Animal welfare is a neglected issue for many creation care advocates. A blind spot perhaps, or an area of carefully-maintained ignorance (as it has been for me). It wasn't so for William Wilberforce. The Christian anti-slavery hero was also one of the co-founders of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He was a clear example of holistic thinking about mercy and justice.
Current Affairs
Taking the Measure of the Real Economy
A healthy economy is a necessary but not sufficient condition for human flourishing. C.S. Lewis would call it a “second thing” rather than a “first thing”. A healthy economy should serve higher goals of justice, peace, compassion, and rest. In the same manner that Wendell Berry asked “What Are People For?” we should always ask, “what is the economy for?”
Was “Cash for Clunkers” worth it?
Cash for clunkers is over. Was it a good economic investment? A good environmental one?
How many roads must a man walk down?
How many roads must a man walk down without sidewalks, crosswalks, adequate lighting, or bike lanes, before he realizes that his quality of life depends on the built environment? How we build our cities, and especially how we build our streets, determines an awful lot about how we live together.
Stimulus Funding for Public Transportation Takes the Concept of Paradox to a New Level
News stories out this week about the paradox (or irony--I always get confused) of stimulus funding for public transportation infrastructure projects, while local government budget shortfalls or short-sightedness is simultaneously leading to fare increases, service cuts, and job losses <http://t4america.org/transitcuts/>. Many local governments have obstinately refused to raise public support for operating costs of public … Continue reading Stimulus Funding for Public Transportation Takes the Concept of Paradox to a New Level
The Love of No Thing
Money isn’t real--it is a social construction, a medium of exchange standing in for real goods and real services. In the current economic and financial crisis, our misplaced concreteness, was much worse than valuing and pursuing a secondary good over a primary good. In the pursuit of mere money, and the mistaken belief that money earns the right to make more money, we have not been pursuing a first or a second thing. We have been pursuing no thing.
Green My Hood
Does caring for the environment always come at the expense of jobs? Is creation care something that must be traded off against people care? My church is tackling that challenge because we care about the beautiful but broken South Atlanta neighborhood we call home.
Gas Taxes with justice
But the fact is, we probably weren’t paying enough for gasoline even at its highest levels, because we weren’t paying the full costs of producing and using it...We would like pollution taxes to work through the substitution effect and not through the income effect. We don’t want our policies to leave households, and especially poor households, holding the bag while we solve pollution problems.
Stuck in the Middle on Climate
Those on the left sometimes seem to claim unanimity among climate scientists as to the culpability of people for global warming. Those on the right seem to imply there is major controversy about whether people are to blame. Neither view is correct.
Location, location, location: Residential choices and Creation Care
Last week NPR’s Morning Edition aired a pair of stories by Elizabeth Shogren, one about a family that moved out to the Atlanta suburbs, and one about a family that moved intown to a “new urban” development....Neither of them created the environment they inhabit; they’re just trying to do their best to live in it.
Tilling and Keeping 