On Earth Day

A Message from Simon+

Dear ones,

This Thursday, April 22nd, is designated as International Earth Day. Dating back to a UNESCO conference in San Francisco in 1969, the day usually boasts a wide range of events all over the world to recognize and promote wise and sustainable environmental stewardship.

I welcome anything that helps to promote greater care of our natural world, so I’m glad that we have an international earth day. That said, I have come to a point in my life experience with all of this that rather than feeling empowered or optimistic by such efforts, I find thinking about any environmental issue these days often floods me with feelings of guilt, shame and powerlessness.

Let me give you an example: I am totally into recycling, switching off unnecessary lights and driving a hybrid vehicle. I am also pretty sure that my choosing not to use plastic straws is not going to save the planet. Okay, so, now what … ?

I am slowly, painfully and reluctantly being drawn to the conclusion that the only way to reverse the catastrophic damage being done to our living environment is to consume less. For example, the most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas production from the burning of fossil fuels is to leave them – the oil, coal and gas – in the ground. Yes, we can try to invent ingenious scientific solutions to the problem, but consuming less is a better solution than waiting for some nifty technological fix.

And here we come to the bind, the conundrum, the paradox of our lives in a highly monetized, market driven society: how can we make reasonable and compassionate decisions grounded in our moral values as Christians if in reality we have very little in the way of choice?

Well, here it is, the bind, the conundrum, the dilemma.

Let me try to illustrate what I am trying to talk about. A great deal has been written about the tons of plastic that ends up in our oceans. Pretty much everyone has heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a Texas sized collection of plastic waste “islands” floating around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In reaction to this, there has been a great deal of attention the last year or so about reducing our use of plastic straws. Here is where the dream runs into the cold shower of reality (yes, I am mixing my metaphors…). Cutting down on our use of any plastic is a good thing, so reducing our use of straws made from the stuff is a plus. That said, less than 1 percent of the plastic waste that ends up in the oceans comes from plastic straws.

It turns out that the single largest producer of plastic waste in the oceans are commercial fishing boats. For example, 86 percent of the large plastic waste in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of discarded fishing equipment, mainly nets and lines. And, FYI, plastic fishing lines take more than 600 years to break down in the environment, if they do at all. You see why I get depressed over this stuff!

So, what can I do? What possible impact can I make?

Most of the environmental issues that face us need political as well as scientific solutions. Politically, we need to create the will as well as the desire to treat our planet and the other living creatures that inhabit this world with us with a great deal more respect and concern than we currently do. Lobby your city, county, state and federal representatives.

In the meantime, and I hate to say this, but in the meantime our greatest form of leverage on such issues lie with our choices as consumers, the things that we buy or don’t buy.

Yes, we need to agree on long-term solutions that will seriously begin to address our most pressing environmental problems. This will take the political will to re-imagine some of the systems that we currently use. As we struggle, and hope and wait for this we (those of us with sufficient income to actually have any choice, which is not all of us) can absolutely decide to consume radically less that we currently do.

I, for example, will be eating little to no fish from here on out. Not just because of the huge amount of plastic waste that the fishing industry throws into the oceans every day, but also because I simply cannot trust an industry which relies on some catastrophically damaging fishing practices (bottom dredging, 45 kilometer long lines and purse nets), large number of fish and marine mammals caught and killed as “bycatch,” and the widespread use of human trafficking and slavery (particularly in some other Pacific rim national waters). Only 3 percent of the fish we consume in the US comes from American waters (either caught wild or farmed), the rest comes mainly from elsewhere.

If you want to know more, read this article from writer and activist George Monbiot. Or watch the movie Seapiracy, available on Netflix.

Consume less, love more.
—Simon+