The question of how specific religious views affect perspectives on the environment has been beautifully addressed by previous authors in this SOC series. My goal in contributing to the series is to consider how attitudes toward the environment are formed in the absence of a particular religious world view.
I now belong to a religious community (Kol Ami), but I was brought up in the U.S. with no religious affiliation. My views on the environment were formed at a young age and have not changed significantly over time. In elementary school, my notebooks had EPA stickers plastered all over them. The origin of my environmental identity was my public education in suburban Washington D.C. as well as the attitude of the media at that time (early 1970's). My parents had a great influence too, as active members of the Sierra Club and a local Audubon Society.
The role of the media seems particularly important. I remember distinctly a broadcast during that period featuring Walter Cronkite in which graphic depictions of the "future" included horrifically polluted Great Lakes, among other results of our country's environmental irresponsibility. This affected me greatly. I was not yet a teenager. I have considered myself an environmentalist--part of a worldwide community--since then.
In assessing my environmental impact as an adult, I must recognize foremost that my life is a blink of cosmic time: Where I have the greatest effect and responsibility for the future of the Earth is in parenting. We have four kids in our family. I've met ZPG people who think we are out of our minds for bringing even one child into this world. I am emotionally incapable of dealing with this issue. Rabbi Rosen knows my children, and I hope she would concur that they are good people, caring people, people to whom we can entrust responsibility for the Earth's environment.
While I attempt to be environmentally responsible, noticeably lacking is any effort to affect environmental issues through the political process, unlike members of the SOC. I hope you will see this as a phase-of-life problem, and not reflective of any religious perspective. I have responsibilities to my family and to my work as a teacher and scientific researcher. These are my choices to focus my energy on my children and to try to be successful in my profession. My hope is that once I have given what I can as a parent (foremost) and as a scientist, I can contribute more personally to our community.
Fortunately, not all of us feel this way -- we should all be indebted to people who have dedicated their lives to public service. However, I recognize my own limitations, and I believe I have chosen well.
Thus, of all the SOC contributors, I am least likely to influence any large number of views of the environment. The best I can do is to encourage my own children to be more responsible for the care of the Earth than I have been.
In composing this note, I really did not want to talk about my own experiences; they don't seem all that relevant to the mission of SOC, and I have no idea how representative my life is of others with a non-religious upbringing. Thus I attempted to draw upon the wisdom of the web to answer a few questions which might be important to understanding environmental views of our society. I found that voting-age adults with no religious affiliation are not politically relevant in the U.S. (~15% of the population; see 2000 census data at (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/population/religion). Thus religious organizations, particularly when acting in unison, could wield enormous political power on issues of the environment.
Furthermore, as previous contributors have noted, religious views can and should involve the stewardship of the Earth. Nonetheless, the U.S. population at large is not obviously interested in saving the environment. This seems to be evidence that many of our country's religious organizations are not influencing their members to adopt positive environmental views.
How, then, do citizens of the U.S. acquire their attitudes toward the environment? Have we left environmental education up to family tradition, public schools and the media? These were powerful influences on my own views. However, as the global situation worsens, a more concerted effort will be necessary to bestow a concern for the environment on all of humanity. We will depend on our religious leaders for inspiration and guidance in how we personally effect the natural world. Furthermore, a unified voice from our nation's religious communities -- expressing the views of this series' previous contributors -- would help ensure that our government is focused on stewardship of the Earth.
How has my own environmentalism held up over the years? Not well, but the positive intentions are evident, I hope. Currently I own an a big SUV, to carry the 8 members of my consanguineous family. But I use this vehicle rarely. My family owns a hybrid, and this car gets the majority of our mileage by hauling kids and parents to various destinations. Furthermore, my spouse and I ride our bikes or take a UTA bus to/from work, a 16 mile commute. We challenge each other to limit the number of times we drive to work: Our goal is that we can drive to work only once a month. We've done pretty well, so far.
Ben Bromley is Associate Professor of Physics at The University of Utah
