thos Virtue’s Prince

Courtesy, War and the Environment

 

Badi' Blog reader Lynnea offered the following comments on yesterday's essay about environmentalism.

 

Hello John,

"I'm somewhere in the middle of David Suzuki and Holly Dressel's "Good News For a Change".  In it they talk about wildlife corridors and the Adirondak Park.  Somewhere in there is a description of how a park 'corridor' has been created from somewhere in the States (can't remember where) up and into Quebec. There has been a slow but steady increase in the tree variety and the wildlife variety in this area. Including the carnivores, which are crucial for keeping the balance of everything else. This park took some doing, but wildlife people all along the way were persistent and, once the people in the path of this corridor saw what was happening as good, won support and more. I had to buy it - as you say in today's essay (April 14th), it gets pretty discouraging and I found it wonderful to hear what is really working."

 

We vacation in the Adirondaks, and last year drove up to Quebec on our way home. It is indeed beautiful land, very natural. If these corridors are so good for the environment, why not build tunnels and bridges every few miles down every road so that the animals will have a chance to walk over or under the road? Plants too would have a better chance to spread. Sure, it would be expensive, but the decline and collapse of the ecosystem is more costly. The loss of honeybees alone is threatening to destroy much of our food supply.

 

George Monbiot's Latest

 

If you care about the environment, stop eating meat, or at least eat less of it, and less often. This is the conclusion of George Monbiot's latest column, "The Pleasures of the Flesh." He advises that if you care about hunger in the world, just eat less meat. He points out the roots of what he calls the "food recession," a price spiral of staples that has already hit 37 nations. He recognizes that his big bugbear, biofuels, is a relatively small part of the problem, compared to eating meat. Bad as it is to redirect perfectly good farmland from peoples' mouths to our cars' gas tanks, beef eating is worse.

 

"While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars, 760m tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals. This could cover the global food deficit 14 times." (George Monbiot, The Guardian, 15th April 2008 http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/04/15/the-pleasures-of-the-flesh/)

 

He concludes that the reason we do not feel this crisis is that our own store shelves are better stocked than ever. So the choice to eat is just one more choice among others. "It is hard to understand how two such different food economies could occupy the same planet, until you realise that they feed off each other." In other words, it is one planet, one human race, so justice demands that we make it one food economy as well.

 

"In the lack of judgment great harm arises, but one vote cast can set right a house." (Aeschylus)

 

The Cost of Ignoring Courtesy

 

I was impressed, if that is the word, maybe appalled, by Paul Wells' column in Macleans Magazine (April 14, 2008, p. 13) called "A Lesson from France: Rudeness Hurts." This article reports on (and indulges in) uncivil language and the rise of rudeness. Great invisible damage to the economy is being done by the decline in civility among prominent people, Wells points out.

 

He notes that in France a certain public official was commissioned to make a study on spending and report on his findings. Unfortunately, rather than introduce his ideas gently, he openly declared that another prominent person "would fit right in to a republic of imbeciles" and called a former prime minister a "disaster in government." Other decision makers, under attack, understandably reacted unfavourably and scuttled his entire mission. Unfortunately, Wells rather smugly compares French incivility to our Canadian reflex to be polite -- he does not seem to be aware of the many studies that have found that like the English, we have gone from one of the most courteous to the least courteous of all nations in less than a generation. Wells own conclusion backs this up, showing how abusive language on the part of national politicians destroyed a dialog with the province of Ontario.

 

"...For two months the Harper government has wanted to start a debate over the Ontario government's tax rates. They did it with personal attacks on the character of Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and caricatures of McGuinty on the Conservative party website. Harper and his finance minister, Jim Flaherty, were amazed when their antics cost them politically. But it should have: they were rude, and over time rudeness hurts an economy too." http://www.macleans.ca/canada/opinions/article.jsp?content=20080402_57390_57390

 

No doubt our general failure to respond to climate change is partly attributable to the victory of rudeness over courtesy in public life. The prince of virtues has been dethroned, since, as you know, Baha'u'llah called courtesy the "prince of virtues." He also called it a "binding command" of God; He even prayed that He Himself might attain to it. (Tablets, 88) If we could obey God's law in this respect alone, I am sure that we would be all be richer and have a purer, more beautiful environment.

 

Our lack of courtesy might also explain why the military is able to gain so much financial support, while peace activities are starved for funds. Even when the threat of the Cold War disappeared, constructive use of public funds never gained the favour it deserved. In an atmosphere of anger and suspicion, it just seems to make more sense to spend on defence and killing than frivolous things like, well, love and niceness.

 A Canadian environmentalist is coming to speak in Dunnville this week; looking over his website, I noted this, written ten years ago in his newsletter, which underlines this point,

 

"(A comparative) study of the environment industry and the military industry (said that) one of the key rules of the market economy is to concentrate resources on growth industries and on industries that can contribute to the well being of the economy. The $400 billion a year environment industry is growing while the arms industry and the cold war is in decline. Yet a new study finds that more resources are being thrown by governments at promoting arms sales than promoting environmental sales"

 

This entire existence is not an exercise in dianoktic, it is a moral exam. The Qu'ran said it all:

 

"That which is on earth we have made but as a glittering show for the earth, in order that We may test them - as to which of them are best in conduct. Verily what is on earth we shall make but as dust and dry soil (without growth or herbage)." (Qur'an 18:7-8, Yusuf Ali)