Collide-a-scape

I’m a little jaded on the annual Earth Day love-in. If children showed appreciation for their parents only on Mother’s Day or Father’s day, the human race would be screwed. Is it a nice thing that we venerate our parents once a year? Sure. But who are we kidding: many of us approach these hallmark holidays like programmed robots. It’s Mother’s day: cue the flowers, the breakfast in bed, the Sunday Brunch.

So it is with Earth Day. Cue the park clean-ups, the lofty (and cautionary) speeches, the obligatory rallies. Yeah, been there, done that. Come the day after, it’s back to the same old, same old: taking the planet we live on for granted, just like we do ma and pa.

As The Washington Post correctly observes today in an excellent article, the original 1970 protest/celebration has now become

a national ritual halfway between a street party and a guilt trip.

What’s that you say, this one is special: 4oth anniversary. So was the 20th and here’s what legendary NYT columnist Russell Baker opined then, in an imaginary conversation between him and his editor:

Editor: If you intend to come out against Earth Day, go ahead and do it, but please, please, stop the hot air about public relations and get on with it.

Artist: You’d like me to come out against Earth Day, wouldn’t you? You think all humanity would be so horrified that they would rise up against me crying, ”What kind of monster would be down on Earth Day? What kind of paper hires such a beast?” Then you’d have an excuse to fire me – Editor (interrupting): If you want to write piffle nobody’s going to read, it’s no skin off my nose. I’m just advising you: If you’re against Earth Day, say so. If you’re not, just say whatever you’re trying to say and wind it up.

Saying which, the Editor walked away, shaking his head. How little he understands the literary art. Here am I, struggling to paint a portrait of a once great nation that has fallen prey to the public-relations plague, and all he wants is for me to take an editorial stand on Earth Day.

They just don’t make them like Baker anymore. In that same column, he expands on his thesis that a well-intentioned cause had become just another modern-day marketing extravaganza:

If good sense were involved here, of course I would be against Earth Day, for the simple reason that practically everybody else is for it. When you find something being supported by practically everybody, watch your step.

Anything that isn’t opposed by about 40 percent of humanity is either an evil business or so unimportant that it simply doesn’t matter. In the first category I list the Tonkin Gulf resolution, approved by every member of the Senate but two, which President Johnson later used to justify full-scale war in Vietnam.

The second category (simply doesn’t matter) is probably where Earth Day belongs. It’s a media event, which is to say a public-relations stunt for the folks of P.R. World.

So, anything different today? What’s the message enviro-minded citizens have internalized best after 40 years? According to that WaPo article, many people

have absorbed the lesson that the best thing for the environment is to buy things. This year, a poll conducted by professors at George Mason, Yale and American universities showed that respondents who were most alarmed about climate change were more than eight times more likely to express their concern through shopping for “green” products than by contacting an elected official multiple times about it.

Not today, though. It’s all about you, planet Earth.

On April 22, four years ago, I spent the day with Richard Cizik for this story. A lot has happened since then.

In 2005, Cizik was the vice president for government affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), an influential group consisting of 45,000 churches and some 30 million members. He had been NAE’s political point man in D.C. since Reagan.

By Earth Day 2005, when I caught up with Cizik for my story on unlikely environmental bedfellows, he was already taking heavy hits from his supposed friends on the Right, who abhorred his increasingly outspoken calls for action on global warming.

In 2007, prominent christian conservatives, such as James Dobson and Tony Perkins, had tried to oust Cizic from the NAE, citing, among other things, his advocacy of the green-friendly Creation Care movement, and his “relentless campaign against global warming.”

Last December, Dobson and Perkins got an early Christmas present when Cizik was forced to resign from the NAE after expressing support for same-sex civil unions. In truth, this may have just been his final offense.

If the Religious Right’s puritanical scolds thought that Rev. Cizik was going to slink away into political obscurity, they surely underestimated his conviction. For this past Sunday, Cizic re-emerged onto the public stage, perhaps more determined than ever to tackle global warming:

Surrounded by Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, and Christians sitting in the pews of a United Methodist church, Cizik spoke about the need for new strategies and ideas to advance the environmental issue.

On the eve of this Earth Day, I called Cizik at his Virginia home to learn more about his Second Act in life. While he was vague on details, our conversation ranged widely, from the sway of Dispensationalism (“it has had enormous consequences”)  to his turnaround on Al Gore (“I used to make fun of him…call him the ozone man…the fact of the matter is he’s been right all along and the evidence substantiates this”).

Below are some excerpts of the interview:

KK: There’s a new Pew poll showing that 34 percent of evangelicals believe in climate change.

RC: Those figures seem pretty low. Actually, 71 percent of evangelicals believe climate change is real [according to another poll that Cizik tells me can be seen here]. The problem is that only 30 percent think it is human induced.

KK: I don’t get that [last part]. How could that be?

RC: Evangelicals reason as follows: scientists say climate change is real [and caused by greenhouse gases], but scientists also say evolution is real, so evangelicals don’t believe it. It’s an illogical syllogism. Many evangelicals don’t believe in anthropogenic greenhouse gases. [[NOTE: recent supporting evidence for that last point can be seen here.--KK]]

KK: You must be following all the recent efforts by congressional republicans to cast doubt on global warming as a legitimate issue.  Why do you think there is so much push-back from them on this when there is increasing evidence from scientists that climate change is a real threat?

RC: Just giving someone more information doesn’t always change people’s views. We tend to screen out ideas we don’t want to hear.

KK: I understand that you’re now a United Nations Fellow. What do you do in that capacity?

RC: I’m an ambassador of good will, building bridges, as they say.

Having his wings clipped by NAE hasn’t slowed Cizic in the least. He says he is barnstorming christian colleges and seminaries across the country, preaching the virtues of Creation Care to a younger generation of evangelicals.  In fact, Cizic has even bigger plans to mobilize a new, greener, evangelical movement, which he vaguely sketched out to the Washington Post after his appearances at Sunday’s pre-Earth day festivities.

Those who sought for years to muzzle Cizik and cheered when he got sacked probably never stopped to consider the law of unintended consequences.