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Instruments of idolatry: Stephen Ames asks what responses to contemporary cultural contradictions are viable today and seeks answers in the Christian traditions.

Article Excerpt
How are we to respond to the new kinds of contradictions at the core of contemporary life? The contradiction on everyone's mind today is the threat of climate change due to the rapid increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. A crucial point of scientific study is the estimated timeframe in which a substantial reduction of the CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere must take place to avoid producing hugely destructive effects early and later in this century. The next ten years are crucial for achieving the reduction needed and must be followed up with longer term reductions--a common estimate is at least a 60 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions compared to 1990 levels, by 2050. The scientific projections, which I think need to be updated, lead to the widely shared view that we are risking life as we know it on planet earth if nothing is done.

The recent ABC screening of The Climate Change Swindle again made it clear that some very large businesses have taken up this challenge. They say the science was well enough established years ago, that the only question now is how to manage the risk. They are very hopeful of achieving a clean coal technology, hoping for a high degree of continuity between our present way of life and a future where the risk is vigilantly kept at bay. They say all energy solutions are on the table, but clean coal has priority. They also see it as needed by developing nations like China and India. A recent coal industry advertisement berates the federal government for lack of investment in pursuing clean coal technology and for not raising the requirements for the pursuit and use of renewables. Neither political party mentions the problem of peak oil, nor the problem of the greenhouse timeframe, nor the problem of possibly not finding a route to clean coal.

On the other hand, there is no shortage of good proposals for reducing greenhouse gases. Tony Juniper, the Executive Director of Friends of the Earth in England, has ninety-five proposals for doing just this. They do not depend on clean coal and they include a way to reduce dependence on oil for transport, if not the large dependence on oil for many other common goods.

With his ninety-five proposals, Juniper is deliberately invoking Martin Luther and a parallel between the need for reformation of the sixteenth-century Catholic Church and the need for reformation of the way life is going on planet earth today. Juniper wants to evoke the sense that a fundamental change in our collective worldview is needed to solve the really big issues. A technological fix will not do.

Juniper says his approach is not religious, that he does not espouse eco-theology or ideology, and this may be perfectly correct at...

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