Flourishing

The following is cross-posted from John Terrill’s blog, Apprentice Place. John is Associate Director of InterVarsity’s Following Christ 2008 conference and Director of Seattle Pacific University’s Center for Integrity in Business. Read more about John here.

I’ve become increasingly concerned about the well being of our planet. I wish I could say I’ve been a long-term champion of environmental stewardship, but in reality I am a recent convert. My own journey of earth care coincides with my deepening faith journey, as well as the pinch I feel in my pocketbook every time I pull into my neighborhood fuel station.

A couple of months ago I read a fascinating article in WIRED Magazine (June 2008), entitled Screw Organic. The graphics and the title caught my attention. In this piece, the authors offer ten counter-intuitive illustrations of how best to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses. In their own words, “The war on greenhouse gasses is too important to be left to the environmentalists.” Here are several of their conclusions:

Live in Cities: Urban living is gentler on the planet. “A Manhattanite’s carbon footprint is 30% smaller than the average American’s.”
Organics Are Not the Answer: “A single organically raised cow puts out 16 percent more greenhouse gasses than its counterpart.”
Farm the Forests: “Over its lifetime, a tree shifts from being a vacuum cleaner for atmospheric carbon to an emitter.”
Carbon Trading Doesn’t Work: Despite all the attention, the Kyoto carbon reduction projects will only slow the increase in greenhouse gasses by 6.5 days by 2012.
And my personal favorite, Used Cars, Not Hybrids: “Pound for pound, making a Prius contributes more carbon to the atmosphere than making a Hummer, largely because of the nickel in the hybrid’s battery.”
This last one hit close to home, when just a few days ago my aunt called to ask me advice on whether or not she should buy a new hybrid Toyota Highlander. The non-hybrid Highlander gets 18 mpg in the city and 24 on the highway. The hybrid gets 27 city and 25 highway, only a slight advantage over the non-hybrid, yet it demands a long waiting period and a $10K premium. Since at least half her miles are driven on the highway, I told her that if she remains sold on this manufactuer and make it was a “no brainer” from my perspective . Given her years of projected ownership, she’d be a better environmental steward and save some money to boot by going with the non-hybrid. From my back of the envelope calculations, she’d be more green by doing the non-green thing. As we continued to talk, I pulled out the above-referenced article and began to quote some of the author’s claims.

“If the new Prius were placed head-to-head with a used car, would the Prius win? Don’t bet on it. Making a Prius consumes 113 million Btus, according to sustainability engineer Pablo Päster. A single gallon of gas costs about 113,000 Btus, so Toyota’s green wonder guzzles the equivalent of 1,000 gallons before it clocks its first mile. A used car, on the other hand, starts with a significant advantage: the first owner has already paid off its carbon debt. Buy a decade-old Toyota Tercel, which gets a respectable 35 mpg, and the Prius will have to drive 100,000 miles to catch up.”

I am a novice when it comes to really understanding these important tradeoffs, but as a person trained in business and a Christian concerned with the flourishing of our planet and the well-being of others, I am determined to pay attention. One place where this conversation will take place in earnest is InterVarsity’s Following Christ 2008 Conference. The theme of the Conference is human flourishing, which certainly includes the care for creation on which human well-being closely depends. One of the interdisciplinary tracks at the Conference will be God’s Green Kingdom, directed by Resource Economist, Dr. Lowell “Rusty” Pritchard. The track will challenge Christians to think holistically and biblically about issues of globalization, architecture, zoology, conservation, climate change, and everything in between. It will be a mix of teaching and discussion with field reports from people working at the growing edge of creation care, environmentalism, and sustainability. I don’t know if they’ll talk about the advantages and disadvantages of hybrids, but I do know that they’ll provide important frameworks and case studies to make wise and faithful choices for God’s creation.

I want to be a better environmental steward, making choices that are guided by what is actually best, not just what conventional wisdom suggests. I commend the Evangelical Environmental Network and Creation Care Magazine to you, as well as the God’s Green Kingdom track at Following Christ 2008. Care of Creation is another great organization and resource. They’re three good places to get started on the path of understanding.

I’m really excited about the three interdisciplinary tracks that are part of FC08. Of the three, I am especially intrigued by God’s Green Kingdom, chaired by Dr. Rusty Pritchard. The Christian community is becoming increasingly aware of our responsibility for creation care. Groups like Evangelicals for Social Action and the Evangelical Environmental Network have led the way in this.

For a long time talk of conservation, hybrids, and simple living was the domain of hippies and liberals. Now the evangelical church is maturing in our theology of creation.

Counselors often tell us that we change only when the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of change. With the price of oil going through the roof and Americans seriously addicted to automobiles, especially big automobiles, the pain of staying the same is intensifying.

And it seems that our way of living is in the process of changing at a fundamental levels. I’m not talking simply turning off the A/C in your F-350 and rolling down the windows. I’m talking profound changes in the way he travel, where we work and where we live.

Rod Dreher of Crunchy Con has an interesting post pointing this out. Read it here. He links to several articles indicating that America is on the verge of a serious economic earthquake. Especially interesting is a web-tool that allows the user to calculate the real cost of living in the suburbs by factoring in the cost of travel (i.e., premium gas for your Suburban). Makes me glad that I live in a little cottage three miles from downtown.

A couple of hours ago I was writing a tweet about almost being hit by a Toyota Langcruiser (the irony) while riding my bike through a parking lot when I noticed one by FC08. Check it out here. It’s a friday afternoon and I’ve got a couple of things to tie up before calling it a day, so it seemed like a perfect time to follow that URL down an electronic rabbit trail.

It led me to Cooling Creation, a site dedicated to offering concrete actions we can all do to lower our impact on the environment. Just click on the appropriate box and you’ll be guided through a series of options you can take to reducing your carbon footprint: drive fewer miles; ride a bike more; buy an energy efficient fridge; kill your SUV. The site then emails them to you so that you don’t conveniently forget later on when you need a cup of coffee from Starbucks and the 95 degree temperature makes $4/gal gas seem reasonable, if it means you can stay in air-conditioning a little longer.

It also gives you the option of making a tax-deductible contribution of $99 to essentially offset the cost of your carbon usage. I’m not really sure what this actually means so before I even think about whipping out the old Visa checkcard, I’m going to do some research.

I’m willing to drive less, ride my bike more, and even to get a smaller car (if I can afford it), but despite my concern for the environment I’m not quite at the place where I can give some random website $99 to atone for my carbon usage, even the carbon usage coming from my use of a print Bible. I’m serious.