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    Earthcare: Towards an environmental theology
    Earthcare: Towards an environmental theology
    Earthcare: Towards an environmental theology
    Ebook124 pages1 hour

    Earthcare: Towards an environmental theology

    By Chris Park

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    About this ebook

    This book explores the links between spirituality and environmental problems, and it outlines the basis for a Christian theology of nature and environment. It should appeal to anyone interested in the causes and solutions of environmental problems.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChris Park
    Release dateApr 25, 2012
    ISBN9781476238500
    Earthcare: Towards an environmental theology
    Author

    Chris Park

    I am a retired academic with more than 30 years experience in university teaching, research and senior management in the UK. These days I enjoy spending time reading, writing, walking and travelling, but not all at the same time!

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      Book preview

      Earthcare - Chris Park

      EARTHCARE

      Towards an environmental theology

      Chris Park

      EARTHCARE Towards an environmental theology

      Chris Park

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2012 Chris Park

      This ebook is an updated version of the book Caring for Creation which was first published in print format by Harper Collins in 1991. It is dedicated to my wife, best friend and travel companion Penny, who brought the sunshine back.

      Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com. Thank you for your support.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      CHAPTER 1. ENVIRONMENT IN CRISIS

      CHAPTER 2. ATTITUDES AND ETHICS

      CHAPTER 3. FRAMING ENVIRONMENT: WORLD-VIEWS

      CHAPTER 4. ENVIRONMENT AND SPIRITUALITY

      CHAPTER 5. CHRISTIANITY IN THE DOCK

      CHAPTER 6. SAINTS AND SETTLERS

      CHAPTER 7. TOWARDS A THEOLOGY OF NATURE

      CHAPTER 8. A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE

      REFERENCES

      CHAPTER 1

      ENVIRONMENT IN CRISIS

      Since the start of the new millennium barely a day passes without a story about the environment appearing as big news. Sometimes it takes the form of a good news story, such as the successful conservation of an endangered species, or the clean-up of an area of contaminated land. More often than not, however, the environment provides bad news stories – serious pollution incidents, loss of important habitats, decline in the number and spread of species, emergence of new forms of environmental risk.

      We start by looking at some of the more pressing environmental problems, review the historic context, look at the claims of the optimists and pessimists, and consider what’s new about the environmental problems that challenge us today.

      Environmental problems

      There is overwhelming evidence that we are destroying the very environment on which our health, livelihood and survival depend. The list of problems is long and getting longer.

      Among the most widespread problems are air pollution, changing habitat and population pressure. Some simple illustrations will suffice here. Useful internet sources of up-to-date information on the state of the environment include the World Resources Institute (http://www.wri.org) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (http://www.unep.org).

      Air pollution, mainly by invisible gases, is produced mainly from factories, houses, power stations and vehicle exhausts. This material can be blown by the wind over vast areas, and can damage human health as well as wildlife. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) global warming caused by greenhouse gas pollution has caused average temperature around the world to rise by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) since 1880, with further rises ahead that are likely to cause sea-level rise and more intense storms. On a local scale, an estimated 625 million people worldwide live in areas (mainly industrial cities) where the air is unhealthy.

      Another serious environmental problem today is the continued destruction of tropical rainforests and woodlands. These are being cleared at a rate of around 110,000 km² a year: four-fifths of the forest area is cleared for farming and the rest is selectively logged. Although the tropical forests cover only about 6% of the world's land surface, they are an essential part of our life-support system. They help to regulate climate, protect soils from erosion, and provide habitats for millions of species of plants and animals (up to nine-tenths of all the species of wildlife on earth live in the tropical forests). Beyond the tropics, many species of plants and animals are under threat because of their natural habitats are being destroyed. Other wildlife is threatened by excessive hunting and trapping for trade, especially species which are rare and endangered, like rhinos and African elephants.

      Population pressure is another critical part of the equation: there are simply too many people expecting too much of the earth's environment and resources, and the numbers continue to grow. World population doubled between 1950 and 1987, reaching 5,000 million. Rapid growth continues: the United Nations expect it to reach 7 billion by 2011, with nine-tenths of the growth concentrated in the developing world. It is not just the total number of people that matters, it is their distribution, especially in relation to access to resources. The 26 per cent of the world's population who live in the developed world consume 80 per cent of the commercially produced energy, up to 86 per cent of the metals and up to 34 per cent of the food. Little wonder serious inequalities exist in health, wealth and quality of life between developed and developing countries.

      Historic context

      Whilst scientists have written a great deal about the environmental crisis in recent years, there is nothing new about the idea that people are damaging their environment. There is abundant evidence from earlier periods of human history that people have exploited or mismanaged their environment. For example, forest clearance is a traditional form of land management which has been carried out throughout the settled world for at least the last 4,000 years. Forests have been felled in present-day Sahara and Arabia since 5,000 BC, in China since 2,000 BC and in the United States since about 1800 AD.

      Human activities have caused the extinction of wildlife through the millennia. For example, many large American mammals (including mammoths and many species of horses) became extinct towards the close of the last Ice Age, possibly because early Americans used fire drives to encourage whole herds of big game over cliffs for hunting.

      Air pollution is not new, either. Appalling conditions in 17th century London are described by John Evelyn in his 1661 book called Fumifugium, or the Smoake of London Dissipated - ... whilst these chimneys) are belching forth their sooty jaws, the city of London resembles the face rather of Mount Etna ... or the suburbs of hell, than an assembly of rational creatures, and the Imperial seat of our Incomparable Monarch.

      In his 1974 book Topophilia American geographer Yi-Fu Tuan argued that people have always known food shortages and famines, but they usually confronted them as present realities in this or that place, not as a world-wide catastrophe yet to come. The global scale and the future tense are thus new.

      Optimists and pessimists

      The journalists' maxim that bad news is good news applies well to much writing about the environment, and there is no shortage of gloomy pessimists eager to explain just how nigh the end of the world now is!

      Some of the self-styled prophets of ecological doom have relied on shaky quasi-scientific arguments, whilst others are simply plain old sentimentalists who prefer a rustic past to a high-tech present.

      There have been plenty of scare stories before - the early 1970s in particular was an era of gloom and doom environmental writing. For example, in 1974 a group of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote a book called Limits to Growth, in which they predicted what might happen in the future if recent trends (in pollution, resource use, population increase and so on) were allowed to continue unchecked. They forecast a point within the 21st century when serious shortages of natural resources will lead to falling industrial growth, limited food supplies and a marked drop in the human population caused by pollution, famine, disease and stress.

      Critics of this pessimism school, and there are plenty, point out that despite such bleak forecasts of impending doom we are still here! Just how sound is the argument? ask the optimists, who insist that the prophets of doom invariably expect the worst to happen. The optimists argue that the pessimists always seem to blow the issue out of all proportion and overstate the case, often using incomplete or inaccurate data.

      This debate between positive-thinkers (the optimists) and negative-thinkers (the pessimists) is more than just academic, because recently the pessimists' case has been attracting most of the attention in the media. This is one reason for the rise of popular interest in environmental issues ... it reflects fear in the future survival of the earth and its life-support systems. But is this fear justified?

      Many people are convinced that there is plenty of good news to indicate that things are improving, and they conclude that talk about an environmental crisis is indefensible scare-mongering. Certainly there are encouraging signs. Many industries, for example, are investing heavily in efforts to develop and introduce new production technologies, choose alternative materials, and treat wastes so as to reduce if not eliminate harmful effects to people and environment.

      Demands for the introduction and enforcement of tougher standards of pollution control continue to rise, and campaigning groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace are raising awareness and mobilising citizen concern for the environment.

      A wide range of economic and political measures are being introduced in different countries to encourage the use of environmentally-sound technologies and the adoption of environmentally-friendly lifestyles.

      Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit there has been widespread interest in sustainable development as a way of trying to reconcile the conflicting demands of economic development and environmental protection, and bridging the needs of the present and the future.

      What’s new?

      Many people ask Is the situation really as critical as some people are saying it is? There are problems, of course, but is it really a crisis?

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