As shocking as it may seem, you're darn right on this topic. Well, at least with some of them. I heard this story on NPR a few mornings ago. I'm glad that some of our country's religious-right leaders are trying to urge the Bush administration to take a stance against global warming, even though according to the article it's none of the really powerful ones. But it's a start.
The paragraph that really sparked my interest was the quote from the letter that James Dobson and other powerful swayers of White House opinion wrote in response, saying, "Human beings come first in God's created order ... and that primacy must be given to human beings and for human betterment."
I don't get this statement at all. Don't get me wrong - I value human life, and how incredibly precious it is. But I don't think that our species is any more important in the big scope of our planet than others. What I do think is that more should be expected from human beings than from other species, that we should be held to a higher standard of caring. You would think that humans, having the most brainpower and the biggest capacity for love, (supposedly), would care more about taking care of Mother Earth and all the plants and animals who enjoy her miraculous climate and geographic beauty. But yet "human betterment", which to me translates to owning a car, and driving to and from your job without carpooling or investigating public transportation, and trying to have a bigger car or truck or SUV than your neighbor, and trying to have a bigger home than your neighbor, and trying to have so much more stuff than your neighbor that you wrecklessly throw out your old stuff without any thought of recycling ... this mentality has contributed more to the deterioration of Mother Earth than anything else. And now billions of people in India and China are beginning to crave this "human betterment".
I really can't believe that more people aren't concerned with this issue. How many species do we have to lose before it becomes important enough to fight for? How much diversification must be lost as we humans continue to try to make ourselves bigger, faster and richer, no matter what the cost to our planet? I don't care what your political, religious, ethnic or economic persuasion is - if you come around to my way of thinking and see the urgency of the situation, I'm glad to have you aboard.
2 comments:
Wow. Good rant. I totally agree with you. I'm no expert on The Bible but I think there's a passage in there that says something like "Let man hold dominion over the earth". To me that means not just that we have control over pretty much everything on earth but that we have a responsibility to take care of it as well. Unfortunately, it often seems that too many religious and otherwise very reasonable and kind individuals take it to mean that we have the right to take all we want.
Excellant blog. As you know, I agree with every word.
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