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Foundational Tremors

2015; Wiley; Volume: 104; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/irom.12077

1758-6631

Kathleen Stone,

Climate Change and Geoengineering

International Review of MissionVolume 104, Issue 1 p. 69-82 Original ArticleFree Access Foundational Tremors Gender, Power, and Climate Justice Kathleen Stone, Kathleen StoneSearch for more papers by this author Kathleen Stone, Kathleen StoneSearch for more papers by this author First published: 20 April 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/irom.12077Citations: 1AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Understanding climate justice through the lens of gender and power must be founded in at least six hundred years of history. The subject and the way we address it pry at the deepest psychological and spiritual, political and social foundations of how we've been led to think about progress and development. We've hoped that the industrialized model of development would be the panacea of human, social, and economic progress, but it is deeply flawed. The model of development we've inherited intentionally created powerful trajectories of economic, social, and political inequalities1 between nations and peoples, races and genders, inequalities that are woven into its foundations. Simultaneously, it created a trajectory in which the whole of the ecosystem – ecosystems that have supported communities of human beings for thousands of years – are now threatened. Five thousand years ago, Isaiah proclaimed to the Israelites, whose lifestyles were threatening that community, that each day was a day of ultimate choice: "God has put before us both evil and good. Therefore, choose this day whom (what) you will serve." In this day and age, to do what is good for the world around us will mean making new foundations from which we can make genuinely healthy choices for ourselves and our relationships with our neighbours. Those choices will create the foundations for the survival of our children and grandchildren. And it is those choices that will heal a history that privileged some while it oppressed others. It is those choices that can construct the truly beloved2 community. For those who have been privileged by the system as it is, these choices can seem like sacrificial work. But if we do the right kind of work, our spirits will thrive. We will finally live with the responsibility God gave us to care for the earth and its people. This responsibility can heal our hearts and relationships because it will address the deep structural economic, political, and social injustices faced by so many of the world's people and creatures. And, if we do this with the intention and the impact that is needed, we will allow the ecological balance to restore itself3 – and this is the ecological balance needed for our children and grandchildren to thrive. This is the basis of real joy, a well-lived life, and love. Sandy foundations "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell – and great was its fall!" Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes. (Matt. 7:24–26) I had an overpowering visceral response when I first saw the oil sands in Alberta, Canada – where I was participating in the Poverty, Wealth and Ecology hearings of the World Council of Churches (WCC). My stomach tensed, my head hurt, my heart pounded, my mind whirled, my womb cramped. We looked up at a four-story high dump truck, said to be capable of holding three hundred hippopotami (according to Suncor Energy's "talking point" that day). We stood in the garage of Suncor Energy, just one of many oil companies that had been granted a lease on land from the Canadian government in northern Alberta for the sake of oil extraction. Suncor owned many of these trucks. Each of them operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This engineering marvel of a truck excavated the "overburden." An "overburden" is the term for what the oil company calls the boreal wetlands, under which the oil sands lie. For oil to come from the tar sands, the rich ecosystem, the "overburden" that has been present for millions of years, needs to be scraped down; wiped clean of trees and undergrowth, ponds, marshes. Then, the next twenty to forty meters of sand and clay is removed and then the oil sands are excavated. The thick oily sand is processed with extreme heat to separate the sand from the oil. Not an animal or plant survives in the areas in which this excavation happens. Pipe after pipe surrounds the moonscape, and smokestacks reign like castles. Large tailing ponds full of chemical waste from the intense separation of the oil "tar" from the soil hold a toxic greenish-blue-grey-black stew. These tailing ponds are so poisonous that a rhythmical cannon shot keeps wild geese from landing upon them because they would die instantaneously. Wetlands and hills, ancient rocks, butterflies, birds, deer, moose, mice, running streams, beavers, and the rich, mineral-laden loam of these ancient wetlands are systematically and methodologically dug up and removed so that the industrialized world we are accustomed to and which is said to be in our best interest can run unabated. This extraction process in the Athabascan boreal wetlands is increasing in intensity every month.4 It was while looking up at this four-story-high dump truck that I asked the questions I had asked before but now knew I could not escape: Could my industrial, energy-laden US middle-class lifestyle be even remotely worth this absolute destruction of entire ecosystems and the communities of mammals, fish, plants, fruits, insects, and downstream humans that depend on this particular ecosystem? Was this natural world only valued for its usefulness by whoever can purchase and "develop" (exploit) it? Where are the limits? Where does greed start? We've defined poverty, but how do we begin to define greed? The statistics about the carbon intensity of refining these oil sands and the cumulative effect of this development on top of the many other excavated, cleared forests around the world is changing the entire atmosphere. This, rationally, frightened me. I certainly was not the only one who felt the cry of the earth and her creatures that day. The group of ten international delegates from the WCC consultative process on "Poverty, Wealth and Ecology," with whom I travelled, were almost all from countries just beginning their path to industrialization. They manifested their own grief alongside me. Maybe it's obvious. But what really caused our visceral reactions to these big machines, and the bare, stripped, and penetrated earth and the spewing of waste into polluted tailings ponds? After all, although our small ecumenical group felt this cry, not everyone had the reaction we had. This excavation and extraction yields jobs, and jobs are the difference between life and death for people. But wherever I went, I knew that day that I could not escape the "call," the questions, and the agitation with which I would continue to be "blessed" to this day. The consequences of that call have been personal, professional, economic, political, and social. In the spring following, at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the world's indigenous peoples, nations, and governments presented to the Economic and Social Council the conceptual, legal, economic, social, and political framework of dominance manifested in the "Doctrine of Discovery." First pronounced in written form by the Papal Bulls of the 15th century, this framework of domination legitimized the right of Christian authorities from European nations to dominate resources, peoples, power, and control in whatever land they "discovered." This framework of domination and the Papal declarations and church doctrine make clear the attitude of domination of European nations' leadership. Inadequate interpretations of the biblical story from Genesis seemed, to these Christian monarchs, enough justification to take control of all that they encountered. Those from Christian nations would do what they could to "subdue" in whatever way necessary – to the point of violence – whatever was in their way.5 This domination had particular ramifications for women. 6 This important research makes visible the legalized violence at the foundations of modern economic, social, political, and legal order. Our present order's antecedents established and instituted in law a deeply infected world view; legitimized violence in its efforts to build religious, economic, and political authority; and ushered in hegemony. White men of European descent (and whoever would ally with them) now excelled at economic, political, and social power in the "new world" of the 14th to 19th centuries and anyone perceived resistant to the project would be their enemies and recipients of a legalized violent aggression. Whoever did not ally with them and their projects, including submission to the Christian faith, could be imprisoned, beaten, raped, enslaved, and murdered, and those who did such acts were considered righteous in doing so. And so genocide became habit. This system, which began with a European Christian male understanding of themselves as a global force able to dominate through the doctrine of discovery, continued to manifest itself in the US. It was used to build the philosophical foundations of the nation, codified in the policy of "manifest destiny." Race and class inequities deepened institutionally in US foundations. During colonization, white men habitually could murder and rape the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (the current US) or of African or Caribbean descent, or women who did not ally with men of European descent. During the industrial era, domination of the earth quickened and deepened exponentially. This six-hundred-year-old framework of domination helped me to understand the sickening feeling I experienced that day in the Athabascan boreal forest and the legitimated violence against earth and inhabitants of our current global economic, social, and political system. Rev. Dr Melanie Harris of Texas Christian University summarized and expanded Delores Williams work7 at the Religions for Earth Summit at Union Seminary in September 2014, and further emphasized this difficult truth: The logic of domination present in American slavery is the same logic of domination at play in human's treatment of the earth. … Noting the way that many African women were repeatedly raped and forcibly impregnated to breed, sometimes giving birth to more than 24 children, Williams (Delores) draws a conclusion that is still piercing for us to consider. There is a connection between an economic system built on the backs of African slaves, white supremacy and environmental injustice. As a theologian, Williams (Delores) suggests that evil is operating at the very base of economic disparity and ecological destruction. The very act of defiling African American women's bodies and the body of the earth is sin. … Williams makes us see a very cruel reality of climate change. There are connections between the actions of this sin of defilement done to the reproductive systems of enslaved African and African American women including racial disparities in education, economic disparities, barriers to employment opportunities, lack of access to fresh food, and food deserts and the legacy of white supremacy in north America and strip mining. The same logic of domination and control at work during slavery is the same logic at work when we see humans have the right to rip out the womb of mountains. While there are many dangers to strip mining, in order to feed humans death dealing dependency on fossil fuels, we become complicit in the sin of defilement, by damaging the very capacity of that mountain to reproduce.8 This right to dominate instituted itself through the Papal Bulls of the 1400s, and continued to institutionalize itself in the laws of the "new worlds 'discovered' " by the Europeans. This right to dominate was the foundation for the legalization of slavery and the massacre and subjugation of native peoples and now continued its infection – with economic, political, and social legalization, incentives, and power – and in that four-story-high dump truck. Upon return from Alberta, travelling in New Jersey on one of our infamous highways, I looked over to the east toward the Atlantic Ocean and I saw anew the huge refineries and oil tanks outside the Port of Elizabeth. This port is the largest on the east coast of the US and moves wares and fossil fuels from all over the world. I heard of the suffering of the people who are relegated every day to this environmental nightmare of the Port in their neighbourhood. Asthma and cancer clusters saturate the possibilities and probabilities of those housed nearby. Poor people of colour strangled again by the same system that had already directly enslaved, raped, and impoverished their ancestors and their descendants. At the Church Center for the UN, I heard stories from all over the world where corporate power, now blessed by almost every state and legal system in the world, continues to wreck the ecology and the communities integral to that ecology. Resources "discovered" in one place enrich those who live in another place. And those who benefit are those who ally – whether intentionally or not – with the legal justification for their domination. My recoil from the form of "development" I have inherited and my efforts to address such an aggressive system has had to develop a bit around the edges. Working people, people barely able to scrape by, people fighting for a right to work, responsible people, people who love their families as much as I do – work in these industries. These are the jobs offered. In the spring of 2013, I had the opportunity to attend the only public federal hearing on the XL Pipeline – a pipeline to be built that would triple the amount of oil from the Athabascan oil sands, travelling through the entire middle of the US to the Gulf of Mexico for export. During that spring, I entered a firestorm of controversy in Middle America – rural Nebraska. The pipeline is deeply controversial. Before the federal hearing on the Keystone XL pipeline, as a powerful blizzard raged outside, I stood in line next to unionized workers who felt that their very livelihoods would be devastated if the pipeline was not built. There are also many, many persons who if they had the choice may have chosen a different line of work, but are currently dependent upon the economy of the oil sands. As we talked with employees at the Suncor plant in Alberta at the Athabascan oil sands, the public story they told us was that they were faithfully responding to their families and this was a job that would accompany their families into economic security. They were proud of their work.9 They were proud of the technology that enabled such large machines to exist and such excavation possibilities. They were proud that not only men but women were driving these huge machines. Though the toxic tailings pond shook our little ecumenical group to the core, though water usage in tar sands breaks records for the amount of water needed during energy production, though the carbon intensity far outweighs any other fuel development, the scientists that spoke to us that day were proud of the technological advances they were "discovering." These technological advances are often seen as exemplary in the industry, and the reduction of water use was seen as revolutionary by others. Tailings pond #1's reclamation was now considered fit for human use – and the grazing of cattle. Small one-foot-high pine trees planted amidst a day of celebration and photographs covered what once was the sludge of a tailings pond. As we travelled by bus, a lone deer stood in the field. To this, the reclamation specialist who shared with us her work, exclaimed with deep pride, "You see, we have begun the cycle of life again!" These scientists, reclamation specialists, mechanics, technicians, public relations experts were doing well by their families, responsible fathers and mothers, sisters, daughters, brothers, giving time and energy to this endeavour. And likewise in every industrialized factory around the world, this carbon intensive development, this mode of industrialization, this domination model of development – this model where we can legally destroy an entire ecosystem and whoever is in its way – has been their source of livelihood. However, this industrial model of development also causes impoverishment, homelessness, refugees, and health issues, joblessness, and significant hunger. While some of us appear to have benefitted, it has been at a significant cost to others – of exclusion, health issues, and now climate change that threatens climate chaos and early death. This creates suffering, conflict, and war. And this is not what God designed. New foundations We have a serious problem. It is in the very foundational warp and weave of what we've believed would be good for us. It's an inherited right to aggressively destroy. It must be interrupted with a gospel message strong enough to pry at the foundations. Jesus came so that we might have life and have it abundantly. Every single character in scripture who was told that their lives did not matter or that they were not righteous enough for full inclusion – Jesus "saved." We have a destructive system set in place from the foundations of the Christian colonial project. It was a foundation that said some were more worthy than others. It is a foundation that excluded the majority of persons from what were perceived to be benefits. This foundation is set on shifting sand backed by military might. This story needs interrupting for our own sake and the sake of our grandchildren and the seventh generation. Climate change gives us all a significant opportunity to see the foundational crack. And once we see the crack, then we all have the opportunity to reform the foundations, brick by brick, into a caring economy. This problem cannot be organized into polarized camps; it's not about jobs vs. environment, asthma vs. no progress, garbage dumps vs. clean air, cancerous, toxic water supplies vs. gold, tar sands vs. war, your back yard vs. mine. It can't be about women vs. men, black vs. white, migrant vs. citizen, indigenous vs. non. Instead, we as an entire human community must do the hard work psychologically, spiritually, economically, ecologically, politically, and socially so that we can see and respond to the truth, albeit a truth that few have been able to speak: Just as some human communities have been enslaved for an economic, social and political system, so have we done to the earth upon which we all depend. We have raped her and scraped her. Our children's and grandchildren's lives have been damaged. The world we've set up as the "good life" is one that few are able to live. Air flights around the world, automobile dependency, avocados and pineapples on a table in snowy December, air conditioning and lawn mowers, washing machines and four-story-high dump trucks cannot be the goal of human development. The good life of love and kindness and thanksgiving must be. The six hundred years of divisions of slave and free, poor and rich, north and south, east and west, deserving and underserving is counter to the good life, and the way the system has worked has been to our great detriment as a people living on this planet. The foundational sin is this: some thought they were more deserving and more legitimized than others and could therefore dominate whatever and whomever they deemed less than themselves. Men of European descent told themselves, and told everyone else through law, philosophy, and policy, that this was the case. Around the world, people of the "wrong" gender, race, religion, culture were captured and put into fenced-off areas, enslaved, and killed. This was not the Jewish holocaust but the holocaust of people from Africa, Rapa Nui, Santo Domingo, Turtle Island, West Papua and Cote D'Ivoire. Once we see that this development model depended and depends upon the destruction of whole peoples, our eyes are opened to the current war against immigrants. We realize the depth of righteousness and wisdom when people protest against resource extraction or other industrial development in their communities. Once we can speak this humbling, difficult truth of a foundational sin that we've inherited, as an entire human community, we must imagine and birth a vastly different life together – one with foundations of true mutuality, healing centuries of economic and political injustice. Many would argue that what I'm talking about could threaten the survival of capitalism. And the historical imagination seems to only be able to root itself in alternatives like communism or socialism. I don't believe any of these systems are the answer. That new system must be developed, unseen, yet in which I have faith. That new system will resist this logic of domination and intentionally build a caring community. It will care for the earth upon which each community depends. What we want deep in our hearts and souls is to be the beloved community. What we want is not ego-centric survival of the fittest, but an interdependent, careful eco-centric life together. What we want is to see in one another the face of Christ, to be Christ. To love and be loved. What we want is a world where everyone has the air, water, soil, ecologies they need to eat and sleep and love. We need to journey through with acts of repentance and forgiveness for such a history. We need to repent and forgive centuries of trauma, as well as the small hurts of the everyday human experience Climate change and our care for a world that our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren inherit is the crisis/opportunity. We must do this together. There's no alternative to this if we want future generations to have a world in which to live. We must work together to heal the ecologies, beginning with those neighbourhoods and communities whose inhabitants have been traumatized for centuries and continue to be traumatized – mostly black and brown communities now living near garbage incinerators, toxic dumps, fishing for their dinners in polluted rivers or watching their crops dry in the summer heat. These are the ones who know what needs fixing and how the infection plays out. Is our theology strong enough to support such a rebuilding? Is it strong enough not only to do the hard self-reflection that is needed to sit together at the table, to make sure there's interpretation from local dialects, to hear those who have never been formally schooled, who could not write a paper like this but who have the wisdom of experiencing the underside of this system and who know the ecological relationships we need? I believe God became incarnate on this earth to make sure we knew that each and every human being and all of the created world was valued equally – no Gentile or Jew, no male or female, no slave or free, no north or south, no east or west, no employee or activist – where God cares for the sparrow and the lily as much as for humans. We must gently and powerfully, together, cut through any inkling of a thought that someone or thing is better and more valued than another; that someone is right and another is wrong; and that today's arrogant economic, political, and social policies can continue. Imagine, elephants grieving, dogs knowing, and ants intelligently responding. Pigs reflecting and showing affection. Imagine the poor leading, with intimate understanding of the deep and infected power of this system of domination, silencing, imprisoning, killing. We are One. We are dependent upon one another even if we do not know one another. We need to be grateful and profoundly determined to protect each and every one of God's children, animals, minerals, insects, fish, flowers, fruits, and humans, while protecting the air, water, and soil upon which it all depends. This is the Christian/Jewish theology that we must adopt or we simply will not survive. New foundations for community As a white woman of European descent living in the "developed" world, I have inherited gendered and raced lifestyle choices and possibilities as a consequence of the "industrial revolution" and my ability to ally with the patriarchy.10 My ability to write an article like this – the skills, technology, and education – is grounded in this privilege, which itself is grounded in the legal framework of domination. This privilege must be transformed. In order for me to truly collaborate with women of colour and impoverished women from developing countries, I must understand that my privilege protected my access to education, food, health, economic status, and technology while it forcibly and legally denied others the same. I have been valued by the industrialized system in ways that others have not been. I have gained privileges because I grew up within a system that naturally included me and encouraged me not to question it. As a child, the habits of dependency upon such an industrialized system grew; I really did not know that that system had so little respect for some communities, for human diversity, biodiversity, or the earth's ecological foundations. But now I do, and the more I investigate the policies and profits of the infected system creating climate change, the more I know that this is not God's way. And because we're not in alignment with God's way and the way of the natural order, this way will ultimately implode and more life-giving processes will burst forth. That is the way of God. Thank God. Climate change is an opportunity for all of us to finally connect the dots. We can deepen relationships and become the beloved community, globally. Because that system requires that those who cannot or will not be white male, Christian system allies be enslaved, abused, used, imprisoned, and murdered for the sake of profit and economic growth, we must connect the dots and deepen relationships across previous chasms of experience. Climate change gives us the opportunity to connect dots across communities and "issues." As a white woman of European descent, I can listen intently to the women who gather water and firewood, tend gardens, weave from the grasses, make pots from mud banks, or raise their children with constant attention to water, energy, and health care costs. I can recognize that these women are at the beck and call of current economic, political, and social inequities and climate change. I can recognize that they do what they have to do when their lives and health are threatened by climate change consequences and the increased complexities of their caregiving roles. I can recognize that their ability to care for their children, parents, sisters, and brothers is at the whim of a growing industrialized food, water, health, and housing system in a global economy that they do not control. These women live and die by the price fluctuations of a global economy. Traditional caretaking tasks are dependent upon a certain ecological balance which lies in the path of destruction brought on by the quest for fossil fuels and other resources. When ecological balance is threatened, caretaking tasks become more and more difficult. Women need to travel farther to get the water they need for their families. The river floods or dries up, undermining the small farm by the river bank. Women are forced to flee their homes. Women need to move to cities and become dependent upon price fluctuations of food, housing, health prices for their families. Water disappears because of climate changes, industrial discharge, or city/country indebtedness, or the heat soars above what a plant needs to flower and fruit. Cows starve, grains dry up for the chickens' feed, grasses burn, food and water prices increase exponentially. Women and their children's' lives get decidedly harder. In the US and other industrialized nations, it is poor women, and most often non-white single mothers of colour, who live in homes close to environmental hazards. This leads to more caretaking of children, self, and the elderly. Healthcare needs increase where access to quality healthcare is minimized. These same poor women and children, elderly, and disabled suffer disproportionately in the current climate chaos. During Hurricane Sandy, as power disintegrated across lower Manhattan, down the New Jersey coast, and out into far edges of Brooklyn, the lives of impoverished women, single mothers, the elderly, pregnant women, people with disabilities, and immigrants were most impacted. They could not access food, healthcare, sanitation, or safety when the water shut down, the gas shut off, the elevators no longer operated. Poor communities were abandoned by both New York City governmental offices and New Jersey governmental offices. 11 Their lives were valued less than those in more affluent neighbourhoods – those already gleaning the benefits from the same system that is causing the mess. The result was further loss of housing, food, water, heat, and transportation. To address these realities, United Methodist Women rece