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<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""><font face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>This
is a chilling speech, worth reading, and in my judgment, well worth
passing on. Unfortunately, it will only be heeded by those of us
who are not "believers." The ones who need to understand
it, won't...<br>
</font> <br>
<font face="Trebuchet MS">Donald R Emery
PhD</font><font face="Trebuchet MS" color="#0000FF"><i><u><br>
</u></i></font><font face="tahoma" size=2><br><br>
</font><b>On Receiving Harvard Medical School's Global Environment
Citizen Award<br><br>
<i>by Bill Moyers<br><br>
</b>On Wednesday, December 1, 2004, the Center for Health and the Global
Environment at Harvard Medical School presented its fourth annual Global
Environment Citizen Award to Bill Moyers. In presenting the award, Meryl
Streep, a member of the Center board, said, "Through resourceful,
intrepid reportage and perceptive voices from the forward edge of the
debate, Moyers has examined an environment under siege with the aim of
engaging citizens." Here is the text of his response to Ms. Streep's
presentation of the award:<br><br>
</i>I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera
whom you never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists,
and just plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how
environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply
beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's
experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.<br><br>
The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill McKibben.
He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic
heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the environment. His
bestseller<i> The End of Nature</i> carried on where Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring left off.<br><br>
Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we
journalists routinely cover - conventional, manageable programs like
budget shortfalls and pollution - may be about to convert to chaotic,
unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he
writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment,
creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is
causing the melt of the arctic to release so much freshwater into the
North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening
gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of
changes that could radically alter civilizations.<br><br>
That's one challenge we journalists face - how to tell such a story
without coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we
most want to understand what's happening, who must act on what they read
and hear.<br><br>
As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable
narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers,
there is an even harder challenge - to pierce the ideology that governs
official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my
lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in
from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in
Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a
monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that
cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite
being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When
ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they
are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike,
oblivious to the facts.<br><br>
Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior?
My favorite online environmental journalist, the ever engaging Grist,
reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that
protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent
return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, 'after the last tree
is felled, Christ will come back.'<br><br>
Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking
about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the
country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true -
one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is
accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens
went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right - the
rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in
America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series written by
the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye.
These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the
19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate
passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has
captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.<br><br>
Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George
Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to
him for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the
rest of its 'biblical lands,' legions of the anti-Christ will attack it,
triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who
have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the
rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and
transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they
will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of
boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation
that follow.<br><br>
I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've
reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West
Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they feel
called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish
settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's
why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the
Book of Revelation where four angels 'which are bound in the great river
Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man.' A war with
Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed - an
essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I
Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 - just one point below the
critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will
return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to
eternal hellfire.
(<?/bigger><?/color><?/fontfamily><a href="http://www.raptureready.com/rap2.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.raptureready.com/rap2.html</a>)<?fontfamily><?param
Arial><?color><?param
0000,0000,0000><?bigger><br><br>
So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist
to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer -
'the road to environmental apocalypse.' Read it and you will see how
millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental
destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed - even
hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse.<br><br>
As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe
lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S.
Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total - more
since the election - are backed by the religious right. Forty-five
senators and 186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent
approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy
groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of
Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis
Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100
percent with the Christian coalition was Senator Zell Miller of Georgia,
who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the senate floor:
"the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that i will send a famine
in the land.' He seemed to be relishing the thought.<br><br>
And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found
that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the
Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the
Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your
radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the
motel turn some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of
this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under
the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it,
"to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the
droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse
are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global
climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why
care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed
the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of
light crude with a word?"<br><br>
Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will
provide. One of their texts is a high school history book,<i> America's
Providential History</i>. You'll find there these words: "the
secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world
as a pie…that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece."
However, "[t]he Christian knows that the potential in God is
unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's
earth……while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians
know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of
resources to accommodate all of the people." No wonder Karl Rove
goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, "Onward
Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on
November 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful
driving force in modern American politics.<br><br>
I can see in the look on your faces just how hard it is for the
journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me
put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world
without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do
what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now,
however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked:
"What do you think of the market?" "I'm optimistic,"
he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?" And he
answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is
justified."<br><br>
I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the
Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the
natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and
to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not
that I don't want to believe that - it's just that I read the news and
connect the dots:<br><br>
I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the
environment. This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean
Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting
rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National
Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand
if actions might damage natural resources.<br><br>
That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle
tailpipe inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports
utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy
equipment.<br><br>
That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep
certain information about environmental problems secret from the
public.<br><br>
That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting
coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with
coal companies.<br><br>
That wants to open the arctic wildlife refuge to drilling and increase
drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of
undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild
land in America.<br><br>
I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental
Protection Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars - $2 million
of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council
- to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes.
These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but
instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry
were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and
children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.<br><br>
I read all this in the news.<br><br>
I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's
friends at the international policy network, which is supported by
ExxonMobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate
change is 'a myth, sea levels are not rising, scientists who believe
catastrophe is possible are 'an embarrassment.<br><br>
I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations
bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached
to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from
pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon;
a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a
rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in
California.<br><br>
I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the
computer - pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; Thomas, age 10;
Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine months. I see the future looking
back at me from those photographs and I say, 'Father, forgive us, for we
know not what we do.' And then I am stopped short by the thought: 'That's
not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future.
Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world.'<br><br>
And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are
greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to
sustain indignation at injustice?<br><br>
What has happened to our moral imagination?<br><br>
On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?"
And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it
feelingly.'"<br><br>
I see it feelingly.<br><br>
The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a
journalist, I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can
be the truth that sets us free - not only to feel but to fight for the
future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the
cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from
those photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human
health is what the ancient Israelites called 'hocma' - the science of the
heart…..the capacity to see….to feel….and then to act…as if the future
depended on you.<br><br>
Believe me, it does.</blockquote>
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<dl>
<dd><font face="Tahoma" size=2 color="#808080">Natasha Vita-More
<dl>
<dd><a href="http://www.natasha.cc/" eudora="autourl">http://www.natasha.cc</a>
</dl>
<dd>[_______________________________________________
<dl>
<dd>President, Extropy Institute
<a href="http://www.extropy.org/" eudora="autourl">http://www.extropy.org</a>
<dd>[_____________________________________________________</font><font color="#808080">
</font>
<dd><font face="Tahoma" size=2 color="#808080">Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture </font><a href="http://www.transhumanist.biz/" eudora="autourl"><font face="Tahoma" size=2 color="#C0C0C0">http://www.transhumanist.biz</a></font><font color="#C0C0C0"> </font>
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