The weirdest story from 2007

January the first is one of those round up moments. The tele is full of reviews of the past year. For me the weirdest story of 2007 was the one about the Russian submarine that planted a flag in the Arctic ocean 14,000 feet below the North Pole (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6927395.stm). The Arctic is thought to contain oil, gas and mineral reserves and the Russians were claiming these for themselves. This behaviour was made more bizarre by the fact that their ability to do this was dependent on a massive retreat of Arctic sea ice this summer, far greater than has ever been recorded before, and due, of course, to global warming http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/us/01climate.html . So here are these people diving into these newly accessible waters so that they can help us burn more oil and devastate the climate even further.

What is going on here? At root we probably have a wrong-headed idea about property and property rights. The actions of Russia in the Arctic are all too similar in principle to the staking out of claims by immigrants to North America and the dispossession of the indigenous Indians. And the thinking that lies behind both is traceable to John Locke. It was Locke who gave us a philosophical justfication of property rights in terms of rights being accorded to a person who worked a particular piece of land. So stake it out and work it and it is yours. ( http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1056550072  )

It is now so obvious that we cannot go on like this. We have to have a more responsible view of the natural resources of the earth. As our oil resources diminish we are going to have to actively manage these stocks. The same goes for all the other resources of the earth that are currently threatened by humanity’s rapacious behaviour. ( see http://globalpublicmedia.com )

It is very difficult to see how we will make this transition toward active management of the earth’s resources. One key factor in the whole process will be how we see the earth itself and our relationship to it. Can we recover a proper humility toward the earth and a proper sense of responsiblity? Can faith in a creator help us to do this? Perhaps it can if it is tied into a vision for Shalom?

We need to explore this further.