Earth Day is upon us again. No doubt there will be creative marches of protest and hope, a multitude of speeches throughout the city and schools, and most certainly, platitudes pontificated by pious politicians concerned — as only politicians can be concerned — about the common good of our country.
In other words, Earth Day will be another weary worn-out day of frantic energy and very little effectiveness. The week will be full of events but nothing of any significance. My pessimism comes from a presupposition: There is no alternative.
We are far past the hope that our individual consumer choices, like changing our lightbulbs, recycling and buying a Prius, will make a healing impact on the impending death of our life-support systems. We have beaten up and raped our Mother Earth too savagely to assume that we can, like a raging alcoholic dad, sober up and make penance. The truth is, we will continue to consume, and our consumption will be predicated upon the necessity for fossil-fuel extraction of the earth’s resources. Having dominated the earth, we will now go on pillaging, plundering and seizing until our coveting runs its course in war, genocide and extermination.
There is no alternative in a world where all have become capitalists without conscience. There are no viable mass-based political or spiritual institutions that offer a counter-culture. Like the consumers we’ve been trained to be, all we are capable of is bursts of outrage and protest but nothing sustainable, nor anything that requires any real personal, societal or cultural sacrifice. Indeed, the Earth Day movement is still primarily made up of middle-class, white folk who, for the most part, still drive to the rallies, still fly to the conferences, still shop in corporations, still vacation far from home, still vote for one of the two capitalist parties and still invest in so called free markets. All of that must be dismantled, renounced and repented from, if the earth is to have its Sabbath from predators.
All of it.
But that won’t happen. We are not strong enough — neither as individual consumers, nor as capitalist citizens. We are not strong enough to defeat neo-liberal economics or the neo-conservative militarism that has created a culture of corruption complete with hollowed-out institutions. We are not strong enough, wise enough or organized enough. We are only capable of good thoughts, positive thinking and optimistic intentions, not knowing that we live in a time of demons who feed on such weakness. As Rome burns, we will fiddle until the earth itself, in one final gasp of self-defense, vomits us off the land, or at least vomits off billions of us, leaving only a remnant to survive so that life can evolve differently.
Indeed, the only word to say this Earth Day is “repent” because Judgment Day is at hand. But who has ears to hear such a word as that?
Rev. Rich Lang is Pastor of University Temple United Methodist Church and can be contacted through [email protected].