In the remaining few years before the second millennium, the Judeo-Christian community is faced with a unique challenge and opportunity--one that could help transform human consciousness, save the planet, and restore God's creation. As God's stewards we need to elevate the human struggle from the more narrow playing field of the economy to the larger framework of the ecosystem.
For nearly 500 years, the community of faith has battled the powers and principalities on the purely secular battleground of the economy. "Economics" is a human invention; a set of rules and institutional arrangements that in the modern era has severed the human family from its deeper relationships and responsibilities to the ecosystem--God's creation. The near total economic enclosure of human life has dampened our spiritual connection to the Creator and the creation and made us less able to serve as caretakers of the Earth. The shift in prophetic perspective from the economy to the ecosystem forms the basis of a revolutionary new theological ethic for the coming century.
While most traditional social movements view the environment as a resource and relegate it to the margins of political life, a new green generation of theologians and religious activists is beginning to view the environment as the essential context that conditions and determines all economic and political activity. It is with this shared understanding of the larger biotic community that sustains our lives that Jewish and Christian activists champion the principle of environmental justice and a sustainable economy.
Environmental justice transcends the realm of economic justice and is based on the deeper principle of equal access to, and equitable sharing of, the Earth's riches. Every human being is endowed by the Creator with unimpeachable rights, among which are the rights to pure air and water, uncontaminated food, adequate clothing, shelter, and health care, and meaningful work that nurtures and sustains the ecosystem from which we draw our economic well-being.
Environmental justice can only fully be realized by a deep commitment to the rights and needs of the many other creatures who live alongside us in the larger biotic community of which we are all an integral and indispensable part. Our economy and nature's economy are inseparably linked, as are our common fortunes and fate. Justice for our species and justice for the other creatures who inhabit the biosphere are indivisible.
Environmental justice begins with the belief that a healthy economy depends on a healthy environment. Traditional economists continue to labor under the assumption that the environment operates as a semi-independent force in the world. They view the economy less as a limiting condition and more as an open-ended stock of inputs that can be harnessed with human ingenuity and innovative new technologies to create an ever expanding store of wealth. They would agree with John Locke, the Enlightenment political philosopher, who argued that "land left wholly to nature, is called...waste." Natural resources, they contend, only become valuable when transformed by humankind to create productive assets. By this way of thinking, the more efficient the economic system becomes at transforming nature's "waste" to productive wealth, the more material benefits will accrue to the advantage of every member of society.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL justice perspective begins with an entirely different premise. Everything in a state of nature is not unproductive waste, but rather a storehouse of value. Human ingenuity and technology transform that value into assets, goods, and products by extracting, collecting, and converting nature's resources. In the process, the environment itself is diminished and degraded, and waste accumulates. Even the assets, goods, and products are only temporary. Eventually they are discarded back into the environment as waste--some of which is recycled back into the Earth, the rest irretrievably lost in spent energy or entropy.
The very idea of economic "growth" is a misnomer, according to environmental justice thinking. Economics is more about borrowing than about growth. We borrow from nature's storehouse, transforming living things and inanimate material into useful products that we use for a short time before discarding them back into the natural environment.
Green economics, then, is based on borrowing from the biosphere. Being wholly dependent on nature and indebted to it, all economic activity brings with it an inherent obligation of repayment. Paying back one's debt to the biosphere means serving as a steward and caretaker of the creation, and using as little of nature's resources as absolutely necessary to lead a healthy existence. It also means sharing the Earth's bounty more equitably among our fellow human beings and the other creatures with whom we share the planet.
The depletion of the Earth's ecosystems and the deterioration of the biosphere affect the poor most of all. As resources become more scarce and expensive, the least fortunate are the first to experience the consequences of the shortfall. They are the first to be let go in the production process as environmental scarcity forces economic slowdowns. They are the hardest hit by rising prices for energy and other scarce resources. They are also least able to protect themselves against the ravages of pollution. Toxic dumps, landfills, open sewers, and contaminated drinking water are a recurrent theme in the shantytowns and urban ghettos of the world.
STILL WITH PRECIOUS few exceptions, members of the Republican and Democratic parties continue to align themselves with the "old fashioned" economics, believing in unlimited economic growth, with little understanding of, or regard for, the environment from which all wealth is generated. They continue to reason that the more productive wealth the society can generate, the more there will be to go around sometimes known as the "trickle down" theory of economics. The truth lies elsewhere. The more wealth that is generated, the fewer resources are available to provide for the needs of others--now and in the future.
Green activists prefer to recast the goal of economics from one of "unlimited growth" to one of "economic sustainability." Judeo-Christian stewards are committed to a sustainable society in which the production and consumption of goods and services are made compatible with the Earth's ability to recycle wastes and restore stocks. A sustainable economy relies on appropriate technologies and production processes that sustain, rather that drain, the ecosystems from which all economic activity is extracted.
In a sustainable economy, sufficiency replaces efficiency as the modus operandi of production, and the biosphere itself is held in trust as a commons to be stewarded by the human race. In a sustainable economy, the rights of present and future generations, the needs of all our creatures, and the health and well-being of the living Earth take precedence over the short-term whims and caprices of the marketplace and the self-interest of a privileged few. In the long run, our own generation's economic well-being can be sustained only by sustaining the well-being of the Earth itself.
Jewish and Christian activists can help redirect the energies of a new generation toward the task of restoring the creation and our covenant with the Creator. By championing the principles of environmental justice and a sustainable economy, we can begin to effectively counter the powers and principalities with a prophetic vision deeply rooted in our religious heritage.
Jeremy Rifkin and Carol Grunewald Rifkin were the authors of Voting Green (Doubleday, April 1992), from which they adapted this editorial, when this article appeared.
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