ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Coalition for Christian Colleges and Universities
Global Stewardship Initiative
INTERLOCKED TRENDS SHAPING THE 21st CENTURY
by Dieter T. Hessel [TEMEC] & James A. Nash [CCT&PP]
Societies and communities throughout the world face unprecedented environmental peril mixed with severe social problems. Degradation of the environment on top of social injustice is already causing massive suffering among humans and otherkind. Neither ecology nor equity receives much attention in the prevailing political economy, which depletes resources, fosters unnecessary consumption, and fails to meet basic needs of low-income people and vulnerable ecosystems. In too many places, deforestation exceeds forest regeneration; soil erosion reduces arable land; fresh water use outstrips aquifer replenishment. Meanwhile, world population continues to grow rapidly, and communities become unstable, even as more species are lost. These interacting trends add up to an "eco-justice" crisis -- the pervasive problem of our time, hanging ominously like a cloud over the 21st century.
We are beginning to see that "the scale of human activity relative to the biosphere has grown too large,"3 even as the gap between rich and poor people has widened. There is growing scientific evidence and social awareness that the "life-support" capacities of planet earth could be crippled through human agency, making societies unsustainable. We already see this in the overexploitation of such limited resources as ocean fisheries, cutting ancient forests for costly veneers or firewood, imposition of agricultural monocultures on vital ecosystems, and the frequent use of vulnerable places as dumps for toxic waste.
There is an alternative. We and our social organizations are called to think and act in ways that make peace with Earth, viewing the planet and all beings on it as one public household or community. The Greek word for "household" (oikos) is the root for economy (oikonomia), ecumenics (oikumene), ecology and steward (oikonomos). Belatedly, we sense the interrelationship of economy and ecology and our ecumenical accountability to the earth's diverse human communities and otherkind. "Material and managerial well-being of the public household (oikonomia); promotion of the unity of its diverse human family (oikumene); appreciation of the envelope of life the household depends on and is part of (ecology); and trusteeship of the earth community (oikonomos)--these are dimensions of a public vision in our time."4
But such a vision must compete with economic practices and social policies that reinforce business as usual and bring more eco-injustice, deepening the crisis of earth community. This crisis has several root causes: failure to see humanity in and with the rest of nature, political and economic oppression of poor and minority communities, male dominance of women, lack of investment in children, disinterest in preserving the commons, inordinate accumulation of power in large corporations, inappropriate methods of production that "waste" both people and places, plus addictive consumption of scarce earth community resources by affluent classes in every country. These dynamics of the eco-crisis are reinforced by modernity's false assumptions about the potential for limitless growth, and its hubris about the probable outcomes of human technological ability to manipulate nature. When mixed with exploitationist forms of economics and triumphalist forms of religion, the results can be quite grim.
Understanding the Basic Trends
Following is a brief overview of some demographic, ecological, economic, technological, and ethical trends taht will affect the world of the 21st century. To understand this "strange," new world fast-approaching, it is essential to consider basic factors or forces together as an interactive pattern. In a reinforcing way, these trends shape the emerging eco-social nexus, giving a startling profile to the near future.
Demographic Trends. Earth's overall population, currently approaching 6 billion, is expected to reach more than 10 billion by the middle of the next century, before it stabilizes. That picture reflects middle-range projections. The numbers could be higher, or lower, depending largely on the wisdom and coordination of human behavior. Aggregate population data, of course, do not reveal the extent of tragedy and progress being experienced around the world. The growth in population occurs overwhelmingly in impoverished sectors of "developing" countries, compounding human misery. At least 4/5ths of the growth adds people to environmentally unhealthy and socially stressed cities. Despite more death from AIDS and less rapid population growth in parts of the world, birth rates in the developing countries overall are still twice the level needed to stabilize world population.5 In many countries with low per-capita income, there are proportionately more youth and young adults than ever before. The 1990s have involved especially rapid population growth (almost 90 million per year, worldwide), due to "demographic momentum" -- the large number of women of child-bearing age. This reality means that world population could exceed 8 billion by 2020, less than 25 years ahead.
As people become aware of resulting problems, an increasing proportion of women and men around the world want to plan their families or are already doing so. Dramatic progress has actually been made in reducing the average fertility rate from 6.0 children per woman in 1960 to about 3.5 today. So it is not unreal to anticipate a world that eventually reaches the goal of replacement rate fertility (2.1%), thanks to comprehensive health care coupled with expanded educational and economic opportunities for young women. But that goal will be very difficult to achieve soon, given the number of women (one in every four) who want to prevent or postpone their next pregnancies but are not using contraception. In many countries, "the demand for family planning [assistance] already far surpasses the supply."6
Between the ages of 15 and 24, most girls become sexually active (whether voluntarily or not), marry (whether by choice or not) and have their first child (planned or not). The Population Council estimates that delaying the onset of childbearing by two to five years would reduce the eventual world population by more than a billion.7 Added to the lack of effective contraceptive means are such negative patterns as patriarchal subjugation of women, and gender inequity in access to adequate nutrition, comprehensive health and reproductive care, education and employment.
Meanwhile, there is more migration of people from ancestral lands into cities or other countries. The population debate is heightened as swelling numbers of migrant people leave their ancentral communities because of political instability, war, ecological ruin, or economic collapse. In the last two decades, at least 25 million people worldwide have been uprooted for environmental causes, equalling the number who have fled civil wars. That number could double by the year 2010, "as increasing numbers of impoverished people press ever harder on overloaded environments."8
"Migration pressures will increase as the poor leave rural areas seeking a better life in urban communities and wealthier nations. In addition, ecological refugees will join the estimated 17 million people who are displaced outside their countries and the 23 million people who are displaced within their countries."9 Many nations are closing their doors to migrants and refugees, and have stepped up deportation of those arriving illegally. Less opportunity to migrate will intensify civil unrest, increase social conflict, and trigger military repression within "crowded" countries.
Population growth and migratory movement are dangerous progressions that have serious social and ecological consequences; they exacerbate the problems of educational improvement, food security and distribution, employment, health care, housing, sanitation, and urbanization. Congested megacities emerge, creating massive municipal overburden and resource demand. Surrounding areas become ecologically stresssed, and more vulnerable to flood and drought.
A major concern is: will food supplies be adequate for this increasingly populated world? Food production must double by the next century to meet the growing demand, but "arable land is being lost through erosion, deforestation, expanding urban areas, depletion of irrigation water, salinization, waterlogging, and other factors."10 Fish harvests are declining and grain production per capita is decreasing. Poor countries are basing their "development" on commodity export agriculture that subverts local food security; these "debtor" nations are being forced by lending institutions into unfair trade and "structural adjustment" policies that intensify local poverty.
Population growth is outstripping food production based on industrial methods that are energy-intensive, ecologically damaging, and socially disruptive. "In our modern world, the way agriculture is done will very much determine the destiny of this planet."11 One constructive alternative is "agroecology" (or sustainable farming) appreciative of the agricultural wisdom of traditional communities and deisgned to work with natural processes. Food sufficiency will certainly depend on agricultural research and development oriented to sustainable agriculture that is compatible with available soil nutrients and water. Relatively "clean" food production and small-scale, community-based farming must be coupled with social-economic policies of just distribution, fair trade, and planning for restricted consumption in the North, such as eating lower on the food chain.12
In many places, population issues and growth are related to ecological stress, loss of biodiversity, and depletion of water, fuel, and soil potential. Overpopulation certainly is not the only cause of environmental degradation, but it often is a major contributor. Excessive population growth accentuates every environmental problem, as natural "carrying capacity" is exceeded. Increasing numbers of people typically overuse croplands and grazing lands, reduce fresh water supplies, exhaust fuelwood, increase pollution, degrade ecosystems, and threaten the survival of other species. Though some limits can be expanded by human ingenuity and social institutions, water, land, fuel, and food resources are still finite. Economic indicators of "progress" usually ignore these heavy environmental costs, and remain silent about ecological limits, which though imprecise are tangible. In reality "the world has, or will soon have, more people than the world's economies, environments and societies can accommodate in acceptable ways."13
The planet's carrying capacity is the ultimate environmental limit on human population and consumption growth. Carrying capacity is variable, depending on natural fluctuations and climate changes, the quantity and quality of available resources, numbers of people and consumption levels. Carrying capacity, however, can be drastically reduced by human use and abuse. Even "renewable" resources, such as fish, forests, soils, and rivers, can become functionally non-renewable when pushed beyond biological tolerances. For instance, the productive capacities of agricultural lands have been severely degraded in many places through human-induced erosion and pesticidal pollution. Similarly, overfishing has severly depleted stocks of commercial species worldwide to the point that the potential recovery of some fisheries is uncertain.
Overpopulation threatens not only ecological "carrying capacity," but also economic security. Many poor nations are losing the race between socioeconomic well-being and population expansion; whenever their rate of production increases, their rate of reproduction erodes all or much of the gain. Poor nations are experiencing insufficient increases or net decreases in their standards of living. And because they have borrowed heavily to finance "development" projects, they are forced to adopt policies of structural adjustment that impose more "austerity" on low-income groups. Meanwhile, the "developed" countries may be experiencing a net decline in quality of life, measured not by Gross Domestic Product but rather by a nuanced Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare. Since the later 1970's, U.S. society has experienced a deterioration of sustainable economic welfare "largely as a result of growing income inequality, the exhaustion of resources, and the failure to invest adequately to sustain the economy in the future."14
Economic Trends. More people are being impoverished by -- not just being left out of -- a globalized economy that is systematically widening the rich-poor gap. Perhaps 2 billion people in the world are doing better in globally-linked market economies, but an equal number seem to be doing worse in the world development pattern that has become a zero-sum game. "While the statistical proportions of per capita income, food supply, access to health services, potable water, etc., have all improved, the actual number of people who are poor, hungry, sick, and without drinkable water has never been higher."15 Vandana Shiva contends that development models pushed upon "underdeveloped nations" have disrupted sustainable social, agricultural, and ecological practices, resulted in the direct exploitation of resources and a continuing flow of financial benefits from the now poorer to the wealthier nations. Neither incomes nor resources to meet basic needs are well-distributed, and poor countries are in worse straits than before.16
People with little assurance of sustainable livelihoods tend to have more children to insure that some will survive. This segment of the world population is growing: at least 1.1 billion people now live in absolute poverty. Even in a "developed" country such as the U.S., poverty is increasing. The affluent society leaves out many members. Increasing numbers of people lack adequate nutrition, housing health care, and education. They are economically and environmentally deprived. As we have already suggested, diminished or non-existent economic opportunity is a disincentive to family planning. Sustainable, integral "development," coupled with universal education and movement toward gender as well as racial equality, is the viable social alternative that encourages family planning and helps stabilize population size.
The usual economic answer to poverty has been to foster more economic development in order to raise production and consumption overall. But quantitative growth often lacks quality, and the aggregate often accumulates at the top, percolating up rather than flowing down. The world has "been there, done that," when it comes to rapid economic growth, with GDP quintupling during the last three decades while world population was doubling. The overall result has been quite mixed. Most countries experienced increased life expectancy, literacy and primary education, and better access to basic health care, including family planning, while they achieved reductions in average infant mortality. But overall, there has also been environmental degradation on each continent and in the oceans. Moreover, the rich-poor gap has widened, with more very poor people having less than a dollar a day. Meanwhile, the affluent live profligately in ways that deplete natural resources, increase waste, ignore social justice, and degrade ecosystems as well as the biosphere as a whole.
Affluent people need to comprehend the exponential growth in their consumption and harried lifestyles since World War II. In 1990, the average American owned and consumed more than twice as much as he or she did in 1948, but also had less free time.17 More consumption by the affluent has not and will not increase happiness. Less goods-acquisition by overconsumers helps to make good life in community more likely for them and others.
In tandem with stopping overproduction and overconsumption in industrialized countries, direct attention must be given to ensuring economic sufficiency for the poor, in ways that secure the well-being of both people and natural areas. Otherwise, exploitative landowners will increase the number of displaced, desperately poor farmers in former rainforests trying to eke out short-term subsistence in nutrient-poor soils. People forced to migrate from traditonal rural communities could add up to a billion forestland inhabitants within another two decades. "[This] migrant phenomenon represents by far the biggest mass movement of people to have occurred in the history of humankind in so short a space of time; and the destruction of tropical forests represents by far the biggest land use change to have occurred in such a similarly short space of time."18
Developing countries want to achieve economic equity with the help of market and international assistance mechanisms. A basic goal of these emerging countries is to enable ordinary people to consume enough to achieve sufficiency. In the next two decades, therefore, the planet will experience a very stressful double explosion -- of rapid growth in population and consumption -- unless there are concerted efforts to limit human reproduction, conserve natural resources, fairly redistribute the fruits of production, and redefine the good life according to the requirements and dynamics of earth community.
Ecological Trends. As human life multiplies, the major effects are to widen social disparities and to crowd out other life--degrading human communities and ecosystems, while extinguishing species. "Every day humanity destroys more than 46,000 hectares of forests, degrades nearly 60 million tons of top soil, dumps almost 2 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere from cars alone, and causes the extinction of perhaps as many as 50 species of plants and animals."19 People in industrialized countries, especially affluent North Americans, do disproportionate ecological damage.
Loss of biodiversity, land degradation, water pollution, deforestation, overfishing, and global warming result from increased human numbers using intensified methods of production and consuming inappropriately. Such maldevelopment is not a consequence of population growth alone, but rather the interactive impact (I) of a society, resulting from numbers of people (P) x levels of consumption (C) x types of technology (T) used in agriculture, industry, commerce, transportation, and community life. Assuming that the collective goal of humanity is not to conquer or end nature but to achieve equitable and environmentally sustainable development, no aspect of impact can be neglected or approached in isolation from the others.
This interactive understanding has been rendered as a formula: I = PCT, originally put forth by biologist Paul Ehrlich as I = PAT, with A referring to affluence. Granting it to be "a somewhat oversimplified equation," I=PCT reminds us that "The impact (I) of any group or nation on the environment is the product of its population's size (P) multiplied by per capita affluence as measured by consumption (C), in turn multiplied by a measure of the damage done by the technologies (T) involved in supporting each unit of that consumption."20
Though the formula is necessarily inexact, it is a helpful way to look at any country's environmental impact or "footprint." When viewed through this formula, the U.S. turns out to be the most "overpopulated" nation in the world, though only some of its states are densely settled. The P factor is already huge: with a mid-1990's population of 160 million, the U.S. is the third-largest country in the world. When C and T are divided by P to determine per capita use of resources, U.S. environmental impact is roughly twice that of Britain, Sweden, France, or Australia; 14 times that of China; 40 times that of India, and nearly 300 times that of Laos or Uganda.
Population growth in the Northern hemisphere is moderating, but that fact is offset by high consumption and destructive technology. The North consumes roughly 3/4ths of the world's energy production and higher proportions of all wood products. The U.S., with 1/20th of the world's people, uses 1/5th of the world's metals, and 1/4th of the world's fossil fuels. The U.S. -- the fastest growing industrialized country (at 1% per year) -- consumes 30% of the world's resources and produces almost 20% of its waste. Reduction in U.S. births is essential, but lower fertility must be coupled with substantial changes in lifestyle (i.e., in reduced levels of C and ecologically-benign types of T) coupled with deliberate redistribution of scarce resources.
Technological Factors. Here, as in the demographic story, we see a mixed picture. One the one hand, some technologies contribute directly to social misery and environmental degradation. Research and development of more destructive and even diabolical military weapons increase the likelihood of warfare on whole human populations, and threaten long-lasting ecological disasters. Waste incinerators and management facilities, typically placed in poor and minority communities of the industrialized societies, increase environmental risks for residents of those communities. High-tech fleets of boats from industrialized countries strip the marine fisheries. Overuse of coal and oil add greatly to Earth's greenhouse gasses. And the poor in less-developed countries, often driven off the land, become desperate for subsistence, forcing them to strip trees from watersheds, or in other ways overstress the biological resource base. In each case, a shift to more appropriate technologies -- that fit cultural and environmental conditions -- would improve environmental quality and assure a measure of justice. But that requires political will, technical know-how, economic choice, and wise citizen participation.
Much of recent progress in reducing per capita use of materials and energy has resulted from the introduction of more efficient technologies. But these gains are being outstripped by population growth. And some new technologies are far from benign in their effects, because they further corrode community, harm the environment, threaten the health of workers or abuse animals.
On the other hand, new technologies can improve the situation. Technologies have become more energy-efficient, as affluent consumers know first hand. Even though Americans own twice a many cars, and drive two-and-a-half times as far as did their 1950 counterparts, there has been a levelling off of some kinds of consumption per person.
Mandating wider use of appropriate technologies while limiting wasteful consumption are part of that shift. So are incentives to foster patterns of living that enhance community, utilize social capital (including human labor) in cooperative ways, and give people a stake in the common future. The individual driving around the suburbs and to the malls in a pertroleum-fueled car cannot be the 21st century norm.
Uses of technology need to be assessed in terms of social equity and ecological integrity, not just efficiency.22 As the century turns, moral thinking must move past economic and technocratic individualism toward materially sufficient, socially just community. Strengthening community remains a difficult task, however. "Consumer society, by relying on marketized exchanges rather than reciprocity, reduces the bonds between individuals and makes community more difficult to sustain. [A positive alternative] should press for regulations and tax incentives which create genuine choice in working hours, should promote `community solidarity' by suggesting alterations in the economic incentives for private and public consumption, and should encourage us to think about sensible restrictions on consumption in order to solve collective action dilemmas."23
Social Ethics. Milan Opocensky, general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, speaking in Edinburgh during the summer of 1995, outlined five issues -- overcoming racism, eliminating weapons of mass destruction, achieving equality between women and men, realizing worldwide economic justice and stopping environmental abuse -- as matters that should be treated as status confessionis or as "impinging on the heart of the Christian gospel." Urging Reformed Churches around the world to give full and earnest attention to these priorities, he, in effect, emphasized that population-consumption-environment ethics are not optional interests, but basic concerns of faith. Until recently, the churches did not view environment as having status equal to the others. But there is a growing eco-justice awareness in the churches, and ethical guidance is available in Christian thought about responsibility for slowing population growth and halting overconsumption.
Yet, "developed" country residents (including leaders and members of North American churches) who idolize personal liberty, economic growth, and material affluence have trouble grappling with these concerns. They remain in denial about the likelihood that "if current predictions of population growth prove accurate and patterns of human activity on the planet remain unchanged, science and technology may not be able to prevent either irreversible degradation of the environment or continued poverty for much of the world."24
Constructive Christian ethical reflection on population- consumption-environment faces this reality squarely, and emphasizes that the opposite ends of the global economic spectrum -- the under and over consumers, the rich and the poor -- are not ethically separable. All societies, rich and poor, must grapple with the problem of unsustainable population and skewed consumption. North Americans especially are obligated to face the fact that each additional person in affluent nations consumes far more and places far greater stress on the biosphere than the average person in poor nations. If population carrying capacity is directly affected by per capita resource consumption, then rich country governments and citizens are especially responsible for reducing consumption and population growth, while moving to achieve equitable distribution of resources, including those that ensure human survival and enable effective family planning. As was said in March, 1994 by a panel of Advisors to the Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health and Ethics,
Some basic ethical emphases that have inter-hemispheric and national significance come into view: 1) Reduced population growth depends on increased opportunities for women, who are the majority (60%) of the world's poor and who do a similar proportion of the world's work, but who own only 1% of the world's land and earn just 10% of the world's income. Equality for and empowerment of women to gain control of their own lives are crucial to family planning.25 Here, values of liberty and equity come into play interactively, reinforcing each other. Family planning is not only a private matter of personal choice, but also a public responsibility at all levels of government.
2) When assessing the responsibility of nations and citizens, reproduction and consumption patterns must be considered together. Effective measures for reducing reproduction depend on moving toward real economic justice, including reduced production- consumption in the North, and increased production-consumption of necessary kinds in the South. In countries of the South, ecologically sustainable development should accompany family planning and related reproductive health services, not substitute for them.
3) Everyone has a right not to to procreate, but no one has a right to procreate without limits. This limitation of human reproductive freedom is parallel to security and subsistence rights that limit any citizen's freedom of action.26 As major Protestant church bodies have affirmed for more than two decades, access to artifical means of birth control is both a human right and a feature of responsible social policy. And to achieve an average of the two-child family, there is need for shared sacrifice.27 A priority public task is to prevent high fertility rates through enlightened social development, using the least amount of coercion or offense to human dignity necessary to achieve healthy community.
4) A wholistic approach to the population-consumption crisis takes account of the following elements: a) universal access to safe, effective, simple, convenient, diverse, reversible, and free or inexpensive contraception for both women and men; b) increased research on contraceptive means for men and women; c) equality for women in social status, political and economic rights, effective access to education, income-earning employment, health care and nutrition; d) improved social security systems to reduce the need for large families; e) strengthening the family as a basic social unit, including the elimination of child marriages, discouragement of early marriages, and encouragement of equal male responsibilities as parents and housekeepers; f) alleviating poverty while preventing overconsumption so that there may be economic sufficiency for all; g) increasing appropriate economic and technical assistance from North to South; and f) preserving ecosystems and caring for the habitats of other lifeforms. Population reduction and equitable consumption have intrinsic value for earth community, and are instrumental to achieving ecological responsibility with socioeconomic justice.
Faith and ethics that are oriented to achieving sustainable sufficiency and restoring healthy community, inclusive of everykind, will play a crucial role in the historic struggle to reform wisely a world that would otherwise become more crowded, socially unequal, and ecologically deformed.
---------------------- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Notes
1 Larry Rasmussen, EarthCommunity; EarthEthics (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 37, 3.
2 A Statement by the Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health and Ethics, March 18-19, 1994.
3 Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr., For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 2.
4 Larry Rasmussen, "The Near Future of Socially Responsible Ministry," Theological Education for Social Ministry, ed. D. Hessel (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1988), 28. Rasmussen elaborates on the meanings of oikos in a section on "Ecumenical Earth" apearing in Earth Community; Earth Ethics.
5 Analysis by the Population Reference Bureau, July 2, 1996.
6 Bryant Robey, Shea O. Rutstein and Leo Morris, "The Fertility Decline in Developing Countries," Scientific American (December, 1993, 67.
7 Laurie Ann Mazur, "Introduction and Overview," Beyond the Numbers: A Reader on Population, Consumption and the Environment, ed. Laurie Mazur (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1994), 17.
8 See Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent, Environmental Exodus (Washington DC: The Climate Institute, 1995).
9 James Martin-Schramm, "Population-Consumption Issues: The State of the Debate," in Theology for Earth Community: A Field Guide, ed. D. Hessel (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books), 138.
10 Gerald O. Barney, Global 2000 Revisited: What Shall We Do? (Arlington, VA: Millennium Institute, 1993), 19.
11 Dean Freudenberger, Global Dust Bowl: Can we Stop the Destruction of the Land Before Its Too Late? (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990), 35.
12 William K. Stevens, "Feeding a Booming
Population without Destroying the Planet," New York Times, April
5, 1994.
13 See Joel E. Cohen, How Many People can
the Earth Support? (NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996) for a discussion
of "carrying capacity."
14 Clifford Cobb, "The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare," Appendix to Daly & Cobb, For the Common Good (1989, Rev. 1994).
16 Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (London: ZED Books, 1988).
17 Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American (NY: Basic Books, 1992), 2.
18 Norman Myers, "Tropical Deforestation: Population, Poverty and Biodiversity," in The Economics and Ecology of Biodiversity Decline, ed., Timothy M. Swanson (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 119.
19 Rick Searle, Population Growth, Resource Consumption, and the Environment: Seeking a Common Vision for a Troubled World (Victoria, B.C." Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, University of Victoria, 1995), 9. Also see Charles Birch, "Christian Obligation for the Liberation of Nature," in Liberating Life, eds. C. Birch, William Eakin, & Jay McDaniel (Maryknoll,NY: Orbis Books, 1991).
20 A.H. Ehrlich and P.R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 16.
21 Allen L. Hammond, "Limits to Consumption and Economic Growth: The Middle Ground," in Philosophy & Public Policy 15,4 (Fall, 1995), special issue on "The Ethics of Consumption," 11.
22 Ian Barbour, Technology, Environment & Human Values (NY: Praeger, 1980) and Ethics in an Age of Technology (NY: Harper Collins, 1993).
23 Juliet Schor, "A New Economic Critique of Consumer Society," in Philosophy & Public Policy (Fall, 1995), 20-21.
24 Joint statement of the U.S. National Academy of Science and the Royal Society of London, 1992.
25 Jodi L. Jacobson, "Improving Women's Reproductive Health," State of the World 1992 (NY: W.W. Norton, 1992).
26 See James A. Nash, Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and Christian Responsibility (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), 49-50.
27 For example, see the comprehensive "Report on Population Policy and the Church" adopted by the United Presbyterian General Assembly, Minutes, Vol I (Philadelphia: Office of the General Assembly, May, 1972).
Dieter T. Hessel, Ph.D., is Director of the Program on Ecology, Justice & Faith, Co-Director of TEMEC ("Theological Education to Meet the Environmental Challenge"), editor of After Nature's Revolt: Eco-Justice and Theology (Fortress Press, 1992), Theology for Earth Community: A Field Guide (Orbis Books, 1996), and former social policy director, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
James A. Nash, Ph.D., is Executive Director of The Churches' Center for Theology and Public Policy, editor of its journal on Theology and Public Policy, author of Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and Christian Responsibility (Abingdon Press, 1991), and former director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. He is a United Methodist.
This paper will be the lead article in a special issue of Theology
and Public Policy (November, 1996) on Ethics of Population-Consumption-Environment.
Following it will be an essay on ecumenical ethics for earth community,
six case studies, & a summary of the action agenda.