Moral Ground by Kathleen Dean Moore

Author:Kathleen Dean Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Published: 2011-05-26T04:00:00+00:00

ETHICAL ACTION

How can we protect the flourishing of all life?

If it’s true that we can’t destroy our habitats without destroying our lives, as Rachel Carson said, and if it’s true that we are in the process of laying waste the planet, then our ways of living will come to an end—some way or another, sooner or later, gradually or catastrophically—and some new way of life will begin. But how can we even begin to protect all of the Earth’s flourishing life? The job is unimaginably big. In the face of a catastrophe on the scale of global warming, what is the use of trying?

The answer may come from scientific studies of other devastations. When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, the ash-laden blast leveled forests for dozens of miles around. Scientists thought it would take dusty centuries for life to spread in from the edges of the rubble plain. But now, only thirty years later, the mountain is carpeted in moss and purple lupine and laced with the tracks of deer and fox. What the scientists learned is that when the mountain blasted ash across the landscape, the devastation never touched some small places hidden in the lee of rocks and trees. “Refugia,” scientists called them: places of safety where life endures. From the refugia, small animals emerged blinking onto the blasted plain. And from a thousand, ten thousand, maybe countless small places of enduring life, meadows returned to the mountain.

This suggests that if destructive forces are building under our lives, then our work is to create refugia of the imagination. Refugia: places where new ideas are sheltered and encouraged to grow.

We can create small pockets of flourishing, and we can make ourselves into overhanging rock ledges to protect their life, so that the full measure of possibility can spread and reseed the world. Doesn’t matter what it is; if it’s generous to life, imagine it into existence. Create a bicycle cooperative, a seed-sharing community, a wildlife sanctuary. Write poems for children. Sing duets to the dying. Tear out the irrigation system and plant native grass. Imagine water pumps. Dig a community garden in the Kmart parking lot. Learn to cook with the full power of the sun at noon.

We don’t have to start from scratch. We can restore pockets of flourishing lifeways that have been damaged over time. Breach a dam. Plant a riverbank. Vote for schools. Introduce the neighbors to each others’ children. Celebrate the solstice. Write a story in an old language. Slow a rivercourse with a fallen log.

Maybe most effective of all, we can protect refugia that already exist: they are all around us. Protect the marshy ditch behind the mall. Ban poisons from the edges of the road. Save the hedges in your neighborhood. Boycott what you don’t believe in. Refuse to participate in what is wrong. There is power in this—an attention that notices and celebrates thriving where it occurs, a conscience that refuses to destroy it. These acts will be the wellspring of the new world.

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