A group of 20 Muslim youths worked to clean up an area in Columbus as a community service event. The event helped one Columbus-area Muslim leader realize that demonstrating concern for the environment is not a luxury, but a necessity. Many people prioritize a number of worldly things ahead of environmental care. Increasingly, faith groups are demonstrating that environmental concern and care needs urgent attention throughout the world.
This year on April 22 for Earth Day, many organizations are working in conjunction with Metro Parks Officials to clean up five parks within the Columbus area. Leaders hope to encourage involvement of congregations within local communities. A day of services can be a great teaching moment as well as an opportunity to give back.
Bishop Campbell spoke to OSU students about Laudato Si', specifically regarding how Catholic tradition develops the context for it.
"Bishop Campbell highlighted four themes in his talk, including how Catholicism has considered nature for 2,000 years, a Catholic imagination of nature, historical trends of alienation from nature in the Western world, and a discussion of how sin – light and shadow of the world together – plays a role in our ecological situation."
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Ted Benton, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, writes about how Marx's theories can be applied to modern environmental issues such as climate change. He talks about how Marx's ideas about capitalism relate to current exploitation of nature, and specifically about soil degradation which was an issue during the 1860s when Marx was alive. He also includes problematic parts of Marx's attitudes towards nature, such as his praise of increased productivity of land that may have inspired Stalin.
John Worthington-Hill describes how Buddhism can encourage environmental awareness and sustainability. Embracing individuality is our disconnection from the natural world. In order to live in unity with the earth, we must find the 'middle way' (a buddhist morality based on self-discipline). "Self-centeredness is the great illness from which all imbalance, insensitivity and abuse ultimately stem – an illness directly linked to the Buddha’s ‘three poisons of greed, ill-will and delusion’. These poisonous mentalities seep into the collective consciousness and are instilled in the norms and structures of culture and society, helping to direct how politics and economics deal with the environment." "Environmental destruction is therefore an outer manifestation of an inner affliction. If our thoughts are polluted, then our actions will be polluted too, and so will their consequences."
