I also believe in giving real answers and so for me the honest answer is that there is not a whole lot as individuals that we can do. We can’t change if others are going to use greener clearer energy. We can’t control that even if we recycle everything, the majority of the recycling ends up in the ocean and land fills. We can’t control opposing political ideas and we definitely can’t control how other nations handle pollution and so on. What we can control is our own lives and choices for the most part. None is saying don’t call representatives and vote and ect… just stating that it is a long slow process. We can vote for decades and fight lobbyists and so on for change. It’s part of the fight but there are things we can do now that changes things.
Such as your yard. Many of us in here have discussed how evolution snd ecology works together in the lawn. The majority of non native plants may feed adult pollinators but it does very little for the babies. I believe 90% of insects are host specific. So in america, these native insects have been evolving with the native plants for as long as it’s been here. They have not been involving with plants thousands of miles away. It’s because these insects evolved to be able to deal with foliage chemical compositions. That’s why milkweeds are eaten by monarch caterpillars but they don’t eat spicebush. When you have a lot of nonnative plants and grass in your yard, even without using pesticides, you’ll have very little biodiversity. Because there won’t be hardly any caterpillars you also want have very many other bugs. You won’t have many birds because almost all birds in USA feed their chicks with caterpillars and other insects.
So what you need to do is:
Reduce the amount of lawn in your yard to just where it’s needed purely functionally.
You need to have the least amount of non native plants as possible. You need to fill your yard with native plants.
You need to have a wild diversity of plant types. Have climbers, crawlers, annuals, biannual, perennials, shrubs, herbaceous plants, woody plants, trees, angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms and so on. Make it as diverse as possible within your needs and wants and whatever the archetypal landscape is there.
Limit the chemicals you use. Try to use zero in your garden.
Limit the amount of debris clean up you do until after the last frost date. Many insects rely on the ground cover crested by fallen leaves to survive until winter.
Then there ar either things you can do. Though it does not change a lot you can do things like get a reusable straw. You probably use thousands of draws over the years. Reduce it to dozens.
Get useable grocery bags. You probably use thousands of them in just a few years. If you get 20 grocery bags a week that are plastic that’s just over 1,000 bags a year. Instead every few weeks buy some nice reusable bags that you like. I need to do this again as well. Someone took almost all of the ones I had out of my van at the store. I only took in two and left my window about 10 inches down because it was hot and someone unfortunately took them. But at one time during a whole year I used under 30 plastic bags and used the same 10 reusable cotton bags for over 2 years.
Another big one often ignored is what you eat. You can look for goods that are local. But berries from 100 miles away instead of 2,000 miles away. A lot of research has shown how detrimental animal farming is to nature. The western diet consists of lots of meat. It’s not only unhealthy for you , causes a ridiculous amount of terror and pain for other creatures but the waste produced in the process of getting it from the farm to the table is well noted. So try something like meatless Monday. Or decide to make 5 meals a week to be vegetarian.
We should also get involved in adopting a street or river. Get your kids involved. Have your church adopt the street it’s on and members pick up trash in the area.
Those are all simple things that we can heavily influence and start doing this week. Maybe we can’t fix the world but we can create a mini safe haven for wildlife in our backyard.
Our church adopting the whole road its on would be a challenge, given that it’s the smallest congregation on a major road with three churches within 400 meters of each other.
You are not rude, I just believe that this question doesn’t need to into politics. Everyone has his political views, me included, which in most cases make as biased and more emotional than rational. I try to remove political bias from my comments, but it results are mediocre at best, so I prefer to keep politics out as long as we can.
This is quite funny to hear, since I from Catholic part of the world so we traditionally don’t eat meat of cows, pigs, chickens and few others animals on Fridays. Fish are allowed, since this tradition probably streams from Pentateuch dietary law’s and fish are consider as clean animals.
Friday restriction on food is not accidental, since this is the day that in Catholic calendar was day of penance for believers, since this day Christ die on the cross for our sins. I write “was” since most of modern Catholics always try to get rid of such things.
What is quite ironic, more progressive Catholics at least few years ago (2014?) were promoting following Protestants in abolishing every diet restriction that is customary in Catholic culture. Even when they were already severely reduced after 1965 in the name of “being open to the need of modern man”. Yeah, right.
I allow myself to say few more words about this topic, but maybe they don’t needed.
Answer to question about what is evil is hard to me to answer, while many people is satisfied by just following what secular world deemed as evil. To Christians following secular world is thing that should be done with great care, since even Christ himself said that world hate Him and will hate anyone that is following Him.
Secular world can be right, but can be wrong. When it comes to the environment it looks like that secular world have it right, at least at the level of declarations. At the level of deeds, I never hear in my life about special devotion to Lord of people that are running various chemical plants or things like that. This is probably banal statement that here is too much talking and not enough sensible actions.
Also, I quite concern about moral condition of many Christians engaged in environmental movements. You can’t be good Christians if you choose to follow only some commandments. I don’t believe that it is necessary for Christians that join environmental causes that they need to compromise of some of they believes. My opinion is that, this is too common situation to make me sleep well.
To make my concerns clearer, I recall example of one person that I know, who declare himself as opposed to abortion as evil act, but when to push come to shove he seems to downplay it when it come to environment issues, having, quite quirky to me, response to quite obvious fact that many pro-environment around us two are quite pro-abortion.
Abortion is quite hot button issue, yet when he himself declare himself as antiabortion person and have problem with act consistently when environment come into play, illustrate quite well whats worrying me. He never says that abortion is justified since without stopping degradation of environment human race will vanish and I doubt that he can ever say something like that. I guess he be scandalized by such calculation of “costs and benefits”.
This is long topic, but I have not too much time now, so I will end here.
At declarations it stops! It’s also secular view that YOLO so there is no point living like you’re poor. And why worship on Sundays when instead you can go shopping for more things you don’t need? It isn’t Christianity that encourages greed and showing off and wastefullness. It’s maybe because I’m not American but I’m not buying into this “let’s blame Christians for climate change”
Nobody is blaming Christians for climate change. But Evangelical Christians and their political party here in the US tend to be resistant to accepting climate change and/or doing something about it. That’s why BioLogos took up the cause.
But I keep hearing Vegans blaming Christianity for attitude towards animals, as in we are the masters of the earth and can do whatever we want. Not that I agree but it’s just what’s being said in certain circles.
There is lots of moral issues to environmentalism but that probably needs a separate thread so I won’t be going of topic
As my best friend in high school was fond of saying, if God didn’t want us to eat animals why would he have nade them out of meat?
Seriously though when look at how much more resource intensive livestock is to raise than plant based food, we probably should choose between many billions fewer of us and a less protein heavy diet.
You are right, and raising cattle causes the most environmental degradation of any livestock. Being ruminants, they produce a lot of methane, a greenhouse gas which is worse than carbon dioxide. I’ll get a lot of pushback for saying this,
I am also a vegan. Have been for over 13 years now.
Some in here disagree, but I personally was inspired a lot by the Bible to not eat animals. The Bible definitely permits people to eat meat , and it’s part of the Jewish sacrifice system and Passover. So I do t think veganism has to do with morality , such as sin or righteousness, but with ethics and personal convictions. The Bible gives plenty of reasons to see animals as more than meat.
The creation myth starts off with the garden seemingly being a paradise with just plant based meals. It mentions the only food given to making was the plants. In the story of Noah it mentions that it was not until after the flood that humanity was permitted to eat meat. Yes I consider all of that mythological D well. Then in revelation we the the end times mythology speaking of a restored paradise on earth when heaven overlaps with it where there is no more meat eating. In Romans, Paul states that if eating meat bothers your conscience then don’t eat meat because to do so for yourself would be a sin.
Also vegetarians, and veganism, had its major jumpstart by christians. The original alternative to a animal based breakfast was cereals created and commercialized by Christians.
But there are some , many Christians, who confuse permitting is to consume animals is the same as why they were placed here. Similar to how divorce is permitted, but it was not the intent of marriage to be a breakable bond.
Not just among monks and nuns but among mainstream Christianity because of the 7th Day movements. It was the overwhelming main driving force of a plant based diet in western nations.
Yes, Seventh Day Adventists are vegetarians, but they have never been much of an influence. The exception is young-earth creationism where their prophet started the modern young-earth creationism movement.
I strongly disagree. For a fact, everything I’ve read about the early history of vegetarianism in western civilization, especially USA goes back to 7th day. They jump started the plant based breakfasts and many other things.
For example, when reading through this, and following the links, you repeatedly see a connection of Christianity and vegetarianism in the western world.