Lavish parades for returning U.S. troops in Washington, DC and New York City have ended, giving Americans a sense of closure to the war in the Persian Gulf. But the forces our country helped unleash in the Persian Gulf rage on, as they will for years. The region's air, water, and soil -- and those who depend on them -- remain under assault.
U.S. forces laid waste to Iraq's electric power grid, which in turn disabled sewage and water systems. Raw waste flowed into streets and rivers, and diseases spread. Thousands of Iraqi children are dying from disease and starvation. Meanwhile, Kuwaiti oil wells set afire by Iraqi troops remain ablaze. Media stories have burned in our minds images of the fires, which darken the sky and pollute the region.
The Persian Gulf devastation is a testament to the dangers Art and Jocele Meyer write of in their recent release Earthkeepers: Environmental Perspectives on Hunger, Poverty, and Injustice. Though written before the Persian Gulf war, the book anticipates the risks of just such a conflict. The war in large measure was waged over cheap oil. "Cheap energy is what makes the affluent lifestyle of the industrialized world possible," the Meyers write. A threat to the finite oil supply -- and affluent lifestyle -- raises the risk of war, with the attendant destruction of people and the land where oil flows.
Earthkeepers considers the links between war and ecology, waste and want. As demonstrated in the Persian Gulf, war and the preparations for war scar the earth. The cycle also works in reverse, they point out, with a degraded environment leading to hunger, poverty, and conflict. The conflict may be over dwindling supplies of oil or clean drinking water. The result in all of this is "human suffering and the groaning of the earth."
What is needed, the Meyers write, is the rediscovery of a "biblical creation stewardship theology." They hold two themes to be central to biblical teaching about the land: The land is a gift from God, and that gift is to be received and cared for as a trust. They write: "We therefore have a responsibility to tend the creation as we use it for our own development. However, we must also respect it in its own right as a tangible manifestation of God's creative energy."
TOO OFTEN IGNORANCE and greed lead to exploitation of the creation. The book surveys many of the ensuing troubles. There are chapters on hazardous waste, water pollution, and soil erosion; on population pressures, genetic engineering, and family farms. The accompanying statistics, of which there are many, are sobering. For example, by the year 2000, less than 5 percent of the Earth's surface will be arable.
A quotation from Isaiah ("and the remaining trees of his forests will be so few that a child could write them down") opens the chapter on rainforests. Almost 40 percent of the world's tropical rainforest had been destroyed by 1980, with millions of acres continuing to disappear every year, according to their sources. The Meyers say those who use the forest for fuel and farming are putting pressure on the fragile ecosystem. They also implicate U.S. lifestyles since beef from cattle raised on rainforest pastures goes to fast food chains.
The couple, trained in biology and home economics, served in recent years with Mennonite Central Committee, a relief, service, and development agency of the North American Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches. Their MCC experience, which included work in Grenada and Haiti, and their own background in farming strongly influenced their views.
One of the best chapters in the book tells of the couple's Ohio farm. In 1973, they bought an 80-acre property in the country. As they soon discovered, the property that sounded ideal in the realtor's listing ("eighty acres, some wooded, big barn, year-round spring, house needs some work, remote") needed more than an investment of some occasional weekends. Nearly half of the land bore scars of strip mining. In places the brush hid mounds of cans and bottles.
The Meyers trimmed the grass and vegetation. They hauled away scrap metal for recycling. As they tended the land, native flowers and fruit trees appeared. On the strip-mined land, they planted trees -- 12,000 during the first 15 years after taking over the property. They raised strawberries and vegetables, tended an orchard, and kept chickens and steers. Later they bought 65 acres nearby, and invited other families to join them in a partnership.
This chapter is particularly compelling because it is so original. This is their story. They know the land, what harm came to it, and how care redressed the damage. They know how to set up a land trust allowing people to share a property. (Copies of the agreement that guides the group's life together are available.)
I found myself wishing for more than a short chapter on this land reclamation project and experiment in community living. How did they do it? Do they intermingle with neighbors? Do they advocate other people leaving the city to restore land in the country? How can residents in the country and those in the city best share their respective resources? Perhaps that story will be told by Jocele Meyer in another book someday. (Art Meyer died in March, shortly after Earthkeepers was released).
Much of the material in the book is drawn from other sources, which are duly credited. But the sheer volume of information is sometimes numbing, especially when presented without much interpretation. In some sections statistics are piled on top of statistics and quotations follow quotations. Some readers may find this tiresome. Reading the book in small sections should help. Read in that way, the book also would be a good resource for discussion groups.
That said, this book has much to recommend it. Theirs is an urgent call for using less energy and living more responsibly, for "the sustenance and fulfillment of the one human family." They share some encouraging signs in the epilogue: trees planted in Haiti; materials recycled in Kitchener, Ontario; life revived in Lake Erie. The Meyers close with a prayerful hope: "May God's will be fulfilled on earth as it is in heaven."
Duane Sherer Stoltzfus was a journalist for The Record in Hackensack, New Jersey when this review appeared.
Earthkeepers: Environmental Perspectives on Hunger, Poverty, and Injustice. By Art and Jocele Meyer. Herald Press, 1991. $12.95 (paper).
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