Ryan McGovern Making Nature Sacred 3

Ryan McGovern-Making Nature Sacred, Emerson’s Nature 5-1-09

In Making Nature Sacred, the author has a section about Emerson’s Nature. He goes on to say that one of Emerson’s primary contributions to environmental theology is “an insistence on nature’s ultimately non utilitarian, sacred status as cosmos rather than as purely material commodity” (Making Nature Sacred, 90). I think this is a very relevant piece of environmental philosophy to this day. There is a big argument going on right now over the environment and what our responsibility to it is. Some will say that we should progress human development as far as possible, and help as many people as possible, and if the environment has to suffer, then so be it. But others will argue that by letting the environment be destroyed, we are going to eventually let humanity be destroyed. It is hard to invest in new green technologies when there is so much poverty and sickness in the world, because that technological development money could be going towards the people that need it. Also, it doesn’t make a whole bunch of business sense right now to completely switch to new technologies. Because if we develop a new way to power cars, then there will be less demand for traditional fuels, which will drive down prices of those fuels, thus making traditional fuels more appealing again. But I guess we have to ask ourselves if the dollar is the only green that we care about. So I think Emerson got it right, that we should not just see paper and lumber when we look at trees, but something more, something living, something that can teach us about ourselves.