another environmental rant slamming religion....

My faithfilled buddy Jack asked if I knew any environmentalists who got rid of their cars, and I responded....



Funny you should ask... I drove cab for years, and feel like it was an environmental sin. Yes, there is always room for improvement in humanities ways. To see you come out against environmental issues surprises me. I know you are a jokester, but come on... even today the news spoke of the coming greenhouse effect.

I started out working in politics, back in the early eighties, and again in the nineties for a few months, and the last cause that I ended up working for was Citizens For A Better Environment. They did good work, stuck to the issues, etc... THey lobbied and got laws passed for the better of all. Here in chicago, the mob has been illegally dumping chemicals on the predominantly black south side for forty or fifty years; CBE helped get these spots evaluated and cleaned up.

Until humans are perfect, there will always be some who will work for the good of their own selfish self over the good of others. The present state of flux in religious beliefs has literally sent millions searching for other answers; one of the easiest is to believe in nothing but ones feelings. If we encourage people to fight over the environment by using generalities rather the specifics of case by case stuidies that we can all evaluate objectively, we will continue to perpetuate the myth that there are two sets of people--those who see the effects of pollution, and those who choose not to care for the effects of pollution unless it hits their home. We are all in the same boat on this stormy sea.

The SUV issue is one of denial. Denial funded by a few powerful few invested in oil and gas and all. And the fears of average men and women who think that they can't live in ways that don't involve the destruction of the earth. Our standard of living is killing us. We need to find ways to live in harmony with the planet, or we'll all die. That is the true situation, unfortunatly.




I don't have any illusions on this issue. We have already basically killed off all the other animals. We are so much less for this, I would die to stop the killing if there were some way to make my doing so have a real effect. I can't do much, though, and I am not going to become some radical rebel without a real cause. I think those who would take the law into their own hands are criminals. I am totally against any use of anything even remotely like that. I am like socrates, too enamoured of the workings of the state to think my rebellion is greater itself than the state.

I think this also points to one of the fundamental problems with religion, which has a big effect on how the world is reacting to environmental issues. I mean, if one believes that only human souls matter, and that some after life exists, then the world itself is dimmer for the heavenly visions. Think of the muslims and their virgins, how much denial of life they hide behind their visions of heavenly joy? I met a woman while I was out canvassing for money, a black women who was some kind of fundamentalist christian of the speaking in toungues variety, who told me that the environemnt was dying because the end of the world was coming, as prophesied in the bible. To her, this was inevitable. It isn't, unless we don't anything to stop the worsening of the greenhouse effect.

I know that religion is a tool with many uses, and that a respect for the world and others can be found in the good book, but the contradictory messages in the text make the narrator untrustworty, in my book... as untrustworthy as anyone who says they have a definitive answer.

If you would like to read more of Jack, you can find him at his blog, which is always good for a thought or two, beleive me... thank you Jack.



Jack Mercer jack@newssnipet.com