Drill, Baby, Drill
a sermon by John W. Wimberly, Jr.
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
September 14, 2008

Text: Genesis 6:5-8,18-22

Comedian Jay Leno and others have been having a field day running clips of delegates to the Republican convention dancing.  I have to say I think they are unfair.  First, I saw some pretty bad dancing in Denver as well.  Second, a lot of the dancers in question are my age and, frankly, suffer from a disability: they are dancing-challenged.  Just because people went through the sixties doesn?t mean they can dance!  Take a look at the Woodstock tapes sometime.  The dancing is pretty ugly.

What definitely was not funny at the Republican Convention were thousands of delegates joyously breaking into a chant of ?drill, baby, drill.?  Frankly, it frightened me.  Even if someone believes in drilling offshore, there should be no joy in it. 

The chanting, while partisan in St. Paul, reflected a longstanding, bipartisan agreement in this nation to put the short term needs of human beings over the long term welfare of God?s creation.  Rather than politicos chanting slogans, as a nation, we need to confess, on-our-knees-confess, that any additional offshore oil drilling reflects a huge policy failure. 

For decades, we have failed to develop a viable, long-term national energy strategy.  We need to confess our ?human-first? approach to life on this planet.  We need to own our sinfulness and admit that we are selfishly making the planet uninhabitable for many forms of life.

I have heard reasonable people make arguments as to why we should drill off shore, in ANWR and elsewhere.  The needs expressed are usually cheaper, future energy prices or less dependence on foreign oil.  However, the arguments are logical only if we accept their underlying assumption: human needs outweigh all other needs, even those of the Earth. In the current debates on drilling, what is good for the earth is a non-issue.

Ironically, putting human needs first will ultimately lead to humanity being extinguished.  A human-first approach to the planet is totally self-destructive.  Because there is no separating human needs and the needs of the planet. What we seem to ignore is one key fact: the planet doesn?t really need us.  We need the planet. 

When I hear people say ?We must protect the planet,?  I respond, ?Nonsense, over the long haul the planet protects itself.  There is a built-in mechanism in nature and evolution to spit out anyone part of the creation that attempts to overwhelm the whole of creation.  If we humans don?t change our irresponsible ways, unable to drink the water or breath the air, we will go the way of the dinosaur.? 

The story of the dust bowl in the 1930’s reveals what nature does to humans who abuse the creation.  In his magnificent book, The Worst Hard Times, Timothy Egan details the perfect storm of events that created the tragedy of the dust bowl.  It is a tale that speaks volumes to what we are doing to the environment one hundred years later.

For millions of years, the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma as well as parts of southwestern Nebraska and southeastern Colorado were covered with tall prairie grass.  With their deeply rooted systems, the grasses held the soil in place and nourished the buffalo, bisons and other animals that roamed the area.  However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, this untouched area became a prime target for real estate developers.  Grasslands were sold to people seeking a new life as farmers in the plains states. 

Over several decades, millions upon millions of acres of grass were dug up and replaced with various kinds of crops.  The destruction of the grasslands was accelerated by the use, for the first time, of mechanized farm machinery.  When a world wheat shortage developed during World War I, farmers made huge windfall profits, becoming wealthy overnight.  As a result, millions more acres of prairie land were turned over and planted. 

During this time, an unusual period of regular and heavy rain took place, adding the growth of record-breaking crops.  Many claimed the rains were the result of cultivated land replacing the unending fields of grass.  However, it didn?t take long before the rains disappeared and a more customary period of drought took its place. 

Meanwhile, the wheat shortage disappeared, the depression started and farmers got less for their crops than their seed costs.  Cattle starved for lack of grain.  Bankruptcies were legion.

Month after month, the land grew ever more dry.  Finally, enormous dust storms began to occur regularly.  Actually, they were dirt storms, lifting up tons of soil into the air. 

On Sunday, April 14, 1935, people awakened to a beautiful Palm Sunday morning?warm, blue skies.  Then, in the middle of the afternoon, the temperature dropped as much as 50 degrees and people noticed dark clouds appearing on the horizon.  However, they weren?t clouds.  It was a massive wall of dirt.  Scientists estimate the amount of airborne dirt moving across the plains that day was the equivalent of all the soil excavated to build the Panama Canal.  It was frightening beyond belief for those who experienced it.

Individuals lucky enough to be near their houses ran inside but had trouble breathing as flying dirt penetrated all efforts to seal it out.  There was so much static electricity within the dirt cloud that it shorted out cars.  People couldn?t touch each other without getting a serious shock.  Before it was over, Washington, D.C. and New York City would be covered with a coat of dust.  Ships 300 miles off the eastern coast in the Atlantic reported being covered with dust. 

In the dust bowl, people began to die of the accumulated effect of several dirt storms a week.  Doctors called it dust pneumonia.  About one-third of the residents moved to another area of the country.  Judge Wilson Cowen of Dalhart, Texas, who three decades later would join Western Church, ordered the city government to fill up for free the gas tank of any person wanting to leave town.

The crisis didn?t end until the federal government intervened.  Agricultural experts showed farmers how to manage their land differently.  But really, the land never should have been touched.  It should have remained prairie covered with grass.

The Dust Bowl was a catastrophic convergence of human need (people legitimately looking for a new life), human greed (cheap land and high wheat prices pulling ever more people into farming land that shouldn?t have been farmed), and natural forces such as wind and drought.  A few experts and farmers saw the tragedy coming.  They predicted that if the land was abused, it would strike back with a vengeance.  But their voices were lost in the land rush to plant more and more crops to reap enormous profits.

After all, in a world with a shortage of grain, who could have argued with the need for more wheat?  Someone should have done so back then.  In a world with a shortage of oil, who can argue with the need for more oil now?  Someone needs to do so today.  Because bottom line: the earth does not respond well to short-term solutions.  The earth punishes those who punish it.

President Bush has rightly stated that we are addicted to oil.  Sadly, we have leaders of Congress in both parties who spinelessly cater to our oil addiction.  In my opinion, these politicians are no better than drug dealers who sell their customers ever more heroin or crack.

But ultimately, when it comes to addictions, the problem isn?t the dealer.  Blaming the producers, the oil industry, won?t end our addiction either.  They produce a product for which there are legitimate needs.  The users are the problem?you and me.  Until we go into rehab and change our lifestyles, nothing is going to change.  Nothing. 

Just as people on the Great Plains woke up one day to see a huge cloud of dirt moving at them, so our children and grandchildren will wake up one day to confront similarly catastrophic realities if we continue to drill mindlessly for oil, dump toxic waste in the land and water and do other things that seriously damage the environment. 

Unless we change our ways and change them soon, there will be no more drinkable water.  The air will be too polluted to breathe.  The soil will no longer produce crops. 

If we don?t change, Mother Nature will strike back.  Count on it.  Indeed, the creation is already beginning to strike back.

If we are really concerned about the fate of humanity, preserving the planet should be our number one priority.  Everything else is secondary.  Without a healthy environment, everything else is a moot subject.

Sadly, what is now clear beyond any reasonable argument is that we are currently unwilling to change our lifestyles to protect the planet.  We will do whatever we need to do to perpetuate our current lifestyles, no matter the cost to our grandchildren or great grandchildren.  The words ?Tough luck? are our bequest to them.  They will just have to deal with whatever we leave them. 

Instead of changing for them, we will continue to drive gas guzzling cars (even hybrid cars get relatively low fuel mileage), build air-conditioned cities in the middle of deserts and swamps, irrigate and fertilize fields that should never have been planted, and buy cheap products shipped from distant lands.

If I sound a little harsh this morning, my bad mood started Monday morning when I took a look at our Old Testament story.  In it, we don?t find a harsh God.  We find an enraged God.  Having abused our privilege of living on the earth, God decided to teach humanity a lesson, just as nature taught us a lesson in the Dust Bowl.  God covered the face of the earth with an enormous flood, saving only a few humans, plants and animals.  Basically, God pushed the reset button on the creation.

As progressive folks, we take stories like the Flood with a grain of salt.  We rationalize them away as myths, legends.  ?They are good literature? we think, ?but not directly relevant to our situation.? 

We rationalize the story of the Flood at our own risk.  It is found not only in the Bible.  The Sumerians had a story about a devastating flood.  It is found in the Babylonian Epic of Galgemesh.  Greece, Australia and India are among numerous other cultures with the story of a huge flood in their literature. 

Fact of the matter is, maybe this story isn?t a myth.  Maybe it is a deeply rooted memory in humanity?s collective unconscious, a memory intended to remind us that there are limits to what the earth will tolerate from humans.  I suggest we take the story of a horrendous flood very, very seriously.

Environmentalists often get upset with the words in Genesis where it says that God gave humanity dominion over the creation.  They contend we are just another part of the creation.  While I understand the point, Genesis recognizes an important reality.  Namely, humans possess a unique power in the creation.  The bison and buffalo couldn?t mess up the Great Plains.  Only humans could have done so much destruction.  Trees and birds can?t pollute the air.  Only humans can fill the skies with smog.  Fish and algae can?t destroy the oceans.  Only humans can create dead spaces in the seas.  Humans have a power over the creation that is unique.  The author of Genesis describes that power with the word dominion.

However, while we have enormous power to manipulate the creation, God will not allow us to dominate it.  Ours is a finite power.  If we abuse the power we have been given, as we have been doing for far too long, the Ultimate Power behind the creation will wipe us out, sure as the Flood in Genesis wiped out everything.

In the story of Noah?s Ark, God chose to start over again by including humans.  Next time, God may decide, ?You know what, maybe humans can?t handle the responsibility.  I?m just going to eliminate them from the picture.?

I am not saying making changes to protect the environment will be easy.  We have gotten ourselves into a very complicated situation.  As one small example, my wife and I have some friends in Mexico who have gone totally solar in their house.  However, their system requires about thirty batteries on the top of their house to store the solar power.  When disposed, batteries are very toxic to the soil.  So even seemingly clean systems can have a major downside. 

But those are problems we can fix.  We are brilliant when we put our heads together.  Of course, if we are going to solve environmental problems, we have to acknowledge the legitimacy of science.  When politicians attempt to win elections by denying evolutionary theory and global warming, it makes a difficult situation even more challenging.

Changing the way we live won?t be easy.  But I have no doubt that if we combine our will power and brain power?Russians and Chinese, Brazilians and Argentinians, Americans and Africans, we can find a clean, environmentally-friendly way to share this planet with one another and all of God?s creations.  If we don?t, future generations won?t have to debate whether or not the Great Flood is a myth from the bible.  Because it will most surely become a historical fact in the lives of our family members.  They will reap what we have sown.

Let us pray: Gracious God, you have given us a unique position in the creation.  It is a position we have abused and continue to abuse.  Help us to understand the dangerous spot where we stand today in history.  Help us also to remember that, with your help, it is not too late.  We can save the planet.  Fill us with hope, commitment and courage as we address the enormous environmental crisis confronting us.  All this we pray in Jesus? name.  Amen.