We make it too easy on ourselves to forgive the avoidance of making difficult decisions.  We choose the status quo over the tremendous restructuring of our world and the expectations we have for society.  As Christians (and/or Jews) many of us should know better, especially in light of what Scripture tells us are GOD’s desires.  For atheists and agnostics, we do it despite the obvious rational opposition.

I was listening to a radio story about California, which is moving heavily from electricity produced by coal and natural gas and toward electricity produced by natural (greener) technologies like wind and solar.  This is good news!  Concerns arose over the less “dependable” nature of these energy producers–as long as we define “dependable” by on-demand predictability and not long-term sustainability.  Personally, I would prefer to live with a couple of brown-outs because its overcast, knowing that we’ll have electricity tomorrow.  But my Mom tells me I was good at delaying gratification when I was growing up.

The debate, which we say is about power sources, is really about something else: are we a people that must have instant gratification or are we a people that adapts and innovates?  Does sustainability take a back seat to instant comforts?

Many pundits bemoan the state of young people and the world we are living in–saying that we don’t know how to sacrifice and work hard.  As the argument goes, those of us in the Internet generations don’t know how to work and therefore are a burden (and failure) in the eyes of our parents.  And yet, it is the world that they have passed down to us that gives priority to strip-mining and devastating extraction methods to produce constant and consistent electricity from which we all benefit.

Because we all seem to want this, it means that we all need to decide to want something else: a tomorrow.

I’m reminded of an argument Theodore Hiebert makes in The Yahwist’s Landscape.  He argues that our typical understanding of humanity’s role to be good stewards of creation comes from the Priestly writer’s creation story (Genesis 1), which was written in the 500s BCE.  The earlier righter, know as the Yahwist (perhaps writing 500 years earlier), who is responsible for the creation story in Genesis 2-3, described a different responsibility.  Verse 23 says:

therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.

This image is not of steward, subduing creation, as if it is for humans to control the fate of the world.  Instead, it is the image of the farmer, charged with tilling the ground owned by someone else: GOD.

The difference in descriptions is subtle, but substantive.  The world’s resource aren’t ours to use and abuse–but to make grow responsively.  If you think about it, when the land grows week, the farmer gives it a chance to refresh before planting new seeds.  When water is needed for the land, humans don’t pretend to be gods, but we bring sufficient water to the land.

Our religious traditions are based, not on subduing the environment and bending it to our will–blowing off the tops of mountains or drilling for miles sideways under the ocean floor–but on doing enough for us and responding to the needs of the earth and people equally.

The coming energy wars will be a waste of time and life if we don’t first deal with appetite and the human need to dominate.  That is real root of the conflict.