a religion of limits

There's a great article on the Grist today about the danger of letting economics be the deciding factor in environmental problems. I think the article summarizes the problem pretty nicely: "The whole growth thing becomes a toxic addiction." The problem with our economy is that we're addicted to growth, but unlimited, infinite growth is simply not possible in the real world. At some point, the physical laws of the universe kick in. And if we're not at that point yet, we're very close to it: peak oil, climate change, water shortages, rising food prices...and some of these are becoming obvious even to those of us insulated in comfortable middle-class American lives. How much farther do we need to sink before we can see reality?

So much of the debate about these problems centers around whether the cost of mitigation surpasses the cost of letting things continue as usual. I've even heard the insane argument that paying now to mitigate future disasters is tantamount to stealing from the poor (us) to give to the rich (future generations, because GDPs in developing countries will continue to increase indefinitely). I find it absurd that anyone would find this argument compelling, but I suppose if you look at historical trends (say, the last 50 or 100 years), it might make sense. But the assumption that these trends of unlimited economic growth will continue doesn't hold water in the real world--the physical world that has real, undeniable limits.

It is this inability to recognize the reality of limitations on anything--on growth, on potential, on money, on resources--that most makes me feel that America stopped being a Christian country a long, long time ago. My husband likes to say that the true religion of America is optimism: an unbridled belief that everything always has, always does, and always will continue to get better and better, forever and ever, amen. When I talk with people about resource limits, I'm inclined to agree with him. American Christians will often say that God wouldn't allow climate change, or peak oil, or drought to destroy our way of life--as though God has never allowed His people to suffer, or to become poor, or to die. But a longer view of history will quickly abolish that notion. I do not believe that Christianity is a religion of optimism; if anything, it would be more accurate to say that it's a religion of suffering. It is, after all, perhaps the only religion in which God chose to limit himself and place himself under the physical realities of life in the physical world: hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and even death.