Last week’s release of the World Wildlife Fund’s latest
contribution to the well-worn genre of environmental
apocalypticism, the “Living Planet Report 2002,” met with instant
and often preemptive derision. Responding to material that was
leaked to the press, the Statistical Assessment Service’s Howard
Fienberg called the report’s gloomy contentions “tired and
unproven.”
The skeptics are probably correct, in some weird, twisted,
strictly factual sense, to object to the report’s conclusion that
we will all run out of resources, water, oxygen, and cute bunnies
— and die — by 2050, but they’re missing the point. People from
various religious traditions have long recognized that the actual
accuracy of an apocalyptic pronunciation is completely beside the
point.
To wit, generations have argued over how to interpret the book
of Revelation without actually thinking that a giant cube is going
to come smashing into earth, as detailed in the penultimate
chapter. The message to be extracted from the text must be gotten
at by looking at the historical context of intense religious
persecution. The apocalyptic encourages believers to keep the
faith, await eventual divine vindication, and not go killing any
Roman soldiers in the meantime.
Another oft-misunderstood part of the apocalyptic is the
tendency to make dire predictions and then issue new dates at such
time as the clock has run down but the world is still standing.
Thus Hal Lindsey and company can still say that the world is going
to end — really! — by 1975 or 1984 or 2000 or, let us say, 2005,
and keep a straight face and a large audience. Greens are likewise
nonplused when species don’t go extinct at the rates predicted, or
when air pollution levels haven’t yet choked us all to death. The
point of such predictions isn’t strict factual accuracy, but to
inject a tone of urgency into the message.
This moralistic feature goes back all the way to the beginning
of the environmental branch of apocalypticism. Rev. Thomas Malthus
was reacting against what he saw as the heresy of perfectionism
when he wrote his famous pamphlet. The reverend reasoned that gross
immorality and animal attraction would lead poor hot bodied youths
to continue to produce children at an irresponsible rate that would
outstrip available resources. Unrestrained sexual appetites —
today that would be “unsafe sex” — would bring society to
ruin.
Indeed, beneath the fulmination of modern apocalyptic movements
lies a truly touching message about virtue and perseverance. The
Guardian story
that broke the WWF’s study nicely parroted the green line by
admonishing us that “the only option is to cut consumption now.” We
must forsake our “extravagant lifestyles” and embrace simpler, less
materialistic lives — or else!
Some have bristled at such orders and opposed their promulgation
into law — and they have a point. After all, the establishment
clause of the First Amendment has long set the benchmark for our
government’s mostly hands-off approach to things religious. It’s
hard to see why public school teachers, for instance, are not able
to tell Johnny that he’s steeped in sin and headed for hell unless
he sees the error of his ways, but are encouraged to lecture about
parallel metaphysical beliefs about luxuriant living and phantom
environmental destruction. And it has been even more problematic
that the U.S. government subsidizes various environmental
groups.
But every generation, as Al Gore has so eloquently reminded us,
breathes new meaning into the Constitution. Now that the government
is trying to work out the details to funnel money to faith-based
charities of every sect and persuasion, it seems churlish to object
that one type of faith has long received like funding.
Indeed, at a time when we’ve learned to be tolerant of the
faiths of others, conservative skeptics have been less than
charitable in their relations with environmentalists. They have
practically rubbed their noses in the fact that resources have not
significantly ebbed, or that pollution is not the dire crisis that
many once feared, or that recycling can be counterproductive, or
that nearly every predicted catastrophe of the last 50 years has
not come to pass. The way things are going, it’s a miracle that
someone has not yet displayed a baby seal in a jar of urine.
This dismissal amounts to soft-bigotry, at best. And it’s
unfortunate because, if we have learned anything in this country in
the last couple hundred years, it’s that the religious expressions
of others, no matter how much they defy common sense or annoy the
daylights out of us, should be tolerated. To so publicly take issue
with the empirical basis on which environmentalism claims to rest
is akin to challenging the revelation at Sinai or the Immaculate
Conception.
In order to reset the delicate religious social balance that
conservative skeptics have disrupted, it may even be necessary for
the Bush administration to embark on a faith-based initiative of
its own. One modest proposal would be to make Earth Day into a paid
federal holiday on par with Christmas and the Fourth of July. Of
course, then environmentalists might complain about the extra fuel
expended visiting loved ones. But one doubts they’d refuse the time
off, and I’m sure that they would unselfishly put the money toward
only the very best of causes.
