EVERY ORGANIZATION NEEDS a mission statement and, as people of the Book, we might start with the first page to find ours. There’s some new data available, so let’s take a look at how things are going.
On a positive note, there’s the “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it” part. Which is going great! It’s never been better! We’re at 8.2 billion people now, and we’re headed for 10 billion people by 2060. We’re adding 71 million people every year. And we’ve got the subduing part under control too — a recent report showed that 95 percent of the land surface of the earth (not including Antarctica) had been altered by humans. But we’re making “progress” in Antarctica too: Just this year, scientists found that a warmer Southern Ocean — heated by our consumption of fossil fuels — was undercutting the most important glacier on the planet. So, check this one off the list — it’s possible that this is the only sentence in the entire Bible we’ve managed to make good on.
Of course, sometimes that superior performance gets in the way of other tasks also identified as important on the first page of Genesis. “And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.’ ... And God saw that it was good.” It is less good now, however: World Wildlife Fund’s “2024 Living Planet Report” found that wildlife populations have declined 73 percent in the last half-century. So, that needs improvement!
And then there’s this part: “Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth.” Vegetation is in a bit of a down period, it must be said. Another new report released in October found that carbon emissions from forest fires were up 60 percent in the last two decades. “We had to check the calculations because it’s such a big number,” said Matthew Jones, the lead author of the report in Science magazine. But numbers are numbers.
Oh, and: “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” That’s a good idea, and it’s worked well in the past, but the waters appear to be, as it were, leaving their place and going into the dry section. If you want evidence, go on YouTube and search “flooding” — do so and you can see apparently innumerable videos of cars floating down streets.
Bottom line? The stock market is up, so no need to worry.
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, is the author most recently of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!
