Earth Day

Against Poverty - Wangari Maathai

Poverty is both a cause and a symptom of environmental degradation. You can't say you'll deal with just one. It’s a trap. When you're in poverty, you're trapped because the poorer you become, the more you degrade the environment, and the more you degrade the environment, the poorer you become. So it's a matter of breaking the cycle.

We cannot solve all the problems that we face: we don't have water, we don't have energy, we don't have food, we don't have incomes, we're not able to send our children to school. But we can do something – something that is cheap, that is within our power, our capacity, our resources. And planting a tree was the best idea I had. For me, it became a wonderful way of breaking the cycle.

[For Earth Day, thoughts from an African woman on overcoming environmental degradation - and poverty. Source: From an interview with Amitabh Pal, The Progressive Magazine - Daily Dig]

One of the things that has struck me over the years is that there are so many "liberal" causes, like the environment, that get belittled by "conservatives". But most of the time, both sides tend towards being wrong, don't they? In putting together environmental issues with poverty, maybe it gets filled out a little more, maybe it needs more attention. I received the Daily Dig in my email this morning, and really had no idea today was "Earth Day", what's always been a "liberal agenda" thing for me. But, what if the church began to stand up for things like clean water, safe economic practices, and even just planting trees - taking care of the creation that cries out as a witness for the Lord? What would that look like in our culture/world today?