world to a survival of the fittest; whereas generosity and gratitude transform the world into a community of sharing. We are invited to pursue a way of sacrifice – not a sacrifice that is cheap, but a sacrifice that is costly. As King David once said: “I will not offer to the Lord my God a sacrifice that costs me nothing.” (2 Samuel 24.24) We must be prepared to make sacrifices – material and financial – that are genuine and even painful. And in this regard, whether we like it or not, more is demanded from the rich than from the poor.

Speaking of cheap, this latest statement – in light of the actual environmental praxis of the Phanar and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America – is an exercise in cheap moralizing and empty Church-speak. For starters, the Halki Summit was held in the historic Halki Palace Hotel, “one of the oldest and finest hotels in the vicinity of the Princes’ Islands,” and which features satellite TV, mini-bar, laundry service and Jacuzzis in nine of the suites. So you can take a nice warm bubble bath while contemplating how “simplicity and frugality” will help avert a global environmental catastrophe. Then take a drink poolside and join in for some bracing conversation about how Summit attendees can “bring the global environmental discussion to a new and richer place.” Indeed.

At the same time, Bartholomew’s American church is preparing to gather in Phoenix for the 2012 Clergy Laity Congress, July 1-5. It is meeting at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa for five days. Yes, a luxury resort in the Sonoran desert in the middle of July. Abstinence? The Marriott features four acres of swimming pools. Can’t swim? The Spa’s steam, sauna and whirlpools might do the trick, or the facial and massage services which start at $330 and ratchet up to $481, for the “total indulgence” package which gets you the “Too Sexy for Your Shoes Pedicure.” Make your reservations now, presvyteres!

No wonder the Colorado River is drying up. Patricia Mulroy, a board member of the Water Research Foundation, which promotes the development of safe drinking water, told Smithsonian Magazine that people need a “fundamental, cultural attitude change about water supply in the Southwest. It’s not abundant, it’s not reliable, it’s not going to always be there.” Maybe the patriarch, who has held environmental cruises on major rivers such as the Danube and the Amazon, could hold his next summit on the Colorado. A raft would work better than a cruise ship there.

Speaking of “self restraint and self control,” recall that on his 2009 visit to the United States, the patriarch shuttled to and fro on a private jet. When he gathered with bishops and priests of the Ecumenical Throne at the Limani Restaurant in New York to toast Archbishop Demetrios, was that an example of the ascesis we’re being lectured about now? At Limani, you can get a nice cowboy ribeye for $48, or Canadian caught Halibut — steak-cut and charcoal grilled – for $35. Add Greek fries or horta for only $9.

Perhaps the patriarch can send a message to the Leadership 100 gathering in 2013 and remind the wealthy benefactors that “more is demanded from the rich.” They’re meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Palm Beach, Fla. The Ritz-Carlton is a favorite of this group (Laguna Niguel and Naples, in recent years), but they broke the mold in 2010 when they met at The Hotel del Coronado near San Diego in 2010.

Now, everyone understands why a church gathering needs a certain basic infrastructure to do its work: central heating and air conditioning, wireless Internet, refrigeration and modern sanitation, ready access to emergency medical care. But there’s a long stretch from basic necessities to the luxury spa in the desert or on the Florida beach.

The patriarch prayed at his summit in Turkey that those gathered with him, the “exceptional assembly,” would “explore ways and means to bridge the unacceptable gap between theory and practice, between ideas and life.” May his prayer be answered.

How Do We Comprehend Natural Disasters Like Earthquakes and Tsunamis?

20 Comments

This essay below that Fr. David Hudson sent along is timely. I have a small parish now which means that after the Divine Liturgy we always have a discussion about any topic that people want to talk about. Today we had the question: How do we make sense of the tsunami in Japan? It wasn’t the sermon and after the necessary caveats (“I am a priest, not a theologian,” “this is my opinion” and so forth) I laid out how I saw it.

I began with St. Paul in Romans,

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.

If the creation that is subject to bondage, that is, if the entire creation experiences the corruption that entered the world when Adam fell, and awaits a freedom that will occur when mankind returns to God, then isn’t the opposite true as well? Won’t mankind’s descent from God subject the creation to greater corruption and disorder? There is a relationship between man and the rest of creation, some mysterious (hard to know) interrelationship woven into the very fabric of God’s creation where mankind’s faithfulness or unfaithfulness to God affects everything.

I used AID’s as an example. Is AID’s a punishment from God? No, I don’t think it is. Is there a relationship between AID’s and behavior? Does creation itself contain a mechanism of sorts where moral probity and sobriety have a salutary effect on even the materiality of our bodies, or dissipation a destructive effect? Is virtue and vice related to the harmony and disharmony of nature? Yes, I think it is. The scriptures certainly indicate such, particularly the Proverbs.

If correct, you could say that these events may indeed be a judgment from God but that is a conclusion I am reluctant to draw because most people don’t see any relationship at all between virtue and creation. Or, if they do, they see it in juridical terms, that is, the tsunamis and so forth are sign of God’s unquenchable wrath. We sin, Zeus sends down lightening. The nature of the creation in other words, particularly it’s relationship to man and God, doesn’t factor into the reasoning at all. God isn’t Poseidon churning up the oceans because He is angry, but if we are not careful that is exactly how many people (including many Orthodox given their inculcation of the precepts of popular Christianity) will perceive these words to mean.

One further point although one I did not make this morning: This is a far cry from the nature as goddess ideology that informs (and organizes) much of the thinking of the environmental movement. There the creation is a kind of mysterious force, irrational, something be feared, perhaps even worshiped. When you see nature personified, when the impersonal forces are personalized, when the destructive forces of nature are posited as the Judge, when nature rather than God is revered, watch out. That approach lingers at the edges of neo-paganism.

The essay follows.

Metropolitan Teofan of Moldova and Bucovina

The earth is broken up, the earth is split asunder, the earth is violently shaken (Is 24:19).

The earth has been shaken again to its core in the Land of the Rising Sun, and has behaved violently, resulting in despair for humanity. Millions of victims of the earthquakes and overflowing waters in Asia, of the hurricanes in America, of the spread of AIDS in Africa, the floods in Romania and all Europe in recent years, and now of the merciless earthquake in Japan forces us to reflect on the causes of these disasters. What has happened, really, in the depths of the earth, on the earth, in the waters and in the atmosphere? Who is responsible for all these things?

We believe and we declare that man, assigned by God to be “priest” and servant of creation, is responsible, through his deeds, for everything that happens in nature.

Nature is the friend of man, not his enemy. However, when he seeks only his own interests, man upsets the balance established by the Creator in the environment. The consequence of this attitude lacking in peaceful and respectful communication with nature is its transformation from friend and ally to enemy. “Here in the Balkans,” said St. Nikolai Velirimovich, “something of the ancient respect for nature is still preserved. We still see the custom where the peasant makes the sign of the Cross and says ‘Lord, forgive’ when he wants to chop down a tree, mow hay, or slaughter an animal. The peoples who have declared war on nature… have brought numberless evils on themselves. The person who severs friendly relations with nature, severs them at the same time with God.”

The exploitation of nature by modern technological society is, in general, recognized as responsible for some natural disasters. What is not realized sufficiently, however, is the truth that everything which takes place in nature is an extension of what is happening in the heart of man. An attentive and responsible analysis of the history of mankind reveals the fact that holiness or sin in man affects the entire creation, influencing it for good or evil.

When man lives a clean lifestyle it brings joy and pours out blessings on the universe. When man fills his life with God, the creation in its totality is enlightened and serves man without any reservations. This is the explanation of the fact that the tree branches bend toward a saint when he passes by, and why poisons become harmless for a person with a holy life (Luke 10:19), and why animals cease to be wild in the presence of a person who has achieved inner peace. This truth, transposed to the level of an entire people or of human society in general, directly results in nature manifesting itself in a peaceful way, without convulsions.

In contrast, when sinfulness becomes widespread it extends evil into the heart of creation and this comes back on mankind, in consequence, in the form of earthquakes, floods, diseases, drought, etc. Just as nature is receptive to goodness, modesty, faithfulness and spiritual beauty in man, it is also not impassive in the face of the evil, vanity, and the luciferic claims of superiority manifested by human beings. Neither storms nor deadly lightening, nor clouds of locusts, nor merciless floods take place randomly. They are the extension of the storms, the agitation, the spiritual drought, the unbelief, and the earthquakes which take place in the souls of people and among and between people. “The earth dries up and withers,” the Prophet Isaiah warns the sinful people [of Israel], “the world languishes and withers… the earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt” (Is 24:4-6). “The earth is broken up, the earth is split asunder, the earth is violently shaken… so heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion…” (Is. 24:19-20). Living in the spirit of this biblical conception, the peasants of the Romanian village of yesteryear used to seek to discover what great sin had been committed among themselves when some plague or other came upon their fields, their animals, or themselves.

Are not the disasters which have so powerfully shaken up our human life really a reflection, a reverberation in nature of the devastating evil within us? As a reaction to everything that has happened in the wake of the floods [in Europe], the decision has been made to construct higher and stronger walls and dams, to stop, in the future, the fury of the waters. These actions are welcome and absolutely necessary. Yet are they enough? Aren’t we really applying the same logic as the people after Noah’s floods? They decided to build the Tower of Babel. In our days, just as then, no one is talking about the need to raise inner walls to stave off the fury of hatred, of division, of the disintegration of the family, and implicitly of the nation. There is no talk, or maybe a little feeble talk—as though we are ashamed—about the raising up of educational and legislative walls to protect us from the soul-destroying and body-destroying fury of sins against nature, of abortion, of pornography.

The earthquake in Japan and other disasters caused by the elements of nature are also a warning to humanity to turn their faces back to God.

Through the Church, the world is offered the possibility of inner renewal through faith in the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. The earth, the waters, the atmosphere, wait “in eager anticipation”, in the words of St. Paul the Apostle, to be “liberated from [their] bondage to decay” and to our sins (Rom. 8:19-21).

We must receive Christ God into our souls, so that He might be born in us and save us. Otherwise, who knows what disasters we will suffer in the future?

Every tender smile directed to the stricken of this world, every attitude of forgiveness for the one who has wronged us, every comfort for a ravaged elderly person, every newborn child, every prayer for “those who love us and for those who hate us,” every experience of God’s presence in our lives is transformed into blessing for us, for others, and for the entire creation.

Deprecated: str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/functions/image.php on line 116
class="post-8169 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog-archive tag-environment tag-environmentalism tag-green-patriarch tag-neo-paganism tag-new-atlantis-magazine tag-orthodox-church entry">

Enviromentalism as Religion: Doesn’t the EP get it?

2 Comments

Do you want to understand why the Ecumenical Patriarch’s coddling of environmentalism is not only wrong-headed but dangerous? First read Environmentalism as Religion in the New Atlantis magazine. Then recall that His All Holiness threw the full moral weight of his office behind of the Geneva Protocols, a crown jewel of environmental activism, during the Mississippi River Boat cruise last year.

Fortunately the UN sponsored protocols were dead on arrival when the East Anglia fraud was exposed a month later. But the Ecumenical Patriarch has yet to explain why he supported them. Why employ such a reckless political strategy that could easily boomerang and undermine an already fragile moral authority? (We tried to warn him.)

So why did he do it? And why does he persist in defending global warming as legitimate science and, even more troubling, build moral exhortations around it? Why insist on continuing the defense — the sanctification really — of the ideology?

Could it be that the plan all along was the self-investiture of the Ecumenical Patriarch as the titular head of environmentalism? Do his advisers envision a convergence between the religious dimension of the movement and the international prominence they so desire? If anyone has a better explanation, I’m all ears.
Continue reading →

Papal Environmentalism: Pro-Life and Pro-Marriage

2 Comments

Ethics and Public Policy Center | George Weigel

In his January 11 address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI continued to carve out an interesting Catholic position on ecology. The Pope insists that care for creation is a moral obligation that falls on both individuals and governments. His very invocation of “creation,” however, challenges the secular shibboleths that underwrite a lot of contemporary environmental activism.

Here is the money paragraph in the papal address to the diplomats assembled in the Sala Regia of the Apostolic Palace:

“Twenty years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the materialistic and atheistic regimes which had for several decades dominated a part of this continent, it was easy to assess the great harm which an economic system lacking any reference to the truth about man had done not only to the dignity and freedom of individuals and peoples, but to nature itself, by polluting soil, water, and air. The denial of God distorts the freedom of the human person, yet it also devastates creation. It follows that the protection of creation is not principally a response to an aesthetic need, but much more to a moral need, in as much as nature expresses a plan of love and truth which is prior to us and comes from God.”
Continue reading →

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function nuthemes_content_nav() in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/prose/archive.php:58 Stack trace: #0 /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-includes/template-loader.php(106): include() #1 /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-blog-header.php(19): require_once('/home/aoiusa/pu...') #2 /home/aoiusa/public_html/index.php(17): require('/home/aoiusa/pu...') #3 {main} thrown in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/prose/archive.php on line 58