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> I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom
>you never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and just
>plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how
>environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply
>beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's
>experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.
> The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill
>McKibben. He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of
>journalistic heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the environment.
>His bestseller "The End of Nature" carried on where Rachel Carson's "Silent
>Spring" left off.
>
> Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we
>journalists routinely cover - conventional, manageable programs like budget
>shortfalls and pollution - may be about to convert to chaotic,
>unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he
>writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment,
>creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is
>causing the melt of the artic to release so much freshwater into the North
>Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening gulf
>stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of changes
>that could radically alter civilizations.
>
> That's one challenge we journalists face - how to tell such a story
>without coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most
>want to understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and
>hear.
>
> As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable
>narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers,
>there is an even harder challenge - to pierce the ideology that governs
>official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my
>lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from
>the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress.
>For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of
>power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven
>true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by
>what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple,
>their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is
>the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts
>
> Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the
>Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging
>Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that
>protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent
>return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree
>is felled, Christ will come back."
>
> Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was
>talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out
>across the country. They are the people who believe the bible is literally
>true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is
>accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens
>went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right - the
>rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in
>America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series written by
>the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye.
>These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the
>19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages
>from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the
>imagination of millions of Americans.
>
> Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George
>Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him
>for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of
>its 'biblical lands,' legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering
>a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been
>converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True
>believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven,
>where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their
>political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts,
>and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.
>
> I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've
>reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West
>Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they feel
>called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
>That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish
>settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why
>the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of
>Revelations where four angels 'which are bound in the great river Euphrates
>will be released to slay the third part of man.' A war with Islam in the
>Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed - an essential
>conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the
>rapture index stood at 144-just one point below the critical threshold when
>the whole thing will blow, the son of god will return, the righteous will
>enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.
>
> So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to
>Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn
>Scherer - "The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see
>how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental
>destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed - even
>hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse.
>
> As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe
>lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S.
>Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total - more since
>the election - are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and
>186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings
>from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They
>include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch
>McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon
>Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt.
>The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was
>Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book
>of Amos on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that
>i will send a famine in the land." he seemed to be relishing the thought.
>
> And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found
>that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book
>of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible
>predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned
>to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some
>of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time
>gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such
>potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the
>environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and
>pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse
>foretold in the bible? Why care about global climate change when you and
>yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from
>oil to solar when the same god who performed the miracle of the loaves and
>fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"
>
> Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord
>will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's
>providential history. You'll find there these words: "the secular or
>socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a
>pie...that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece.' however, "he
>Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and that there is no
>shortage of resources in god's earth...while many secularists view the
>world as overpopulated, Christians know that god has made the earth
>sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the
>people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that
>militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the
>foot soldiers on November 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a
>powerful driving force in modern American politics.
>
> I can see in the look on your faces just how hard it is for the
>journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put
>it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without
>expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can
>to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think
>of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the
>market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?"
>And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."
>
> I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with the Eric Chivian and the
>Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the
>natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to
>the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that
>I don't want to believe that - it's just that I read the news and connect
>the dots:
>
> I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection
>Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the
>environment. This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air
>Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare
>plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National
>Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand
>if actions might damage natural resources.
>
> That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle
>tailpipe inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports utility
>vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.
>
> That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep
>certain information about environmental problems secret from the public
>
> That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting
>coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal
>companies.
>
> That wants to open the artic wildlife refuge to drilling and increase
>drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of
>undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild
>land in America.
>
> I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental
>Protection Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars - $2 million of
>it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council - to
>pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These
>pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead
>of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going
>to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's
>clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.
>
> I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's
>friends at the international policy network, which is supported by Exxon
>Mobile and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate
>change is 'a myth,' sea levels are not rising, scientists who believe
>catastrophe is possible are 'an embarrassment.'
>
> I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent
>appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene)
>riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections
>from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in
>Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public
>lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial
>habitats in California.
>
> I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the
>computer - pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age 10;
>of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine months. I see the future looking
>back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we
>know not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's
>not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future.
>Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."
>
> And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are
>greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to
>sustain indignation at injustice?
>
> What has happened to our moral imagination?
>
> On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "'How do you see the world?" And
>Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly."
>
> I see it feelingly.
>
> The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a
>journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be
>the truth that sets us free - not only to feel but to fight for the future
>we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for
>cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those
>photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human health
>is what the ancient Israelites called 'hocma' - the science of the
>heart....the capacity to see....to feel....and then to act...as if the
>future depended on you.
>
> Believe me, it does.
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