In my last post, I shared some thoughts on the biblical mandate for faith ecological stewardship. But for someone who has simply not thought much about environmental responsibility, where do we begin?

Here are five small steps toward a more ecologically sound lifestyle:

1. REDUCE. "Paper or Plastic?" Neither! Start carrying cloth bags to the grocery store instead of having the cashier bag your items in paper or plastic. This is one way to reduce your post-consumer waste (and how many of those flimsy plastic bags are actually reusable, anyway? They usually come home with holes in the bottom!) Plus, some stores offer a small discount for bringing your own bags.

2. REUSE. OK, so say you forget the cloth bags every now and then, and you end up with a "bag of bags" in your kitchen pantry. Find other ways to use them! For example, I use them to pick up after my dog (a must when you are a dog-owner in an urban setting!), line my kitchen and bathroom trash cans, and carry lunch to work. I know a woman who uses them as shower caps, and another friend makes bags from those plastic shopping bags. Get creative!

continue reading

I've heard from several people recently mortifying accounts of Christians not only neglecting environmental concerns, but actually attacking other Christians for speaking out in favor of making environmentalism a priority.

A truly God-centered worldview demands responsible stewardship of the earth's resources. Consider the following reasons:

Reason #1 - God created the earth and everything else, (Genesis 1-2). That's reason enough to respect creation and treat it with care.

Reason #2 - God entrusted responsibility for its care to humanity (Genesis 1-2)

continue reading

There are a lot of great reasons to live in Southern California. There's the weather, the beach, Disneyland. What's not to love? Well, for one, those unsettling earthquakes we get every once in a while. And we just had one. Not a big one (certainly not the Big One), but enough of a quake to get your eyes wide open and your mind racing.

According to the United States Geological Survey, the earthquake we had just before noon on Tuesday was somewhere between 5.4 and 5.6 on the good old Richter Scale, and the epicenter was about 40 miles from the Conversantlife.com office. (Okay, so our location didn't factor into the reporting, but I thougfht you would want to know, seeing as how you are concerned for our well being and all.)

continue reading

So I'm walking through Trader Joe's in Huntington Beach with my favorite uncle, who happens to work at a Trader Joe's in Chicago. He's retired from teaching and decided to work a few hours a week at a place he really loves. If you aren't familiar wtih Trader Joe's, it's as much a cultural phenomenon as it is a grocery store. There are 300 hundred of them, mostly in the West and East Coasts, yet each one feels like a neighborhood Mom and Pop shop filled with uniquely branded food, funky signs, and friendly staff members who seem to actually enjoy their jobs. And then there are the customers, who for the most part appear to be college-educated-Birkenstock-wearing-eat-healthy-care-for-the-planet kind of people who are fiercely loyal to their favorite grocery store.

continue reading

When I first arrived in Africa more than 20 years ago, most everything I bought in the grocery store came in a can or a paper bag. Very few items in those days were packaged in plastic.

The great thing about the canned goods was that the can itself was reusable by local people. Tins were washed and smashed or cut and shaped into new, useful items. Small oil-burning lamps were made from these. Boxes that resembled little suitcases were created for storage.

Paper bags were used again, too. In many a smoky hut hot pots were lifted off the fire with the aid of a folded bag in place of a fancy oven mitt. Lists were written on second-hand bags, math problems were scratched down and solved and fires were started all with the assistance of already-used paper bags.

continue reading

We’ve got some strange weather going on right now in Southern California. It’s raining, the wind is blowing, and yesterday there were tornados in Riverside County. One person died as a result. No life is inconsequential, but there’s no comparison between the problems and inconveniences we’re having and the horrific aftermath of the natural disasters that occurred in Myanmar and China, where the combined loss of life is expected to top 100,000.

When you read reports or watch video about the misery that people endure in the wake of these trajedies, you can’t help but feel a sense of helplessness. You can contribute and maybe even volunteer to help the victims, but there’s no assurance that such holocausts of nature will not occur again. In fact, you know it’s only a matter of time before another hurricane hits or an earthquake strikes. And you wonder: Can we trust this life-giving sphere that is usually so good to us? It all seems rather capricious, especially when those who are least able to handle the terrestrial blast of wind, flood, and fire—the poor and the disadvantaged—are often hit the hardest.

continue reading

The Long Emergency is a book about the end of cheap oil. It was published way back in 2005 when gas was cheap; you know - like, $55 a barrel. It's fascinating to read the Rolling Stone review of the book, an article that's now about 3 years old, because the opening paragraphs of the review chasten America for being in hard-core denial about the slow, yet inevitable drying up of this resource. In the subsequent three years, our thrist for oil has only increased as a nation. Throw in the rest of the world, and the increase has become exponential. People in the know are now talking about $200 a barrel.

What does this mean? It's important for us to realize that oil is used for more than just fuel for cars. Food, technology, medicine, military, education... name an industry that doesn't have utter dependence on cheap oil built into its infrastructure. Even 'alternative energy' elements such as wind, solar, or nuclear power, are all dependent on oil for the their manufacture and production. The statistics presently rolling in all point in the same direction - we've passed the peak production of oil, so that major indicators foresee a diminishing supply, year on year, for the foreseeable future.

Demand, on the other hand, continues to rise. Some of this is because India and China have grown wealthy through industrialization. Some of this, though, is because our heads are stuck, deeply stuck, in the proverbial sand (or perhaps oil tar). We're talking about building bigger bridges across Lake Washington here in Seattle. And Los Angeles? Well, don't even get me started. We're boasting about cars that get 30 miles to the gallon. We're thinking about the future as if agriculture, transportation and everything else will require, at best, 'a little bit of conservation', as if "Bike to Work Day" will addres the issue. It reminds me a bit of the church's tendency to forget about the 2nd coming of Christ, operating forever on the principle that tomorrow will be the same as today.

We need to, at the very least, consider the possibility that the oil keg, the beverage of choice at the industrialized world's party, is over half empty, and draining quickly. If this view is even a possibility, then we need to think about what it might mean for our world, because Jeremiah 29 invites God's people to work for the blessing of the world in which they live. What attitudes should we nurture in a world running out of cheap energy?

continue reading

Sure. You might find some points with which you disagree when you watch this (it takes 20 minutes to watch). But I hope you'll watch it with an open mind and consider the possibility that, in fact, the way we're living is unsustainable, and that as those charged to care for the earth, we who follow Christ should be at the forefront of both generous care for those most effected and marginalized by the the global consumer economy, and at the forefront of addressing the systemic changes that are needed to care for both the earth and one another.

That Bush has set a deadline of 2025 for 'halting the increase' of carbon emissions; that he's offered no specific, mandated way of doing so, and that he's making the entire goal voluntary, are revelatory of our president's failure to adequately see and address the realities of just how broken the system is. Most newspapers, conservative or liberal, have decried the proposal as lacking.

As the stimulas checks are in the mail, it's clear to that present administration and the economic powers that be see 'more of the same' as the best solution to our dismal economic situation: WE NEED TO BUY MORE STUFF. That this course of action requires deeper pilaging of the earth's resources on the front, and deeper piles of polluting waste on the back end, and the vaste use of petrolium resources in-between in order to produce, transport, sell, and use the stuff, (thus pushing oil prices through the roof and raising the cost of food for all, but especially for the poorest of the poor), is either not seen becauses of the blindness of this administration, or IS seen and is being pursued anyway. EITHER WAY is sad, but I pray that it's the former, because ignorance is a lesser crime than volitional oppression.

continue reading

I’ve been reading Slow Food: The Case for Taste, by Carlo Petrini, the Italian founder of the slow food movement.

 What is slow food, you might ask? I’m still working that out, but without much trouble, you can tell from the name that it’s a reaction to “fast food”. In fact, it’s a reaction to the globalization of the food market, the “flattening” of taste, and the increasingly prevalent loss of regional cuisine, especially, apparently, in Italy.

Slow food advocates call for organic, locally-grown food, and for making food and eating it purposefully, preferably around a communal table with one’s friends, family, and neighbors. Essentially, it’s a call to move away from mindless refueling at the local fast-food joint (or even convenient eatery) and a return to eating healthy food.

For the Christian, this easily relates to our understanding that all we have is from God, that every meal is a gift from Him (even the least liturgical among us, those who would never observe fixed-hour prayer, still offer thanks before our meals), that we are not to take anything for granted – least of all, the food we may have – and that we are to fellowship with those God puts around us, which often involves food.

My mom had started researching healthy foods and changing our diet when my brother was born, because he spent the first few years of his life in and out of hospitals, and Mom knew instinctively that injecting him full of drugs wouldn’t be a productive way to live life.  Most of the trendy food and health movements now – filtered water, organic produce, hormone-free dairy products, green tea, "medicating" with herbs, free-range chicken and grass-fed beef, gluten-free food, crazy Dr. Bronner’s soap, salads all the time – were things we did fifteen years ago, when people told Mom she was crazy, negligent, and probably unChristian for feeding us this way. Apparently, she was just about ten years ahead of the marketing folks.

Though I felt weird then, I’m glad now that she did the footwork to feed us well.  We never had much in the way of money, so we grew a lot of our food, and when we lived out in rural upstate New York, we had laying hens and had our own fertile, free-range eggs, though we never ate the chickens (my Dad and brother just couldn’t bring themselves to chop their heads off). We also belonged to the local food co-op. Many hours of my life were spent with Mom at the co-op, working off our four-hour-a-week commitment in order to get cheaper, healthier food.  

So, I was delighted when Tom and I finally decided to join the local food co-op in our Brooklyn neighborhood last fall. This is a much bigger operation than our little place in Albany. There are about fifteen thousand members, and each member works about three hours a month to maintain membership, which allows one to shop at the store. Only members can shop, and all members have to work side by side, whether they're affluent bankers and lawyers from the nice neighorhoods or more blue-collar workers who've been in Brooklyn for generations.

continue reading