There’s a good piece over at Grist today about what role green consumerism and generally playing to people’s self-interest has in environmentalism. There are indeed numerous attempts to make “green” lifestyles cool, so that environmentally-sound products on the market become the norm, and without “sacrificing” people’s desire for technology, style, etc. (This is in fact the explicit aim of sites such as Treehugger.) But I think David Roberts makes some really good points about why notions of ’self-interest’ are more complicated than many people want to believe; that, in fact, businesses (both green businesses and those who have yet to declare themselves eco-friendly) have a vested interest in the public believing that their self-interest is always equivalent with greater convenience or greater luxury. I think his final points are worth quoting here:
“One of the things progressives need to do is contest this understanding of self-interest. We need to remind people that a good life includes healthy social ties, free time, good food, honest labor, commitment to something larger than yourself. Freeing yourself from all hardship won’t make you a good person or a happy person.
That’s the central obstacle. I have no objection to short-term tactical considerations, appealing to people’s base interests. But we should never stop trying to convince people that they’ve been lied to about what they are and what they can be. The ties of place and family and community are not annoyances to be escaped when finances permit. They are the very stuff of being human.”
I agree heartily with Roberts (despite my regular frustration with the term ‘progressive’). Depth in environmentalism or any social movement will come from a deeper understanding of what it means to be human, and from taking this understanding into how we live together as human beings, rather than from cheapening one another’s actions and motives by seeing them as fueled predominately by material self-interest.
Switching gears a little, it occurred to me that this argument (that environmentalism should focus on people expanding themselves, rather than reducing people to self-interest) should be a key attraction to environmentalism for Christians (and adherents of many other religions as well). As a Christian, one is supposed to know that one’s self-interest is not always the bottom line, and that in fact, Christians are called to sacrifice their personal desires, sometimes for the greater good, but sometimes also because it is good for us. This comes out frequently in some of the letters by Paul, who does not shy away from suffering brought about by his work in his cause, but sees it as ultimately good for himself. (Not to mention the rather clear picture of suffering-for-greater-good in the life of Jesus himself.) It is good for people wanting to become more Christ-like to deny themselves material luxuries and conveniences, not as self-punishment or to achieve some purely ascetic state, but because it is a way to grow and to gain a sense of what is actually important. I think that this is one of the parts of most religions that makes the most sense to me; they understand truly that happiness and a depth of living come not from the alleged contrived happinesses of the world, but quite frequently, from that which would be seen as sacrifice by the world. For something to have soul, to have depth, it must require more from us than our immediate, surface self-interest. God requires more from us; other people require more from us; just perhaps, a true appreciation of the gift of God’s creation requires, and should rightly require, more from us. Christians should understand that properly handling a gift from God will most likely require work and giving on their part.
There are an increasing number of people of faith who are responding to precisely this, as well as to the more general notion of actually caring for creation, rather than just using it. A large number of these groups are multi-religious or interfaith; Faith in Place is one such group here in Chicago, who partners with religious congregations to help them both as congregations and as individuals become to live more sustainably.
On the other hand, there are also such interfaith groups who, while responding to environmental concerns, reject the notion that general human sacrifice in response to the earth might be appropriate. (By ‘human sacrifice’ I really mean just that humans should be as concerned about giving to the earth and caring for it as we should be about taking from it; that we must go beyond ourselves, and not be concerned merely with ourselves.) The Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship is the main group that comes to mind here. They take a somewhat defensive stance against those who have criticized Christianity for its contribution to environmental degradation (for such a critique, see Lynn White’s The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis) and argue for a very particular view of stewardship, which mainly seems to be using environmental resources for further technological advance. While stewardship may be defined as using your resources to the good of others (assuming technological advance is equivalent with the good of others), you have to take care of those resources in the first place in order for them to be available for others. I think some of their ideas truly derive from good intentions – such as making sure that the poor around the world have equal access to advances in medicine – but otherwise they seem fairly misinformed, and more dedicated to specific economic and techno-scientific ideologies than to the spirit of any religion. For instance, they claim that the 20th century has brought about general improvements in environmental quality. That at the end of the 20th century more people than ever are living in cities with dubious air quality seems to escape their attention. Notice also two of the listed ‘aspirations’ in the council’s chief document, the Cornwall Declaration:
6. We aspire to a world in which widespread economic freedom–which is integral to private, market economies–makes sound ecological stewardship available to ever greater numbers.
7. We aspire to a world in which advancements in agriculture, industry, and commerce not only minimize pollution and transform most waste products into efficiently used resources but also improve the material conditions of life for people everywhere.
I didn’t realize that private, market economies were an essential part of Judeo-Christian belief. Basing our environmental actions on our own technological advancement also seems a bit more like dependence on our own strength rather than reliance on God, which definitely contradicts a large number of Biblical teachings.
To tie this in with what I was talking about above, the ICES’ approach to environmental responsibility seems to be predicated on ideas about material self-interest, and thus fails to bring what could be the more distinctive contribution from our religious traditions: a sense of true reliance on God as God provides through the natural world; an understanding that technological or material abundance is not always the best thing for us; and that, in fact, personal sacrifice to care for creation might bring greater joy, greater understanding of God’s provision, and even a greater ability to provide for others around us.
It seems to me that people of faith should be attracted by those features of environmentalism that include ideas similar to these (such as the points made above by Roberts), and that they may also be uniquely suited to helping keep them part of the greater environmental discourse. I hope that this proves true, and that we continue to see more groups like Faith in Place or the Interfaith Climate Change Network, and perhaps fewer groups like the Interfaith Council, who seem to have chiefly economic, not environmental, concerns in mind.
