Comments on Elizaphanian
I like the list, many very effective and helpful ideas. I especially like that you included numbers 10 and 11 -- so much environmentalism is every bit as individualistic and self-absorbed as the rempant consumptionism that it combats.
One point of disagreement: #4.
I have lived in urban and rural areas. In urban/suburban settings, walking or public transport is a viable option. For those of us who live in rural areas (who often do grow our own food), they simply are not. For me to get to any store would be a 6-mile walk, one-way. For me to car-pool for my errands, would usually mean driving miles out of my way to pick someone up (assuming we run our errands to town at the same time, not likely).
Add to that things like hospital visits, funeral home visits, etc. These things are about 12 miles into town for me, and not on a schedule that I could share with anyone. Too much of the discussion about environmentalism is focused on those who live in cities.
I understand the disagreement about #4 - 3 of my 4 parishes would qualify - but I do think there is a lot of room for reducing the driving impact by sharing - and that the church has a role to play in that. I am as guilty as anyone of not living up to these, by the way, so I'm not trying to be preachy. It's just that this seems to be the way that we need to go.
Thanks for the feedback. It's a work in progress.
Why believe in belierf to beleAVE - I place no trust whatever in the geologically prostituted creatures who claim to represent us in Westminster or anywhere else, I see them as thieves. Trust is manufactured to be cheap in the false reality they engender through their centralised media their collage of top-down institutions all lumped close together to facilitate graft to represent themselves and not us.
There is no left or right no communism or capitalism no public or private just a self serving CITY and a prostraited Country-side. Who put the side in countryside - who prostitutes our dictionaries to create a false reality - who decides what we wear, who tells our councils what they must do?
Look where everythnig comes ... from and you will see that "Bill Stickers" - must be prosecuted because he is a thief! I say the £ondon Parliament is a DEN of THIEVES I accuse them!
Sam,
You appear to believe exactly the same things I do.
I am hardly more than just a nominal Xtian, but the lifestyle guidelines you are proposing appear, even to me, to represent the absolute bare minimum for someone who professes to follow Christ and apply his teachings in the modern world.
I know we are saved by faith and Paul didn't see anything wrong in eating food offered to idols (the first century equivalent of shopping in Tesco's ??)
- but anyone with any spiritual, or even cultural aesthetic sense must surely feel in their bones that the modern western lifestyle is simply not compatible with christianity. Ruskin for one would have hardly needed to take more than a sniff of our 21st century ways to immediately smell a very large rat.
Why O Why are there then so pathetically few representatives of the Chuch saying these virtually self-evident and minimally challenging things ?
I suspect there are many lapsed churchgoers like myself who have substituted the impassioned outpourings of the likes of Monbiot for the weekly sermon of past times, largely because we have become so totally disillusioned with the church above the grass-roots level.
Has the Church Militant, to say nothing of the Church Intellectual, simply ceased to exist ?
Lewis, where are you when we need you ?
I like this list, but it still bothers me that most people still don't see the connection between the problem and their own actions. I think that many Christians see environmental concerns as an 'optional extra', and not important like, for instance, evangelism. I have actually been warned about not being distracted from God, by being concerned about these issues. To me, it is part of a wholeness which all Christians should be working towards. It is a necessary ingredient in loving your neighbour as yourself.
Last year I moved to within easy walking distance of work, and got rid of the car. Living in a town centre now, I hardly miss it, but I could not have managed without it before.
A few other things to avoid: peat, tropical hardwood and non-organic cotton, the damage caused by these things is immense. Don't buy anything from companies who do not act responsibly towards the environment. Also, eat foods when they are in season, to avoid either transport or heated greenhouse fuel. They taste better too! Nobody should be eating fresh strawberries in February, any more than they should have Easter eggs in October!
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