Our Only World

            I begin with an apology.  I have been contributing book reviews for the Echofaith newsletter for going on three years, and have yet to review a Wendell Berry book.  That oversight ends here.

This Berry book consists of ten essays he wrote, mostly around 2013.  The contents of the essays go beyond environmental issues and climate change, but I include this book primarily because Berry has made me see an issue that most climate change activists don’t mention or spend little time discussing or analyzing; that is the abuse of and neglect of the land itself, whether forests or crop land.  More about that below.

I will mention briefly that Berry also takes on the topics of abortion and LBGTQ+ issues in one essay.  In his thoughtful way he doesn’t take sides, pro-abortion, or anti-abortion, for instance.  But he does make a cogent argument for how individuals can approach the issue and keep the politics out of it.  Thus defenders and opponents of abortion may argue against Berry, but he does expose the futility of present heated debates.

Back to environmental issues.  Here is what Berry says is the missing piece in considerations of how to care for the world:  “As evidence, I will mention only that, while the theme of climate change grows ever more famous and fearful, land abuse is growing worse, noticed by almost nobody.”

A prominent theme in Berry’s essays is the abuse of natural resources, primarily land, by industrial farming, and misinformed forestry practices.  “In the industrial land economies, from agriculture to mining, anything coming from the land that cannot be sold is treated as the enemy, and this includes natural and human communities.”  When Berry critiques industrial farming abuses, he points out that it is the land and local communities that suffer the consequences. 

Of course Berry does deride the industrial complex and government for causing and not mitigating climate change, fossil fuel uses, and consumption of fossil fuels, but his emphasis on the abuse and poisoning of the land itself is a much needed addition to climate solutions.

Another interesting caution Berry adds to addressing climate change is not to look so much into the future and getting alarmed or depressed, but to acknowledge our ability to do something in the present.  “Just so, I know from as many reasons that the alleged causes of climate change – waste and pollution – are wrong.  The right thing to do today, as always, is to stop, or start stopping, our habit of wasting and poisoning the good and beautiful things of the world, which once were called “divine gifts” and now are called “natural resources.”  That advice makes sense as something individuals can easily decide to do, and relieves us of despairing about the near future end of the world, or settling for living in a degraded environment.  Thinking about the present and what can be done will establish whatever future will come.  I can live more comfortably with that thinking.

One more theme Berry mentions, which has been noticeable to me in the upper Midwest is the growing interest in consuming local products, crops or meat.  He mentions the increased interest in buying locally in his essay on the 50 – year farm bill, proposed in 2009 by the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas.  For those of us in the Ecofaith network, increasing our efforts to participate in and encourage locally produced farm products is vital.

One last point that shows the humor and the thoughtful insight of Wendell Berry.

“The future has been equally, and relatedly, an irresistible subject.  How can so many people of certified intelligence have written so many pages on a subject about which nobody knows anything?”  At the end of the book, this:  “Only the present good is good.  It is the presence of the good – good work, good thoughts, good acts, good places – by which we know that the present does not have to be a nightmare of the future.  ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand’ because, if not at hand, it is nowhere.”