Reading: From Collapse by Jared Diamond
Leaving out of this discussion for the moment the question of environmental problems within the First World itself, let’s just ask whether the lessons from past collapses might apply anywhere in the Third World today. First ask some ivory tower academic ecologist, who know a lot about the environment but never reads a newspaper and has no interest in politics, to name the overseas countries facing some of the worst problems of environmental stress, overpopulation, or both. The ecologist would answer: “That’s a no-brainer, it’s obvious. Your list of environmentally stresses or overpopulated countries should surely include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burundi, Haiti, Indonesia, Iraq, Madagascar, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Rwanda, the Solomon Islands, and Somalia, plus others.”
Then go ask a First World politician, who knows nothing and cares less about the environment and population problems, to name the world’s worst trouble spots: countries where state government has already been overwhelmed and has collapsed, or is now at risk of collapsing, or has been wracked by recent civil wars… The politician would answer, “That’s a no-brainer, it’s obvious. Your list of political trouble spots should surely include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burundi, Haiti, Indonesia, Iraq, Madagascar, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Rwanda, the Solomon Islands, and Somalia, plus others.”
Surprise, surprise: the two lists are very similar. The connection between the two lists is transparent: it’s the problems of the ancient Maya, Anasazi, and Easter Islanders playing out in the modern world. Today, just as in the past, countries that are environmentally stressed, overpopulated, or both become at risk of getting politically stressed, and of their governments collapsing. When people are desperate, undernourished, and without hope, they blame their governments, which they see as responsible for or unable to solve their problems. They try to emigrate at any cost. They fight each other over land. They kill each other. They start civil wars. They figure that they have nothing to lose, so they become terrorists, or they support or tolerate terrorism.
Sermon
The mystery of the enormous stone statues on the beaches of Easter Island in the South Pacific has fascinated people for centuries. What did the statues mean? Who created them? Some have suggested that Easter Island was settled by Indians from South America. Others have even speculated that the scores of statues, some weighing nearly a hundred tons, were constructed by visitors from outer space. The construction seemed far beyond the capability of the small population of half-starved islanders eking out an existence there.
The first recorded European sighting of Easter Island was on Easter Sunday, 1722. Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen named the island for the holiday, and the name stuck. Islanders paddled out to see the Dutch boat in tiny canoes no more than ten feet long. Their canoes could hold one, or at most, two people. Not only were the canoes small, but they leaked. The canoes were stitched together using small planks. The islanders had no material for use as caulking, so their canoes leaked so badly that half the time was spent bailing. How could these people have come here, to one of the most remote islands in the world, and island two weeks’ journey from the nearest land? How could a few thousand people living on the margin of subsistence move statues weighing many tons down from a rock quarry miles away? No wonder Easter Island and its massive stone statues remained a puzzle and a mystery. Well, the mystery has been solved by modern archaeology and anthropology. It turns out that what the Europeans discovered in the 18th century was the remnants of a civilization that had collapsed. When Europeans first saw Easter Island, they encountered a treeless island with no plants growing more than ten feet high.
It turns out that Easter island had been inhabited by Polynesians for nearly a thousand years. The island was once thick with forests. Over time, with growing population, the islanders cut down more and more of their forest until it was literally all gone. The destruction was so complete that all the native tree species had become extinct. The mysterious statues had been transported using rope made from tree bark and erected using timbers. The deforestation also meant that they could no longer construct sea-going canoes. Without sea-going canoes the islanders could no longer fish for porpoises and tuna, their primary sources of protein. The wild food of the forest was gone. The lack of forest caused erosion of soil, and that caused a drop in crop yields. Conflict broke out. So did cannibalism. The most inflammatory taunt that an islander could shout at an enemy was “The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth.” The population of Easter Island dropped by about 70 percent.
From our modern perspective all this seems amazing. What could they have been thinking as they cut down the last trees in the forest? How could they not see what they were doing?
A long day’s drive from us is another example of the collapse of a civilization. The Anasazi civilization that built Chaco Canyon and the settlements at Mesa Verde disappeared about 800 years ago after existing for 600 years.
The parallels with the experience on Easter Island are eerie. The story of Chaco Canyon, the largest site, is a story of a growing population gradually using up resources. Trees were cut down in the surrounding forests faster than the fragile environment could sustain. Indeed, the forests have not yet recovered to this day. Settlements moved out farther and farther from the main site, which now imported food, pottery and stone from the surrounding area. Chaco Canyon was the site of a religious and political elite that was supported by the labor of the outlying settlements. Over time agricultural irrigation practices unwittingly lowered the water table and contributed to the erosion of the soil.
The increased population in the stressed environment could not withstand the periodic droughts when they came. Warfare and cannibalism erupted. Sometime between 1150 and 1200 Chaco Canyon was abandoned and remained so until Navajo sheepherders came 600 years later. And what happened to these ancient people of Chaco Canyon? Probably many starved. Many killed each other. Some survivors fled to other settlements.
I could go on citing grim examples I have taken the book Collapse by Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond. We could look at the collapse of the Mayan civilization in what is now southern Mexico and parts of Guatemala and Honduras. Or we could look at the complete collapse of the the Norse settlements on Greenland after 400 years. These are variations on the theme of human civilizations stretching the capacity of their environment beyond what it can bear. These are also stories of civilizations that could not see what was happening or could not change to meet new challenges.
Instead let’s look at a recent disaster that we do not think of as having environmental roots. A decade ago in Rwanda nearly a million people, the vast majority of them Tutsis, were murdered in a horrific genocide. Three-quarters of all the Tutsis in Rwanda were killed. The number killed was 11 percent of the population of Rwanda—one person in nine. On top of this another two million people, mostly Hutus fleeing after the Tutsi rebel army took power, fled the country. All this was typically reported as ethnic violence between Hutus and Tutsis, an ethnic violence incited by leaders of a Hutu faction. All of this is true, but there is much more.
It is also true that Rwanda was, and still is, one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Not only was the population dense, but it was growing at a dizzying rate, doubling every 17 years. The result, in a land that still lacks modern mechanized agriculture, was a huge number of desperate people living on the edge of starvation. As families divided up their small plots, the plots became too small to support the people on them. Conflicts arose in village after village—conflicts between the poorest and those with a little more, conflicts within families over how land should be divided among too many children. Rwanda was already a powder keg when violence broke out in 1994. Sadly, the rate of population growth in Rwanda today is three percent per year—among the highest on earth. At this rate it won’t take long to reproduce the crowding that helped create the tensions that led to the genocide.
As we heard in this morning’s reading, the countries which are in an environmental crisis are most likely also in a political crisis. Rwanda is simply one grim example. And, of course, you and I cannot isolate ourselves from environmental pressures. Our world is far too interconnected. Our soldiers are in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrorism is linked to desperation. Global warming contributes to more intense hurricanes which devastate our shores.
We face a frightening array of environmental challenges today. We are destroying natural habitats including forests, wetlands, coral reefs and the ocean bottom. It is important to note that deforestation was the major factor in the collapse of Easter Island, Chaco Canyon, the Maya, the Norse in Greenland, and others. With the destruction of natural habitats comes the destruction of wild sources of food, especially fish. The destruction of wild species of animals and plants is diminishing biodiversity and upsetting delicate natural processes.
Soil is being eroded between 10 and 40 times faster than soil is being formed. Half of Iowa’s topsoil has been eroded in the last 150 years. In rural Iowa bits of unfarmed land, like churchyards, that were once level with surrounding farmland now stand like islands ten feet above the farms around them. Fossil fuels, of course, are a finite resource. All projections show coming shortages of oil and gas in coming decades.
Freshwater is also a finite resource under pressure. A billion people today lack safe drinking water. Chemicals are increasingly a risk. The recent huge chemical spill in China is just the latest example. The gases produced by modern society contribute to global warming. The human population is growing and, with so many coming into their childbearing years, will continue to grow even if the birthrate drops dramatically. More important than population growth is economic development. A person in the developed world—North America, western Europe, Japan—consumes 32 times the resources of a person in a third world country. As countries like China develop, their environmental impact will increase dramatically.
I can imagine that some of you are thinking: “Well, this is great. I come to church to hear a sermon that is spiritually uplifting and I get a lecture on environmental gloom and doom. What does any of this have to do with religion? Or spirituality?”
I’m glad you asked. How you and I face this challenge will emanate from the deepest part of our being. All of this goes to the core of what we hold sacred, to what we hold most dear in life, to what vision of life you and I will be faithful.
As is so often the case, religion is and has been part of the problem and potentially part of the solution. Part of what contributed to the collapse of Easter Island, the Anasazi in Chaco Canyon and the Norse in Greenland was their adherence to their religion. The Norse, for example, spent much of their labor hunting walruses so they could use the tusks to buy vestments and sacramental wine from Europe for their churches. Today one of the barriers to effective change is the millions of Americans who are indifferent to environmental issues because they are convinced that they will soon be whisked away to heaven in the rapture. If the world is about to end, who cares about global warming. Religions that oppose birth control unwittingly contribute to starvation and violence.
Yet there is another religious vision—a vision that is contained within a wide variety of the earth’s religious traditions. This is a vision of humanity that is not opposed to nature, not above nature, but an integral part of nature. It is a vision that imagines the earth as our common source. It is a vision that includes a moral imperative of stewardship—a view that we are responsible to care for this gift of creation and that we are obligated to pass it along. There is a religious sensibility that sees the natural world as a gift that is beautiful and wonderful. This sensibility delights in the marvels of nature, thrilling to alpine wildflowers in summer, to fresh snow in winter, to the dive of an osprey into a mountain lake, to the smell of rain.
I believe this is where we begin and where we return to draw strength: to this fundamental sense that the world is beautiful and wondrous, that it is a blessing to be alive, that we are all connected to creation and to each other. This is my kind of fundamentalism! This kind of nature-loving religious fundamentalism can open us to a new way of living.
We begin with a love for life and a love for creation.
Then, as Claudia Browne suggests in her chalice lighting this morning, we take steps in our own back yards. We make some changes in the way we live. Like all journeys, a journey to save our planet and our civilization begins with modest first steps. We begin where we are. We pay attention to mileage and emissions ratings when we purchase a car. We adjust our thermostats. We recycle. We pay attention to the food we buy and how it was grown.
The journey goes on. We join hands with others. Here at our religious home environmental concerns informed our recent remodel and addition. We have a Green Sanctuary committee that is helping us to minimize our impact here. We have a voluntary simplicity group that treats living sustainably to the level of spiritual practice.
In our communities we pay attention to things like land use, recycling, public transportation, urban planning, air quality, water quality.
And while it is important to begin where we are, this is a journey that must take us into the much wider world of national and international policy. In the long run, the collapse of our civilization is a real possibility. In the long run, the collapse of our civilization is virtually assured if we continue to pursue the short sighted madness of our present course. It is simply crazy for our government to pretend that global warming is not real. It is insanity to believe that the solution to our use of energy is to ruin wildlife preserves and to crank out more coal fired electrical plants. It is simply self destructive to continue to cut down forests around the globe.
We simply must join hands with other people who love life and love the earth—people across our state, people across this country, people across the planet. That means getting involved as citizens. It means supporting non-government organizations that are working to create a new future.
The Anasazi in the Southwest could not see nor understand the long term consequences of what they were doing until it was too late. The people of Easter Island, with no writing, no science, probably could not understand the effects of their actions until it was too late.
Our situation is different. Our understanding of our situation goes beyond what people a few centuries ago could even imagine. We understand the interconnectedness of life in ways they could only intuit.
Alas, we can also destroy our environment at a pace they could never imagine. We have chainsaws and bulldozers to help us cut down our forests; we don’t need stone tools. We can create toxic chemicals and oil spills and polluting power plants. We can choke our cities with millions of cars.
The great issue for us is whether we love life and our world enough to save it. We have the knowledge. Rwanda need not happen again. Our civilization need not collapse. We know enough to preserve it. We know enough to create a garden of Eden on earth. The real question is whether you and I and millions like us can be faithful enough to what we love.
Our civilization may collapse. Many believe it is well on its way. But it need not collapse. We know what needs to be done to preserve and enhance life. Our civilization will collapse only if we allow it.
Let us rededicate ourselves to life on earth. Let us embrace this wonderful gift. Let us pass it on to our children, our grandchildren, and to generations yet unborn.
Amen.
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