Roots of Our Ecological Crisis

¶ … Roots of Our Ecological Crisis is an argumentative attempt to place blame for mankind's woes at the feet of several different factions. The purpose of this essay is to examine White's writing and present an explanation for his views while concluding with an alternative argument that addresses and solves many of the problems that White clamored about in this piece.

I agree with many of the ideas contained within this piece but the very premise that this essay is based upon is clearly logically flawed. White assumed, and clearly enunciated in his title, that the world is in a crisis. This particular viewpoint colors and contextualizes all of the ensuing material that eventually blames Christianity for an imbalance of nature of man.

Another premise of this writing that I disagree with is the idea that man and nature are separate from each other. White appeared to have serious disdain for followers of the Christian faith because he believed that their faith was causing an insurrection throughout the rest of nature by treating it as resource. To underlie this opinion he wrote " Our science and technology have grown out of Christian attitudes toward man's relation to nature which are almost universally held not only by Christians and neo-Christians but also by those who fondly regard themselves as post-Christians."

White does distinguish that fact that Christianity is too large of an entity to paint such broad strokes with, but does narrow his focus down to a version he labeled Western Christianity. His brief historical account of the marriage between science and Christianity does explain some of the more irrational ideas that are experienced, but I see it differently.

Christianity is only meagerly practiced and holds very little threat to the ecology or anything else for that matter. The spiritual fervor and discipline that was distinguished by the life of Jesus Christ and his followers has had very little to do with any supposed crisis in present times. This is like suggesting that the Crusades was a Christian themed event, when, in actuality, it was nothing more than a political maneuver seeking more power for the masters of war of the time.

Organized religion and power structures that incorporate these institutions are the real target of White's criticism, but it seems he can't bring himself to blame the very system that gave him his power and voice. To me, this article reveals White's guilt and self-hatred of his understanding of the world and he needs to blame an easy target to alleviate himself from this painful confusion.

White's opinion, that St. Francis failed, accounted for his deepest fears. He wrote " Saint Francis, proposed what he thought was an alternative Christian view of nature and man's relation to it; he tried to substitute the idea of the equality of all creatures, including man, for the idea of man's limitless rule of creation. He failed." St. Francis did not fail, White did.