This is a guest essay from Chip Ward, author and board member of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. It was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission.
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Despite the media feeding frenzy, we still may be asking ourselves, "Just who exactly is Sarah Palin?" Mixed in with the Davy-Crockett-meets-SuperMom vignettes -- all those moose-hunting, ice-fishing, snowmobiling, baby-juggling, and hockey-momming moments -- we've also learned that she doesn't care much for her former brother-in-law and wasn't afraid to use her office to go after his job as a state trooper; that she was for the "bridge to nowhere" before she was against it; that she's against earmarks unless they benefit her constituents; that she can deliver a snappy wisecracking speech, thinks banning books in libraries is okay, considers herself a pit bull with lipstick, and above all else, wants to drill the ever-lovin' daylights out of every corner of her home state (which John McCain's handlers have somehow translated into being against Big Oil, since she insisted on a marginally bigger cut of the profits for Alaskans).
Oh, and -- not that this is very important to Americans or the planet -- she now thinks that global warming might possibly be human-made ... sorta ... though she didn't before, despite the fact that the state she governs is on the frontline of climate change. And, of course, she's a classic right-wing, fundamentalist Christian: against abortion: check; against same-sex marriage: check; against stem-cell research: check; favors teaching Creationism in public schools: check.
It's that last item, her willingness to put Creationism up against the teaching of evolutionary science in the classroom on a he-says-she-says basis, that's far more revealing of just who our new Republican vice presidential candidate is than we generally assume. It deserves the long, hard look that it hasn't yet gotten. Most Democrats and progressives tend to think of the teaching of Creationism as a mere sidebar item on their agenda of political don't-likes, but it's not. Sarah Palin's bias toward Creationism is a window into her political soul and a measure of John McCain's hypocrisy.
It's possible that the public has been fooled into thinking of McCain as a "maverick" when it comes to his party's abysmal record on the environment, but his selection of Palin as his running mate sends quite a different message. In fact, he's potentially put future generations on a "bridge to nowhere" (or perhaps to the fourteenth century). Whether we know it or not, we should now be duly warned: The Palin nomination is the equivalent of launching a "surge strategy" in the Republican war on the environment.
The Republican holy war on nature (continued)
For the past eight years, the Bush administration's assault on environmental quality has been so deliberate, destructive, and hostile that the usual explanations -- while not wrong -- are hardly adequate. Yes, Republican animosity to government regulation is long-standing. Yes, they believe in the power of an unrestricted marketplace to shape our collective behaviors. And yes, they emphasize property rights over notions of the commons and have often been comfortable sacrificing wildlife, air, and water quality in the pursuit of profits. In addition, despite recent claims, they are indeed the party of Big Oil. But none of this quite explains the Bush administration's shameful record on the environment. In the final analysis, the only explanation that fits the nightmare of the last eight years is this: It has been on a holy war against nature -- and the nomination of Sarah Palin is essentially an insurance policy taken out on its continuation.
The idea that the environment matters is ingrained in Americans, even those who don't think of themselves as environmentally inclined. Democrats and Republicans alike have learned the hard way that the decisions we make about what we allow into our air, water, and soil gets translated into our skin, blood, and bones. We now sense that we all live downwind and downstream from one another, and that it is prudent to practice restraint and take precautions when making environmental decisions.
This unspoken consensus is one of the great accomplishments of the modern environmental movement. The policies of the Bush regime have been shocking and shameful exactly because they fly in the face of these shared values and beliefs. Only when we grasp that the narrow Republican base both Bush and McCain pander to no longer shares these basic values and beliefs, does their war on the natural world make sense.
If you believe that a look-alike God made the world for you to dominate and use, that you are among God's chosen few, and that he will provide for you no matter what you do to your surroundings, then you are likely to see yourself as above the natural order. If you believe that the world will be ending soon anyway, that you will be "raptured" while non-believers are "left behind" (as fundamentalist Tim LaHaye so vividly describes the process in his bestselling novels), then precaution and restraint are moot. Remember, more than 60 percent of the nation's 60 million evangelicals believe that the Bible is literally true, every last word of it, and more than a third believe the end of the world will occur in their lifetime.
That's why a pro-Creationist stand is no sideline issue, but the litmus test that reveals whether a politician shares the religious right's ideology -- a literal interpretation of the Bible, a disparaging attitude towards science, belief in mankind's unfettered dominion over the natural world, and a willingness to impose its religious doctrines on others.
Both of Sarah Palin's churches -- the Wasilla Assembly of God where her faith was shaped as a child and the Wasilla Bible Church that she attends today -- believe in just such a literal interpretation of the Bible. From Biblical study, Creationists have calculated that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old. That this is contradicted by the fossil record matters little to those who also think Revelations is a reasonable guide to foreign policy in the 21st century. Asked during her run for governor if Creationism should be taught in the public schools, Palin responded that the theory of evolution and Creationism should be taught side by side, and then "the students could debate" which is true.
Why evolution matters
When many Americans think "evolution," they probably recall that illustration of an ape, then a Neanderthal, then a hairy caveman, and finally, a modern homo sapiens walking in a line and growing ever more upright as they proceed. That illustration crudely highlights the aspect of evolutionary theory that pinches the nerves of Christian zealots who prefer a creation scenario like the one painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel -- God tagging man with life, finger to finger. But the human common ancestry with primates is just a fraction of what evolutionary theory is all about.
Evolution is largely about connection and interaction -- the linear connection of one species evolving into another (speciation), but also how species fill niches created by one another, how they interact, exchanging energy and information, how they compete as well as cooperate, and how all of them -- from microbial soils to migrating birds -- form dynamic communities that, in turn, are also woven together, web within web within web. Pull one thread of that living tapestry and you tug at so many others, which is why precaution is so wise.
Evolutionary theory does not preclude God. It uncovers the how of life, but leaves the why of it quite open. Many devout Jews and Christians, even evangelicals, believe in evolution, just not Biblical literalists.
Evolutionary theory shapes and informs the ecological sciences that are the very basis for our environmental laws and policies. The emerging, European-led global movement -- so far lacking U.S. participation -- that aims to deal with global climate chaos and restore the earth's vital operating systems is premised on understandings gained through the evolutionary sciences. Cast doubt on those sciences and you undermine the basis for changes that are urgently needed.
The Creationist campaign means to dumb down and confuse our kids by pushing the evolutionary sciences off the educational stage. America's Taliban want to make room for Creationism's dull sister, Intelligent Design, in order to undermine the emerging environmental consensus that is our best hope for a sustainable future. According to that consensus, we humans are embedded in natural systems that are in crisis; our well-being, even our survival, depends on the vitality of those systems.
Kiss the polar bear goodbye
So how does all this translate into actual behavior? As governor, Sarah Palin recently sued the Interior Department to keep the polar bear -- the iconic symbol of her state -- from being listed as a threatened species under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. Additional protections, she argued, might inhibit oil and gas drilling and pipeline construction in the region.
The Endangered Species Act is a favorite target of the religious right since they are convinced it elevates lowly creatures to, or above, the status of human beings. They see "charismatic carnivores" and other protected species as the means used by conservationists to pursue broader protections for whole ecosystems. And that's true enough, in that "keystone species" like the polar bear regulate a wide network of relationships within a whole ecosystem. Those bears, for example, keep a lid on seal populations that could otherwise devastate fish populations and skew the arctic food web. Numerous animal and bird species depend on scavenging bear kills for food. But without reference to ecological science, the role of a keystone species and the value of biodiversity itself are hard to appreciate.
Palin, of course, also wants to drill for oil in the ecologically fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and has expressed her hope that she can convince McCain to abandon his opposition to it. She is an active promoter of Alaska's aerial hunting program where wolves and bears (again, keystone species) are shot from the air or chased until exhausted, after which the pilot lands the plane and a gunner can shoot them point blank. She tried to raise the bounty on wolves to encourage more killing and strongly opposed a ballot initiative to end the aerial hunting program. In the Lower 48, we learned the hard way that eliminating top predators upsets a chain of relationships in their ecosystems. No wolves in Yellowstone meant big, lazy herds of elk trashing streams, driving away beavers, and thus eliminating the wetlands that beavers create -- a cascade of unintended, harmful consequences. That's why naturalists are reintroducing wolves in parts of the West, and health is returning to the land with them. Under Palin, Alaska is going to relive our old mistakes at a time when Alaskans -- and humanity -- can ill afford it.
The carbon queen
Even in Alaska, known oil reserves are dropping. Nonetheless, Palin is determined above all else to keep the current flow of energy moving, explore and develop new oil fields, and ramp up natural gas and coal production. She gave special permission to Chevron to triple the toxic waste it can pour into the waters of the Cook Inlet, despite scientific research concluding that the Beluga whale population there is endangered. She has refused to pressure Exxon to pay-up for damages caused by the infamous Exxon-Valdez oil spill. She has supported virtually every mining proposal that has landed on her desk, including one for a vast gold mine in the Bristol Bay watershed that would risk the world's largest run of sockeye salmon. She favors open-cast mining for coal in the pristine Brooks Range. She has refused to enhance safety measures for trans-Pacific shipping along the Alaskan coast. All that and she's been governor for barely two years!
Her deplorable environmental record was such common knowledge that John McCain couldn't have missed it, even if he napped through his vetting committee's report.
So if the McCain/Palin ticket is elected, you should know what to expect. Although John McCain may once have openly refused to subscribe to the beliefs of the Republican Party's religious right, famously describing them as "agents of intolerance," his selection of Sarah Palin is a message (and not just to the party's fundamentalist right): If you thought that he understands the need to kick our fossil-fuel addiction and address global warming, if you believed his promises to build a green economy, forget about it. A McCain/Palin administration, just like the one before it, will continue -- and this is the best-case scenario -- to fiddle while the planet burns.
Driving into the future without a map
Ed Kalnins is Sarah Palin's former pastor at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, which she attended for 26 years. He sees powerful signs that the end of the world is drawing nigh and assured a London Times reporter that Biblical scripture specifically mentions shortages of oil and wars for its control. When the end comes, he expects to be "raptured" with other righteous Christians and spared the suffering of those of us who will be left behind. He believes the apocalyptic destruction of our planet will happen in his own lifetime; in fact, that is exactly the future he hopes for. He has urged his congregation to make ready a "refuge" for good Christians fleeing northward in "the Last Days." Although Kalnin's orientation may seem -- to be polite -- extreme, it is typical enough of those who push a Creationist agenda. And it's a perspective Sarah Palin knows well, having spent a lifetime in Kalnin's Pentecostal church, and even now, she is in no hurry to disown it.
We need environmental science in our schools more than ever. An ecologically illiterate generation of students will be ill-prepared to meet our real, less-than-rapturous future. They won't have a clue about what's happening around them or how to deal with the damage we've done. They won't be able to create new technologies that mimic nature's models for recycling waste and energy. They will drive blindly into the future, burning fossil fuels, without a map they can read. They may even let the Ed Kalnins of our world take the wheel.
The evolution vs. creationism debate appears to be an argument over the distant past. But it's actually about the future. It's about, in fact, who will define the cultural mindset that will generate that future. Let us pray it is not defined by a pit bull with lipstick who thinks she is "tasked by God" to drill for oil.
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Comments
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Spence Posted 4:40 pm
23 Sep 2008
The only way to counter this spiral of extremism is with shame and legislation. Shame those who would waste the sacred inheritance of our natural resources. Legislate against those who would play out their solipsistic passion plays of macho posturing on a stage of crushed species and broken ecosystems. The only way to deal with the Palins of the world is to beat them, and then mock them. They will never give up their willed ignorance, never achieve a deep view of the complex miracle of evolution and the world it has wrought.
It's their loss. Let's make sure it is never ours.
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mrLee Posted 10:30 pm
23 Sep 2008
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John former Marine Posted 11:49 pm
23 Sep 2008
What's scary about Bible-believers like Palin is that she, and the other Pentacostals I know, can choice-pick a few snippets of science that they find to their advantage. They take incomplete information or small data sets and bend it to fit their view of the world (which is due to end any day now).
If you want to understand what a Christian can do with limited understanding of science, I recommend you look up the Pentacostal doctrine of "Serpent Seed." From what I remember from my childhood, basically, they've mixed Calvinist predestination with a limited understanding of genetics. They believe that the serpent, before he was "cast down", was an upright, human-like primate that we would call a big hairy sasquatch or yeti or bigfoot (a.k.a. - the "missing link") This big hairy man seduced Eve with his big juicy fruit and she ate of it. Then even went home to her cuckold Adam and told him she had just tried something new and they shared some fruit together as well. The result of Eve's day of gorging on "fruit" was that she got pregnant...with twins. One of the boys, Abel, was the son of Adam and was pure genetic goodness...let's say XX. Cain, on the other hand, was a genetic cross with the spawn of Satan and so was born to be bad...XY. Now many generations of humans later, we are all descended from Eve, Adam, and the Serpent. Some of us are, by our genetics (XX), pre-destined to righteousness and heaven-bound. Others of you are unfortunate to be carrying the Serpent gene XY and are all pre-destined to be Catholics or Muslims or Atheists and go to hell.
Does that sound a little wierd to you? Well maybe a reporter should ask Palin what her opinions are on Serpent Seed doctrine and genetics.
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
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Kit Stolz Posted 4:06 am
24 Sep 2008
On the same subject, today Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has an unusually good op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that includes a hugely damning quote from Palin (for rationalists, at least):
"When oil profits are at stake, her fantasy world appears to have no boundaries. About American's deadly oil dependence, she mused recently, "I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can't drill our way out of our problem."
I guess the only difference between Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney is ... lipstick."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kennedy24-2008s ...
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John former Marine Posted 12:12 am
25 Sep 2008
I do, however, think that most people would be totally shocked (since everybody is talking about genetic stuff these days) if they were to hear about the rediculous views Pentacostals hold on genetics (and how these views would influence policy, their implications in racism, etc.). I know that an understanding of geologic time is very important to being science-literate but there are a lot more shocking things about fundamentalism that could be exposed.
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
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MAD MAC Posted 2:04 am
25 Sep 2008
Victory in Pattani
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caniscandida Posted 4:38 am
25 Sep 2008
<<
"Is that Dr. Leakey?" [asks Mma Ramotswe, pointing to a photo in the magazine]
Mma Makutsi nodded. "Yes, Mma," she said, "that is him. He is holding a skull which belonged to a very early person. This person lived a long time ago and is very late."
Mma Ramotswe found herself being drawn in. "And this very late person," she said. "Who was he?"
"The magazine says that he was a person when there were very few people about," explained Mma Makutsi. "We all lived in East Africa then."
"Everybody?"
"Yes. Everybody. My people. Your people. All people. We all came from the same small group of ancestors. Dr Leakey has proved that."
Mma Ramotswe was thoughtful. "So we are all brothers and sisters, in a sense?"
"We are," said Mma Makutsi. "We are all the same people. Eskimos, Russians, Nigerians. They are the same as us. Same blood. Same DNA."
"DNA?," asked Mma Ramotswe. "What is that?"
"It is something which God used to make people," explained Mma Makutsi. "We are all made up of DNA and water."
Mma Ramotswe considered the implications of these revelations for a moment. She had no views on Eskimos and Russians, but Nigerians were a different matter. But Mma Makutsi was right; she reflected: if universal brotherhood -- and sisterhood -- meant anything, it would have to embrace the Nigerians as well.
"If people knew this," she said, "if they knew that we were all from the same family, would they be kinder to one another, do you think?"
Mma Makutsi put down the magazine. "I'm sure they would," she said. "If they knew that, they they would find it very difficult to do unkind things to others. They might even want to help them a bit more."
>>
Creationists have tended to reject the theory of evolution for a number of reasons. Two anti-intellectual reasons are that (1) the theory of evolution ignores the existence and activity of God the Creator, and (2) a biblical religionist's acceptance of an extra-biblical source of authority which literally (and superficially) contradicts a biblical text is not permitted and would be sinful.
But there is another, which is more respectable, and even noble, however wrong-headed: (3) the theory of evolution is the foundation of an ethics that is no better than the Law of the Jungle, and would justify brutal selfishness, competitiveness, aggression, and the dismissal of altruism and charity as praiseworthy kinds of conduct.
Of course, as the brilliant Mma Makutsi recognizes, the evolution-based scientific story of life on Earth should actually stimulate a stronger sense of ethical cooperation and mutual regard. (And although she is concerned here exclusively with humanity, I would extend the DNA-linked "family" to include all living creatures, the sentient members of which family deserve to receive from us some ethical regard -- which is why my sign-off message used to say, "Chickens are our cousins.")
Genesis, the first book of the Bible, also links all humanity through genealogies. But we observe that, so far from uniting us in one happy family, it has only served to promote tribalism, of one kind or another. In particular: ethics for Israelites is NOT the same as ethics for Gentiles; on the one hand, Israelites are required to keep a large code of commandments which are not enjoined on Gentiles; on the other, Israelites are NOT required to treat Gentiles with the same regard that they are to treat fellow-Israelites. One of the most horrible legacies of the Bible is in fact the justification of the enslavement of African people by Europeans, on the basis of Noah's curse of his disrespectful son Ham, consigning Ham's descendants (viz. Africans) to be slaves to the descendants of his respectful brothers, Shem/Sem (ancestor of Asians) and Japhet (ancestor of Europeans).
Even that supposedly enlightened Israelite Jesus of Nazareth bespeaks that ancient prejudice: cf. Matthew 10.5s., his mission to the disciples, "These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, 'Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not; But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel"; and again, Matthew 15.22-24, his cold words to the (Gentile) Canaanite mother: "And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, 'Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David: my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.' But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, 'Send her away; for she crieth after us.' But he answered and said, 'I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'"
This prejudice persists in this country (to say nothing about racist Israeli animosity towards Arabs). The defense by some prominent Orthodox Jews of the Brooklyn-based Rubashkin family, owners of the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa, who are accused of hideous mistreatment of their Gentile immigrant workers, mostly uneducated people from Guatemala, is a terrific disgrace. Their implication could not be more clear: what happens to Gentiles does not matter at all, so long as we Jews get our kosher meat. Fortunately, many other Jews, upholding more noble biblical and Jewish traditions, have been very critical of the Rubashkins, and have added stipulations regarding social justice to the criteria of what deserves to be called "kosher."
On Michelangelo's famous image on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, showing the near touch of the fingertips of God and Adam: This is conventionally called "The Creation of Adam," but that is not accurate. Adam is already created, and animate; if anything, the image depicts the final step of the creation process, in which God bestows on Adam his immortal human soul, on top of the animal soul which is already allowing him to look up and raise his arm.
Sarah Palin, and Christians of her ilk (NOT Roman Catholics, needless to say), would of course reject the Michelangelo image as representing anything that they believe for at least three reasons: (1) it is an image, and "Bible-believing Christians" have nothing to do with images; (2) it depicts a classically ideally beautiful nude man, which is shameful; and (3) it has nothing to do with the account of the creation of the first man in Genesis 2, which describes Yahweh fashioning a body out of clay, then breathing life into it.
Still, the (universal?) Christian doctrine of the special creation by God of each individual's soul, or personhood, whether at birth or at conception, is a frightening example of "stovepiping." It especially reinforces Protestant individualism: the only relationship which really matters is that between the individual and God; other relationships are more or less significant or negligible.
Ergo, the theory of evolution provides at least as solid a foundation for a praiseworthy ethics as does biblical anthropology.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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