By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
The world is only ours on loan, and we need to do a better job than we have of late in taking care of it. That was the consensus message from a trio of local Christian, Jewish and Muslim community leaders who joined Rep. Jay Inslee at Seattle’s St. John’s United Lutheran Church.
The Bainbridge Island congressman brought both a message of potential gloom and a ray of hope for the environment to the lectern on January 13, expressing the same sentiments as in the book he recently co-authored and signed for his readers in the lobby after his talk.
Against a backdrop of dire warnings for the future if the world does not reduce the greenhouse gases it is currently pouring into the atmosphere, Apollo’s Fire (co-authored with Bracken Hendricks) presents reasons to hope that the solution is not only technically feasible but could also lead to a new economic boom for the United States.
In his talk, Inslee told the tale of Felix Kramer, a man who took the fortune he had amassed in the high tech world and invested it in promoting something new which he decided the world really needs: an environmentally-friendly car.
Inslee said Kramer took his idea of a plug-in hybrid car to the automotive companies in Detroit, but they told him it couldn’t be done. With some expert assistance, however, he took a converted Toyota Prius and built a prototype in his garage. By driving the first 40 miles on stored energy before switching over to the hybrid system, the car averages about 120 miles per gallon.
“What is the upshot of that?” Inslee asked. “Two months ago I brought a car, a General Motors Volt, up to Capitol Hill,” he said — a car built along the lines of Felix’s crazy idea that GM is now gearing up for production.
Inslee also spoke glowingly about the future of cellulosic ethanol, an as-yet-unproven technology to make fuel from hardy grasses and woody plants. The first large-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in the country is expected to start up soon in Georgia.
Although the Sunday night appearance was just one stop on a local book tour, Inslee tailored the message to fit his surroundings. He talked about the importance of “faith communities” in getting members of Congress from across the political divide to sign on to support strong environmental actions. Inslee said that when evangelical Christians concerned about the quality of humanity’s “stewardship” of planetary resources come to talk to conservative congresspeople, it carries a lot of weight, and helps to swing them to his side on some of these issues.
Carol Jensen, the church’s pastor, Rabbi Anson Laytner, of the American Jewish Committee, and Alam Ali, president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Seattle, joined Inslee to talk about our responsibility to care for the environment from the various Abrahamic religious traditions.
“There is, of course, no environmentalism in the Torah. Why should there be?” Laytner said. “We’ve only really been able to destroy large swaths of the planet since the Industrial Revolution.”
He told a rabbinic story from the beginning of the Common Era: God created multiple worlds before settling on this one. Seeing it was good, He told Adam and Eve: “See how beautiful my work is. For your sake I created it all but do not spoil it or destroy it, for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it.”
Laytner said that environmentalism is not only a Jewish issue because climate change is as much a threat to future generations as is anti-Semitism.
“Environmentalism is a Jewish issue because ultimately it is about saving lives, and that is one of the highest Jewish values, one for which almost all the other commandments may be temporarily abrogated. Ultimately, environmentalism should become a Jewish religious value as much as any ancient ones,” he said. “Preventing climate catastrophe is an ethical responsibility rooted in the fundamental values of our religious tradition. It is an issue not just for the children of Israel alone, or the children of Abraham alone, but for all the children of Noah, because it affects or will affect all of us sooner or later. As that midrash said: ‘Do not destroy it, for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it.’”
Pastor Jensen summed up her view of this by invoking what she called “a common affirmation that surrounds all of our efforts to protect and defend this Earth,” shared by Christians, Jews and Muslims alike, “that is that this planet does not belong to us. The air, water and other natural resources, the creatures, great and small, are ultimately God’s creation,” she said. “They’re not commodities to be bought and sold, but to be tended by all of us for the common good and for future generations.
“Our concern about global warming begins with our call to be stewards of this planet with all its incredible diversity, but it doesn’t end there,” Jensen said. “It’s also propelled by our calling to stand with and to advocate for those who are impoverished and marginalized in our global economy. Rising sea levels and extreme weather are particular threats to the poor who live in areas more prone to flooding, who don’t have resources to relocate.”
Ali said Muslims draw a direct connection between religion and the environment.
“We believe that the issues of the environment and the effect that human beings have on it is actually a direct reflection of our moral state,” he explained.
“There’s obviously in the world today a crisis of values and ethics. This moral crisis, which might as well be viewed as ‘moral pollution,’ underlies this phenomenon of environmental pollution and degradation,” Ali added. “When we divorce ethics and morality from our pursuit of knowledge and its applications, that environmental pollution and degradation sets in.”
At the end of his talk the congressman added his own brand of spiritual optimism.
“I don’t believe [that] the Creator who would create the human intellect,” Inslee said, “would stand by for the destruction of the Creator’s own handiwork.”