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Aug 19, 2011

What sailing teaches us about our environment, and our faith

August 2011

"What I love about sailing is it makes you pay attention to everything in the environment around you.” So noted my friend David Kane as he worked the sails of the Able, his sturdy Stone Horse sloop.

David is an instructor at Newport’s Navy base and he’s responsible for my maiden voyage on Narragansett Bay—indeed, my first sail ever. Having finally accepted his long-standing offer to see the world from the water, I and another friend joined David on a post-card-perfect Ocean State summer afternoon. You couldn’t ask for a better first sail, even if I did ram the ship’s newly painted hull with the dingy while boarding, but that’s another story.

By the time we came ashore six hours later, the sun had set over Jamestown, the moon had risen over Fort Adams and, with much guidance, I—the clumsy land lover—had steered the Able and my friends around Gould Island and tacked a few times back and forth across the East Passage. It was the first time I saw the underside of the Newport Bridge—and we did it twice. I learned a little of how those red and green lights try to protect...

Aug 13, 2011

What's missing in Pew Research vs. the poultry industry

The Pew Environment Group and the poultry industry are in a bit of a tiff.

The debate began with Pew’s recent study of pollution from large-scale poultry producers. The summary on the Pew website notes that
“in just over 50 years, the broiler industry has been transformed from more than one million small farms spread across the country to a limited number of massive factory-style operations concentrated in 15 states,” said Karen Steuer, who directs Pew’s efforts to reform industrial animal agriculture. “This growth has harmed the environment, particularly water, because management programs for chicken waste have not kept pace with output.”
The summary then gives these statistics:
  • In less than 60 years, the number of broiler chickens raised yearly has skyrocketed 1,400 percent, from 580 million in the 1950s to nearly nine billion today
  • Over the same period, the number of producers has plummeted by 98 percent, from 1.6 million to just over 27,000 and concentrated in just 15 states.
  • The size of individual operations has grown dramatically.
...
Aug 10, 2011

The hypocrisy continues . . .

Once again, media reports on the dangers to unborn children—and the moms that carry them—dodge an important issue: Why are we so concerned about “fetal development” when so many in our culture support abortion?

Today's news from the University of California, published in the online version of Environmental Science & Technology, examines banned chemicals used in flame retardants that are turning up in pregnant women. Here’s a clip from a story in the San Francisco Chronicle:
The data, while preliminary, also found a relationship between thyroid hormone disruption in women in their second trimester of pregnancy and exposure to once-common flame retardant polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs. Most PBDEs are no longer in use today but persist in the environment.
"Maternal thyroid hormone during pregnancy plays a critical role in fetal brain development, especially during early pregnancy," said Ami Zota, postdoctoral fellow at UCSF's Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment and lead author of the study. "Even moderate disruption of thyroid hormone can have a long-lasting developmental impact on her child, including (attention deficit disorders)...
Jul 31, 2011

Biodiversity needs truth and love

There’s a new and chilling study about the failure of management techniques to protect the planet's needed biodiversity. Some of the reporting on the study is also chilling.

(If interested, the article from the Marine Ecology Progress Series is here. After the download, scroll to page 251.)

The findings suggest that in the marine world, the use of “protected areas” do not adequately protect the variety and health of species—certainly not to the extent necessary. I’ve covered the decline in biodiversity elsewhere and this new news shows that the problem is not going away.

But there’s a double threat to the story. Besides understanding and mitigating the loss of global biodiversity, we must also understand its root causes. Scientists and commentators often claim two related ones: overconsumption and overpopulation. The adjective they often use is anthropogenic, which means you and me. People are the problem, some say, because we consume too much and there’s just too many of us.

In fishnewseu.com, Dr. Peter F. Sale, one of the study's authors, says this:
"Our study shows that the international...
Jul 30, 2011

House gardens: reminders of who created beauty in the first place

If we’re to think globally and act locally, then I suppose we must be especially ecologically minded at home.

But this must mean more than using organic lawn products or reducing household toxins. We also do well in making our homes and yards reminders for all of the beauty of creation.

I was thinking of this driving home from lunch with long-time, long-unseen friends. To avoid the summer beach traffic, I took the back roads from Rhode Island’s coastal south. This brought me through rural areas that had wonderful house gardens—whether modest or elaborate, or just a few planters on the front steps. These were the gardens of mostly small, simple homes—and yet with their gardens, they looked to be nestled in Eden.

As a gardener myself, I appreciate when people say how much they enjoy passing by my yard. I’m glad that my efforts delight others. Home gardens transform communities and lift souls. They remind us of the great glory of God’s work in the world.

This takes me to an observation made after lunch by one of my...
Jul 27, 2011

Nature and relationship

“Society is absolutely dependant for its vitality and existence on its ability to bring about adequate friendships among its people,” writes the Jesuit James V. Schall in his essay “The Totality of Society.” He’s writing about the commonalities between Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas in understanding how relationships—“friendships,” as a catchall term for all loving bonds—underpins what it means to be human.

Schall takes some of the best of pagan antiquity and Western medieval thought and finds them completing each other’s sentences. We learn that the human soul is made to reach outward, to be in relationship with someone else—ultimately and perfectly, we are only fully human when in relationship with everyone else.

Schall notes elsewhere that this grand, universal vision of relationship troubled Aristotle. But for St. Thomas, with his Triune God of relation and love—in whose image all humanity was created—such a vision made absolute sense. St. Thomas wrote that “all precepts of law, especially those ordered to the neighbor, seem to be ordained to this end, that men love one another.”

But people and cultures can...

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About the Blog

Catholic Ecology posts my regular column in the Rhode Island Catholic, as well as scientific and theological commentary about the latest eco-news, both within and outside of the Catholic Church. What is contained herein is but one person's attempt to teach and defend the Church's teachings - ecological and otherwise. As such, I offer all contents of this blog for approval of the bishops of the Church. It is my hope that nothing herein will lead anyone astray from truth.