Environment

The Weekly Wrap: March 29-April 4

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The Weekly Wrap: March 29-April 4

First Authors, Now Reviewers!

Last week, I wrote about Mia Ballard’s book being pulled by Hachette when it was found to rely heavily on AI. This week, a story broke about New York Times free lance reviewer Alex Preston’s use of AI in a review of Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s Watching Over Her. It turns out, the AI inserted passages into the review from another review of the book in The Guardian. A Times reader recognized the similarity of the reviews and contacted them.

When they confronted Preston, he admitted his use of AI in the review and acknowledged the serious mistake he’d made. The New York Times has ended its relationship with Preston and linked his review to that of Christobel Kent in the Guardian. You can read more about this incident in this Guardian story.

Preston has written other articles and books and insists he has not used AI-generated text. But like any case of plagiarism, one discovered incidents taints the whole. I expect he will have a hard time publishing anything going forward.

However, as a reviewer, I understand the temptation. Sometimes I’m tired or have to fit reviews into other obligations. I suspect professional reviewers struggle with the same temptations, with paychecks at stake. AI can speed up the writing process. Preston’s failure was not properly citing his source. Instead, he represented the AI text as his own.

I do not use AI in writing, apart from a “readability” aid integrated into WordPress software. But the content comes from my interaction with the books I’m reviewing. Afterall, readers can seek AI reviews of books if they want. But I assume those who come to this page do so to learn what I thought about the book in question. If I can’t do that, it’s time to hang it up.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Tracy Kidder died last week. In “What Tracy Kidder Stood For,” Cullen Murphy reviews his career and the impact of his writing.

July 4, 2026 is the 250th birthday of the United States. Beverly Gage, in This Land is Your Land takes us on a road trip to 300 historical sites, a kind of road trip through our history. Reviewer Jennifer Szalai considers Gage’s effort in “Road-Tripping With a Historian Through America’s Past.”

So, I find almost anything Alan Jacobs writes worth a read. And so it was with “How Not to Save the Planet.” Instead of abstractions like “saving the planet,” he argues “If you learn to love a pond or a creek or a valley, then what you love others will love—and will perhaps also come to find some element of their own local environment dear to them, dear enough to conserve and protect.”

Did you know that April is National Poetry Month. Therefore, it’s a good time to do something about that floating resolution to read more poetry! And the folks at JSTOR have compiled the grand-daddy of resources in “A Reader’s Guide to Poetry for National Poetry Month.”

Finally, I discovered a real treat in “Hear Aldous Huxley Read Brave New World. Plus 84 Classic Radio Dramas from CBS Radio Workshop (1956–57).” Not only can you hear Huxley read his famous work, the Open Culture article points you to where you can hear 84 more productions from the CBS Radio Workshop, back when you could hear quality productions around the family radio before TV supplanted it.

Quote of the Week

Jane Goodall, who died just last year, was born April 3, 1934, She made an observation that both seems simple, and perhps one of the hardest things for human beings to do consistently:

“Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.”

Miscellaneous Musings

I don’t know if you knew this but we lived for nine years in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland–and loved our time there. Recently, heard of a new store opening up in a cool part of Cleveland Heights, The Checkered Bookshelf. There are a number of interesting bookstores in the city. Two on my book crawl bucket list are Loganberry Books and Zubal Books. Remember when I visited John King’s in Detroit? Zubal Books looks and sounds like that.

I’ll be reviewing George Saunders’ Vigil next week. It was an engrossing read but I found the ending both disappointing and puzzling. I wonder if any other readers of this book had that reaction?

Literary Hub ran an article that had me written all over it: “What Are the Routines of So-Called Super-Readers?” I wasn’t interviewed for the article, but the five things they found that super-readers have in common ring true. So who else out there are super-readers?

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Darrell L. Bock and Timothy D. Sprankle, Matthew

Tuesday: W. David O. Taylor and Daniel Train, eds., Naming the Spirit

Wednesday: Stuart M. Kaminsky, Not Quite Kosher

Thursday: George Saunders, Vigil

Friday: Amanda Hope Haley, Stones Still Speak

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for March 29-April 4.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

Review: Beyond Stewardship

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Cover image of "Beyond Stewardship" edited by David paul Warners and Matthew Kuperus Heun

Beyond Stewardship

Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care, edited by David Paul Warners and Matthew Kuperus Heun. Calvin Press (ISBN: 9781937555382) 2019.

Summary: Essays exploring alternative ways to define the relationship with the non-human creation beyond stewardship.

Words matter. For the Christian environmental movement, “stewardship” has been the term Christian environmentalists use to describe the human relationship with the non-human creation. More recently, questions have been raised by a newer generation of Christian environmentalists as to whether this is the best way to understand this relationship. It doesn’t reflect the full scope of biblical teaching. Stewardship implies separation from both creation and God. Also, it implies an instrumental relationship of creation existing for human use. Then the association of this term with finances implies resources owned by another, and this is too limiting of God’s relationship to creation. Finally, stewardship tends to be individualistic when the scope of challenges require acting in concert.

The editors of this essay collection lay out this argument in their introduction. The essays that follow explore how then we might think about our relation to the non-human creation. Given this enlarged understanding, what wise actions are then implied? The book is organized in three parts.

Part One: RETHINKING: Expanding Awareness

Matthew Kuperus Heun, in “Smashing Prototypes,” likens what we’ve done to creation to what it would be like as a professor to take a chainsaw or sledgehammer to his students’ engineering prototypes. We need to recognize our complicity in the damage done creation, lament, and determine to act differently. Following this, Kathi Groenendyk cautions that not only do our words matter but so does our audience. She observes that while stewardship is helpful with some audiences, like farmers and ranchers, other terms like creation-care or earthkeeping will relate better to others. Therefore, know thy audience!

Part Two: REIMAGINING: How Things Could Be

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap opens this section proposing that the idea of kinship overcomes the gap between humans and the rest of creation Jesus, in the incarnation became kin with us. kinship changes how we view things like species loss. Then Clarence W. Joldersma proposes seeing ourselves as earthlings. We are earthy beings, sharing much in common, charging us with a vast responsibility while also giving an independent moral standing to the non-human creation. Not only do we have much in common with the rest of creation, we exist in a symbiotic relationship with it according to Aminah al-Attas Bradford. Consider the microbes in our gut that aid in crucial ways in digesting food, or even mitochondria as an independent organism in every human cell.

Steven Bouma Prediger reiterates the critique of stewardship from the Introduction as both limited in scope and confusing. He makes the case for the term “earthkeeping.” He argues for it as a better reflection of the biblical charge to tend and keep in Genesis 2. Finally in this section, James R. Skillen, argues that stewardship paradigms often overlook human finiteness and fallenness, engaging in hubristic activity. Rather, he advocates the humble posture of those seeking God’s kingdom.

Part Three: REORIENTING: Hopeful Ways Forward

Debra Reinstra argues that creation care begins with knowing the names of species or inorganic things. Then we proceed to understanding their basic ecologies and enter into delight, care, and suffering with those whose names we’ve learned. Matthew C. Halteman and Megan Halteman Zwart apply the idea of kinship to human-animal relationships, especially farm animals, and how this challenged a particular student’s thinking about using animals for food. However, this new perspective also implies a new worldview of whole systems. Neglect of this combined with human arrogance contribute to environmental disasters like the Dustbowl.

Racial injustice manifests in caring for creation as well. When certain groups are disenfranchised from environmental decisions, racism flourishes and the environment does not, especially in urban spaces. Dietrich Bouma reinforces this idea, arguing against barriers that prevent some people from having their voices heard. Then Mark D. Bjelland adds urban spaces, cities, and their watersheds to what counts as creation care. He calls for placemaking and placekeeping. Finally, David Paul Warners commends the idea of recognizing that we walk through a world of gifts. He calls us to respond with reciprocity, restraint, relationship-building, and remembrance.

Conclusion

This book harks back to a similar essay collection, Earthkeeping, from the 1970’s. This book concludes with an afterword from three of the original contributors: Loren Wilkinson, Eugene Dykema, and Calvin DeWitt. It’s a wonderful generational handoff and blessing of these younger scholars’ efforts. This is followed with a rendering of several pages of No More Room, a children’s book written by three students in one of David Paul Warners’ classes. A discussion guide for each of the chapters in this book is also included in “Additional Resources.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer is an ecologist from the Native American Indigenous Peoples and has mined that worldview for its wisdom. She has captivated the imagination of many with her sense of our kinship with other creatures and plants and the sense of our interdependent mutual relationship with it. The fact that she has captured the attention of many Christians reveals the shortcomings of our own theology of creation and our relationship with it. The ideas here reflect a similarly rich way of seeing without the latent animism in Kimmerer’s writing. One hopes that the contemporary disregard for environmental matters in the American church will be a temporary lapse into environmental unconsciousness. One hopes for revival that will wake us to be on the forefront of caring for God’s creation. For now, this work offers rich resources for those who will teach and disciple when people have “ears to hear.”

Review: How to Love a Forest

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Cover image of "How to Love a Forest" by Ethan Tapper

How to Love a Forest, Ethan Tapper. Broadleaf Books (ISBN: 9798889830559) 2024.

Summary: A forester buys a piece of Vermont forest that had been mismanaged and implements restorative practices.

Ethan Tapper is a consulting forester and service forester in Vermont. He’s worked with both public and privately owned land, consulting with landowners on the best management practices. He’s had to navigate the space between commercial loggers who will log all but the diseased trees and environmentalists who want nothing to be done. The reality is that forests have been mismanaged and won’t recover on their own.

In 2017, Tapper put his money where his mouth was and bought a piece of mismanaged forest on what he named Bear Island. In much of the book, he recounts his walks through the forest and his actions to care for it. Surprisingly, he has a chainsaw in hand much of the time. He writes, “I truly understand how the cutting of a tree could be an expression of compassion and humility an act of healing, an act of love.” So, we walk with him as he cuts down diseased beech trees and sprays invasive plants. Opening up the forest to new growth. Planting oaks and maples. And hunting does to reduce the deer population that ravages the forest.

He traces the history of the land from indigenous peoples to early settlers, farmers and herders, loggers, and the coming of the construction of subdivisions. Then he goes below ground and acquaints us with the Wood Wide Web, the network of roots and microorganisms underground, working as a communicative and life-restoring system. Along the way, we observe a fallen tree and the processes of decay that bring about new life. But not all is new. We encounter wolf trees, ancient survivors of the centuries. Finally, we walk with him as he plants acorn into a patch cut.

One of the most moving chapters is his visit to a landowner after a big windstorm. The wind blew down whole stand of pines. A favorite old maple–a wolf tree–has split in two. The owner can see only devastation of forest she loved. But Tepper tries to help her envision the new life that will run riot in this place, the resilience of the forest.

Resilience and responsibility. We learn that these two go hand in hand. On one hand, forests are marvelous ecosystems. Yet human mismanagement and disease invite Tapper to exercise responsible care. Cutting, killing, pruning, and planting intelligently, working with the ways of the forest. All of these are part of Tepper’s work as a member of perhaps the ultimate keystone species. Tepper does not write from a Christian perspective. Yet he exercises the responsible dominion and care of tending and guarding this forest garden (Genesis 2:15). Instead of leaving it alone, his care enables it to flourish. Tepper expresses it in this way:

“Someday I will teach my children that this world is not ours to hold but that we hold it anyway, that each of us is a steward for one brief and precious moment in time. In our short lives, we must learn to pair power and freedom with humility, to embody responsibility and relationship, even when it breaks our heart.”

Tepper writes eloquently, expressing knowledge in the form of deep compassion for the forests of Bear Island. Not only that, we read the commitment that tends for a future he will not see. But is not this the kind of thinking we all must embrace? Thus, Tepper’s story serves as a kind of parable for us all, whether it is forest or farm or suburban lot that we love and care for.

Review: Abundance

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Cover image of "Abundance" by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Avid Reader Press (ISBN: 9781668023488) 2025.

Summary: A vision of an American future where we invent and build what’s needed and for government that enables rather than hobbles growth.

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson open this book with what seems an idyllic dream in the not too distant 2050’s. Abundant water floods the West because oceans provide desalinated water to our taps, allowing a resurgence of tapped out rivers and the greening of desert cities. Fresh food from local “skyscraper farms” and lab grown meat fill your refrigerator, allowing the re-wilding of land. Miracle drugs manufactured in space extend life. Electric transport has cleaned up the air. Work weeks have shrunk through the use of AI. Homelessness, health, and climate crises are a thing of the past.

I have to admit reading this sounded like an exercise of constructing castles in the air. The authors would disagree. They boil their contention down to this: “to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need. Our housing shortages, infrastructure woes, energy needs, and technological challenges are not insurmountable. And the answer for them is not “less is more.” Technology is an engine of incredible growth. The vision is one, not of a static, but expanding pie.

What is striking is that Klein and Thompson are two progressives, who write primarily to progressives. While critiquing conservative efforts to hobble government, their critique is far more focused on the ways progressives have hobbled growth and innovation through excessive and labyrinthine regulation. Much of it was well-intentioned to provide for safe housing, a cleaner environment, and more equitable contracting. Environmental litigation hamstrung housing growth in places like California, where it is most needed.

Perhaps the most telling example in the whole book is California’s efforts to build high speed rail, beginning in 1982. As of the writing, none of the 500 mile system is operational while costs balloon. Meanwhile, China has built more than 23,000 miles of high speed rail. The problem is not know how, with the U.S. long a leader in rail transport technology. Rather, the problem has been regulations and the protracted negotiations, environmental reviews, and lawsuits these entailed.

The issue is not that government can’t work. For example, Houston permitted more housing units than San Francisco, the Boston and New York Metro areas combined during a recent year. In Houston, the median home price was $300,000 versus $1.7 million in San Francisco. Houston has land use but no zoning rules whereas the others have layers of regulations and restrictions that make construction processes lengthier and far more expensive. Contractors build fewer housing units. And none of it is affordable.

America has led the world in innovation due to our commitments to basic research. Once again, in more recent years, research has been hamstrung by reporting requirements that stifle many of the most creative. They observed that we haven’t studied the creative process. Not only that, increasingly, we don’t build what we invent, but offshore it. The authors argue that the country that can both invent and build what it invents is destined to be an economic powerhouse.

Finally, they highlight the importance of strategic deployment, citing examples from Kennedy’s moonshot program to Trump’s operation Warp Speed, which produced a vaccine that might normally take ten years in ten months during a global health emergency. It means logical, streamlined processes and the ruthless removal of bottlenecks. They raise the question of AI development and the wisdom of allowing the innovation and implementation infrastructures to be located offshore. Is it such a good idea to contract this out to the Middle East, they ask?

On one hand, Klein and Thompson offer a trenchant critique of the failures of progressives, one of miring growth and innovation in regulative processes. Likewise, they offer a compelling vision of the possible. What I don’t find here are substantive proposals of how to go about removing the regulative barriers to growth apart from dismantling them, as the current administration seems to be doing. I also think they are optimistic about the ability of technology to save us. I find that technology is always doubled edged. The electric future they envision relies, at least in part, on battery and nuclear technology. Both of these carry significant downsides.

I also think the authors are caught in a binary of scarcity versus abundance. A third alternative that I don’t see here is one of “enough.” In a society with obscene extremes of wealth and poverty, it seems we lack a commitment that everyone would have enough–of housing, transport, health care, education, and economic opportunity. We have an abundance in our social, intellectual, and material capital for everyone to have a high standard of enough. The problem is not merely regulatory but structural and spiritual. I fear that without addressing these problems, the vision of these writers is indeed of “castles in the air.”

Review: Tending Tomorrow

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Cover image of "Tending Tomorrow" by Leah Reesor-Keller

Tending Tomorrow, Leah Reesor-Keller. Herald Press (ISBN: 9781513813356) 2024.

Summary: Facing an uncertain ecological future by drawing on one’s faith and learning from creation, to re-vision how we may live.

Many of us are convinced that our warming earth poses a threat to the flourishing of life on our planet. More deeply troubling is the awareness that our own patterns of consuming earth’s resources are a causative factor. In fact, that influence is so decided that scientists have named our epoch in global natural history the Anthropocene.

I’m a Christian who believes God loves his creation but observes a world responding inadequately to the threat. The question then arises of how then should we live into an uncertain ecological future without giving way to despair. Christians are people of hope. Leah Reesor-Keller wrestles with these questions in Tending Tomorrow. Her response to the uncertain future is to dig into the roots of her faith in five “thematic actions”: redreaming, retelling, renewing, reimagining, and rewilding.

Redreaming involves re-examining one’s religious and cultural roots and is foundational to the author’s project. It means recognizing the things worth embracing and the harmful trajectories it is time to re-direct, all with an eye toward what we would hope for the world in 2100. This leads to looking at our origin stories. The author illustrates with the story of her Mennonite family and how they settled in Canada. She learned that it was a story of colonization. A future might involve acknowledging that Indigenous presence and drawing upon Indigenous wisdom rather than dominionist theology for how one lives on the land.

Then renewing involves reflecting on how one has found hope in past challenges and suffering. One lesson in hope is that we don’t need to see all the steps to the end but just the next ones. Likewise, we nurture hope in community by continuing to show up for each other.

But the “re” word Reesor-Keller gives the greatest attention is reimagining. She begins with reimagining leadership, not as the hero leading the charge, but as an interconnected network of people. This is exemplified in the interconnected character of forests. She recognizes that the flow of power is always a reality of leadership in community. She describes her own leadership and use of Power Mapping to empower marginalized community voices. Then she turns to re-imagining accountability and repairing harm, both within the community, and in the wider Canadian culture with Indigenous people. Finally, she returns to Anabaptist roots to reimagine church communities as people movements rather than institutions.

As she concludes, Reesor-Keller meditates on re-wilding her yard and is reminded that such a project can go in a number of directions. Re-visioning the future has no singular outcome. Rather, we strive to create a flourishing space for many visions while taking the next steps we need to take.

The approach to this book was far more holistic than I expected. The author addresses our origin stories, our blind spots, marginalized people, redemptive community, as well as our care for creation. But in doing so, she shows us her understanding of what it is to be the church in the world. This both addresses our crisis of hope and vision and needs for culture change. She offers no silver bullets. But she offers a vision of how we might live into the uncertain future.

____________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Serviceberry

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Cover image of "The Serviceberry" by Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer, illustrations by John Burgoyne. Scribner (ISBN: 9781668072240) 2024.

Summary: A day of picking serviceberries leads to an extended reflection on natural abundance, reciprocity, and gratitude.

An invitation to pick serviceberries results in an extended meditation by Robin Wall Kimmerer on “abundance and reciprocity in the natural world,” in the words of her subtitle. She marvels at the abundant clusters of berries, rapidly filling her pail. This is sheer gift, both to her and the birds filling their bellies” with berries. All one can do is give thanks for this gift, and share the abundance. As she does so, she considers the web of reciprocity the berries represent. Bushes nourished by fallen leaves, birds nourished by berries. Birds spreading their seeds, spreading the bushes to new locations. Kimmerer recalls how the berries are part of the traditional Potawatomi food economy.

It’s an economy unlike the market economy that dominates most of our economic transactions. Instead, Kimmerer reflects on the gift economy her serviceberry experience represents. Specifically, it reminds her of the source of the gift and how that implies care both for the source and for the gift itself. And she considers how commoditization of gifts promotes accumulation rather than sharing, scarcity rather than abundance.

I was struck by how contrary to our individualism are the gift economies she describes. Instead of accumulating paper currency or its equivalent, the currency of gift economies is gratitude and connection. The prosperity of each is shared in the anticipation of enjoying the generosity of others. One charts, not the flow of money, but relationships. Kimmerer points to the potlatches of Pacific Northwest people as a well-known example of gift economy.

She reflects on ways gift economies function in our mixed economies. These range from free garden produce stands to Little Free Libraries (and their larger tax-supported counterparts). They include public parks and lands that we all enjoy. The latter part of the book then considers the ethic of honorable harvest in gift economies, versus the unchecked extractive nature of our commodity economies. Through a question posed by a fellow tribal member, she queries, “If the economy requires people to consume more resources than the earth can replenish, just to keep the whole thing from collapsing, isn’t it time for a new economy?”

Kimmerer is not an economist but an ecologist. But what she observes from her ecology and the wisdom of indigenous peoples, makes a case for economists to begin thinking about that new economy. What is most notable for me however is that Kimmerer’s ecology and her gift economy are full of gratitude, generosity, joy, connectedness, and wholeness. It is not an ethic of fear, guilt, or burden, or survival of the economically fittest. There is a goodness about what she describes that is perhaps the most powerful argument for devoting ourselves to learn the gift economy. G’chi megwech, Robin Wall Kimmerer!

Review: The Garden of God

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The Garden of God: Toward a Human Ecology, Pope Benedict XVI, foreword by Archbishop Jean-Louis Brugues. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2014.

Summary: A collection of Pope Benedict XVI’s statements in homilies, papal greetings, letters, and other written documents, pertaining to a theology of human ecology.

Many would consider Pope Francis to be the environmental pope, especially with the issuance of Laudato Si. This volume shows that, at least in this respect, he builds upon the theology and actions of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. Afterall, it was under Benedict that the Vatican went carbon neutral. This collection of the Pope’s writings on the environment in speeches, homilies, greetings to various governmental and international bodies, to youth and workers groups conveys a robust and far reaching ecological theology that offers distinctive contributions to our contemporary discussions.

The collection is divided three sections, and because of the “occasional” nature of these writings, many repeat similar ideas. I will discuss some of the key themes in each section.

Creation and Nature

Benedict begins with the idea of creation as the gift of a rational God, intended to be the Garden of God in which he placed human beings to enjoy and tend. From the beginning the peace and prosperity of human beings and the environment are seen to be integrally and reciprocally connected. And for our present day, we cannot hope to have peace in the world if we fail to protect the creation. Its peace is our peace. The creation was set up so that we might fulfill God’s plan for the flourishing of all his creatures, when we set ourselves up at the center and exploit the environment, we threaten our own existence. The protection of creation is also a matter of justice. Our failure to protect creation often puts at risk the poor and marginalized. Benedict celebrates the importance of everything from the Arctic to the Amazon as well as the fragile beauty of the earth as scene by space, with its vanishingly thin envelope of atmosphere on which our lives depend.

The Environment, Science, and Technology

Building on the idea of creation as the rational work of God, Benedict sees faith, knowledge, and science as in harmony. At the same time, the technological applications of science must be informed by the Church’s theology. Human ecology and environmental ecology must work together. He does not accept the pitting of humans against the natural world. The flourishing of families and societies, including the begetting of children is not at odds with seeking creation’s flourishing. Indeed, it is our task. In our time, this means moderating our consumption, turning to alternate energy sources, and ensuring the equitable access to the earth’s resources for all nations. He decries financial gains at the expense of the workers who make this possible, as well as speculative economies, that in the collapse of 2008, inflicted harm to the lives and livelihoods of the global community, as well as leading to environmental degradation.

Hunger, Poverty, and the Earth’s Resources

A number of the Pope’s messages in this section are to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He urges the adequacy of the earth’s resources to feed the world’s people without compromising biodiversity. He decries policies that denigrate the dignity of agriculture and the rural parts of the world. He upholds the farmer as a model of upholding faith and reason, acting on his knowledge of the laws of nature while trusting in the providence of God. He calls for our solidarity with all of humanity for equitable access to food and the world’s resources. He believes this leads to sustainable development.

Most of the pieces are short, sometimes excerpts of longer documents. That makes this at once a resource for thoughtful Christian reflection on caring for the creation and a resource for those studying the environmental thought and advocacy of Benedict XVI’s papacy. Benedict contributes to the conversation the conviction of the transcendent basis for our use of reason in the care of creation. He affirms the role of humans, not only in environmental degradation but also in remediating these impacts. Human beings are part of God’s plan for the world. As leader of a global church, he speaks to global leaders about their responsibilities to all of humanity, and all living things. He affirms the spiritual values that enable people to renounce excessive consumption and make changes for the sake of both fellow human beings as well as the rest of nature.

I did find relatively few references to global climate change. There are concerns regarding his encouragement of equitable sharing of resources if this only means increased consumption of carbon-based fuels and more greenhouse gas emissions as other nations “catch up.” He seems more focused on land and water resources and assumes that climate will not drastically affect food production. Perhaps because we are further down the road as I write in 2023, we see more clearly the implications of our changing climate. Yet these impacts were not unknown in the years of Benedict’s papacy. Indeed it motivated the Vatican’s move to carbon neutrality. It seems more could have been said.

Yet what the Pope said and advocated was significant and far-reaching both in geographic scope and on the aspects of human existence on which he touched. It is striking how he wove these themes into so many papal messages. It both offers models and raises questions about how well we do this throughout the church. May we do as well.

Water Security

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Several weeks back I wrote a post on food security. It was in the wake of the Intel deal to build a huge manufacturing plant in Central Ohio, insuring the security of our micro-chip supply. But there is a form of security even more fundamental than food security, and that is water security. Human beings cannot live more than three days without water. Fifty-five to sixty percent of the human body consists of water.

In addition, we depend on water to grow both plant and animal food, as a source of power, for various manufacturing processes, and for transport among many other things. That Intel plant in Ohio? It is projected to use a staggering 5 million gallons of water per day, becoming the single largest user of water in Central Ohio. Ohio’s abundant supplies of water were no doubt one of the factors in siting the plant there. But they will now have to develop the infrastructure to move that water, and a reclamation plant to recycle at least some of the water used.

It seems that water may threaten our security in at least three ways:

When there is too little of it. Climate change is rendering many parts of our world much drier, not just for a year here and there but for the long term. The reservoirs that are supplied by the Colorado River have dropped by 50 feet or more to about 25 percent of their capacities, jeopardizing power generation as well as the supply of water to Arizona, California, and Nevada. And much of that supply, up to 80 percent, is for agriculture. It’s likely that the fresh fruit and vegetables in your refrigerator were grown there. But perhaps for not much longer–a major dislocation. NASA predicts that California has only one year of water. Given the low levels of water in rivers, streams and reservoirs, efforts are being made to tap into groundwater supplies in aquifers. But these are also finite and dependent on the same rainfall and runoffs for replenishment

When there is too much of it. We heard a presentation recently of a Christian school in rural eastern Kentucky that fought to recover from a hundred year flood last year, only to endure a thousand year flood this summer, with much higher floodwaters. One of the impacts of climate change in much of the eastern United States is more intense storms with heavier rainfall totals. That school has decided to re-locate out of its location in a hundred year flood plain because the once in a hundred or thousand year events seem to be coming much more frequently. Coastal communities like Fort Myers in Florida face greater storm surge, which in combination with rising sea levels can wreak ever greater devastation. And with the melting of ice from Greenland to Antarctica, rising sea levels will make many of our coastal cities new versions of Venice.

When impurities render it unpotable or toxic over the long term. It is a major wonder of infrastructure and technology that we can turn a tap, fill a glass, and drink it. This is not the case in many parts of the world, resulting in higher infant and child death rates, and underlying digestive illnesses for many. But bacteria are not the only danger to our water. Impurities are a major threat from lead that impairs child intelligence in many cities with aging water infrastructures to toxic chemicals that escape into adjacent groundwater, or are discharged by manufacturing processes. Finally, the possibility of sabotage always exists.

Many of our problems are ones that have been long foreseen, but ignored. John Wesley Powell, armed with watershed maps testified before Congress in 1890 about the limits the water supply of the West, situated in a desert climate, would impose on development. People did not want to hear him then and most still don’t want to heed his message. But it seems to me that the question needs to be asked whether the West, particularly in even drier and hotter conditions than Powell knew of, can sustain a growing population and the water uses to which it is accustomed. Likewise, climate experts have predicted with a high degree of accuracy the intensifying climate effects contributing to flooding and coastal inundations.

It seems it is probably past time for us to think about water:

  • How will what we know determine decisions about where we live, or don’t live?
  • How will we better steward existing resources, including the capture of rainwater runoffs, often wasted?
  • How will we protect and expand the supply of potable water, including in the permitting processes for industrial activity that may endanger it?
  • How will we manage water disparities in different parts of the country without creating water wars?
  • How will we think intelligently about various industrial uses of water to avoid disruptions in production while providing for other uses? How will we handle situations where demand exceeds supply?

Many places are already wrestling with these questions. Our presence on a burgeoning and changing planet means all of us need to grow in our awareness of these realities. We no longer have the luxury of ignoring the warnings of John Wesley Powell and the host of others who have given public testimony about the challenges facing us. Every single one of us are within three days of extinction without water. That seems to me to be enough reason to care,

Review: How the World Really Works

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

How the World Really Works, Vaclav Smil. New York: Viking, 2022.

Summary: A scientific, data-based assessment of how our advanced technological global civilization has developed, the challenges we face, and what it realistically will take to address these challenges.

Can we get to “carbon zero” by 2050? Why has it been so hard to get everything from computer chips to PPE? Why didn’t the dire predictions of The Population Bomb come true? Vaclav Smil would maintain that to respond to these questions, we need to understand the science, the data, of how the world really works. And it is often the case in our public discussions, we have refused to take a hard look at the scientific realities and the technological possibilities.

Take the Population Bomb illustration for example. Back in 1968, Paul Ehrlich predicted massive deaths from famine resulting from overpopulation. At that time, the world population was 3.7 billion. Now it is over 8 billion, and no mammoth famines have occurred (yet). How could this be? It was the result of vastly increased grain yields resulting from hybrids and the intensive application of nitrogenous fertilizers manufactured with carbon-based fuels. Could we go back? Not easily–manure, the primary source of nitrogen before chemical fertilizers provides far less fertilizer, weighs far more and requires far more labor.

Or those shortages of chips and PPE. Facilitated by global supply chains, far-flung factories with lower wage scales, and container shipping, it was economically feasible to “offshore” manufacturing throughout the world. But is it wise, Smil asks, to manufacture 70 percent of rubber gloves in a single factory, or all our computer chips elsewhere? Manufacturing shutdowns and transport delays during the pandemic exposed this supply chain that all of us took for granted.

Smil challenges us to face the realities of modern life. Take our dependence on electric power. Apart from nuclear, carbon-fueled power plants offer the maximum of power-generating capability and reliability. Hydro, wind, and solar are both less efficient and reliable. And our increased energy usage offsets the gains we are making in renewables. Getting free of carbon-based power generation is not happening in places like China and India who are increasing their usage of such power.

Then there are what Smil calls “the four pillars of modern civilization”: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia. Ammonia is what feeds the world in terms of those nitrogenous fertilizers. The lightweight durability and moldability of plastic makes it widely used in everything from water bottles to airframes, yet also troublesome as it breaks down and infiltrates our water, and our bodies. The world runs on concrete in our highways and buildings, yet it also deteriorates over time as witnessed in bridge and high-rise collapses. Likewise, steel is ubiquitous in our building, various utensils, our vehicles, our tools and more. It is very recyclable. The fundamental truth we need to face is that, at present, the manufacture of all of these are massively dependent on fossil fuels. As yet, no renewable power sources exist to manufacture these.

Smil assesses our environmental challenges. These do not come in terms of oxygen, food, and water, basic constituents of life but in terms of decarbonization. He argues that none of the “zero carbon” goals even begins to wrestle with the “four pillars” of modern life, nor the challenges of electricity generation globally. This doesn’t prevent him for arguing that we must do what we can, from reducing waste in food production to converting to cleaner forms of transport and reducing energy use (such as installing triple-paned windows, and reducing meat consumption. But that won’t get us anywhere close to carbon zero and he excoriates the magical thinking of so many public pronouncements without substantive changes.

Smil includes a chapter on understanding risk, which seemed a bit of a diversion from the other subjects in the book, but also connects to his basic theme of how the world works. He illustrates that many of the risks we fear are less than the ones to which we are daily exposed–for example the risk of dying at the hands of a foreign terrorist are infinitesimal to that of dying from domestic gun violence of various sorts and that often we do not make policies on the basis of rational factors.

His final chapter deals with understanding the future, the flaws in all our future predictions (again, remember The Population Bomb). The reality is that we are navigating a space that is somewhere between apocalypse and singularity. While the future is uncertain, understanding in realistic terms our past and our present helps us recognize one thing–our actions do matter.

This is a daunting book, both in terms of technical detail and its dose of hard empirical reality–a bucket of cold water drenching our idealistic dreams of a carbon-free world. Smil does not say we shouldn’t work toward these things. Instead, I hear him saying, “Let’s get real and talk about how we are going to get there and how long it will take and what that will mean.” He resists pessimism, but also points tellingly to the lack of little more than empty promises on the global stage. He wants us to stop thinking we can evacuate to other planets. We’re not going to terraform Mars. As a scientist, he wants us to focus on how modern life in the only world we have really works.

Review: Braiding Sweetgrass

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Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013.

Summary: A collection of essays centered around the culture of sweetgrass, combining indigenous wisdom and scientific knowledge.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is an environmental biologist teaching in the SUNY system. She is also an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She has dedicated her career to the integration of scientific understanding of the environment with indigenous wisdom. The book is organized around the different aspects of sweetgrass culture: planting, tending, picking, braiding, and burning sweetgrass. The braiding of sweetgrass is a metaphor for the weaving of science and indigenous wisdom in understanding the gifts of the earth and how we give back–how humans and all living things sustain each other.

Listening to other living things, indeed all the elements of the earth and reciprocity are two themes that run through the quietly eloquent essays organized around these five aspects of sweetgrass culture. In “The Gift of Strawberries,” wild strawberries come as a gift, an early harvest, but gratitude and reciprocity involve clearing land for runners to establish new plants, resulting in an even greater gift of strawberries. Likewise with sweetgrass, which comes as a gift. One receives only what is needed, leaving half, which we learns results in sweetgrass flourishing more than if left alone. Usually some gift is left, perhaps a sprinkling of tobacco leaves. And these gifts in turn are braided, given to friends, and burned in ceremony. She reflects on the Thanksgiving address and the giving of thanks to all the living things from the Earth and the waters to the trees. In an essay titled “The Honorable Harvest” she brings together so much of this wisdom in a kind of credo:

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last.
Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.
                                                    --Kimmerer, p. 183.

She writes of becoming indigenous to a place, one with its wisdom. This reminds me of the writings of Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson who pay attention to what the land is saying and farm in harmony with what they learn.

One of the most enjoyable essays was her narrative of taking students for what she calls “shopping” in a cattail marsh–“Wal-marsh.” Materials for clothes and sleeping mats, rhizomes with carbs, stalks of pith for vegetables–even toilet paper! They learn both about the biology of a cattail marsh, and lessons about the tremendous gifts bestowed upon us. We say “thanks,” we care, and yet the earth gives us so much greater abundance.

There is so much that is attractive in what one finds her, and I think much we might all learn from this indigenous wisdom. Where I respectfully part as a Christian is with her “language of animacy,” really a form of animism that assumes a spirit or soul not only in all living things but even rock, water, cloud, and fire. What I respect is the attentive care and mindful use of all things–what I think implied in the “tending and keeping of the garden” in the early chapters of Genesis, or the knowledge of place we see in Berry and Jackson.

I am also impressed with the ways this professor integrates indigenous wisdom and science in her research and work with students. I wonder how many from other faith traditions make the effort to braid the wisdom of their faith with their research. Whether we accept everything about indigenous religion or not, I believe there is much that can be learned, and crucial wisdom in the American context for the care and renewal of the land we often have pillaged. Kimmerer has shared a gift from her own people. Will we receive it and listen and say “thank you” and share what we can in response? What could be braided together?