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> Published on Monday, December 6, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

> On Receiving Harvard Medical School's Global Environment Citizen Award

> by Bill Moyers

>

> On Wednesday, December 1, 2004, the Center for Health and the Global

> Environment at Harvard Medical School presented its fourth annual

> Global Environment Citizen Award to Bill Moyers. In presenting the

> award, Meryl Streep, a member of the Center board, said, & quot;Through

> resourceful, intrepid reportage and perceptive voices from the forward

> edge of the debate, Moyers has examined an environment under siege

> with the aim of engaging citizens. & quot; Here is the text of his

> response to Ms. Streep's presentation of the award:

> I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom

> you never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and

> just plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how

> environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are

> simply beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other

> people's experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.

>

> The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill

> McKibben. He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of

> journalistic heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the

> environment. His bestseller The End of Nature carried on where Rachel

> Carson's Silent Spring left off.

>

> Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we

> journalists routinely cover - conventional, manageable programs like

> budget shortfalls and pollution - may be about to convert to chaotic,

> unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all,

> he writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment,

> creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is

> causing the melt of the arctic to release so much freshwater into the

> North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a

> weakening gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the

> kind of changes that could radically alter civilizations.

>

> That's one challenge we journalists face - how to tell such a story

> without coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we

> most want to understand what's happening, who must act on what they

> read and hear.

>

> As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable

> narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and

> viewers, there is an even harder challenge - to pierce the ideology

> that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in

> politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal.

> It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the

> oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history,

> ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology

> asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold

> stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is

> generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple,

> their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And

> there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the

> facts.

>

> Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the

> Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging

> Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress

> that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the

> imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, 'after

> the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.'

>

> Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was

> talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out

> across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is

> literally true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent

> Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good

> and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index.

> That's right - the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the

> best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the

> left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and

> religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers

> to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a

> couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the

> Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the

> imagination of millions of Americans.

>

> Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George

> Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to

> him for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the

> rest of its 'biblical lands,' legions of the anti-Christ will attack

> it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the

> Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return

> for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes

> and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of

> God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer

> plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years

> of tribulation that follow.

>

> I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've

> reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the

> West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they

> feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical

> prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the

> Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and

> volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act,

> predicted in the Book of Revelation where four angels 'which are bound

> in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part

> of man.' A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be

> feared but welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to

> redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at

> 144-just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing

> will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter

> heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

>

> So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to

> Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn

> Scherer - 'the road to environmental apocalypse. Read it and you will

> see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that

> environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually

> welcomed - even hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

>

> As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe

> lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the

> U.S. Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total -

> more since the election - are backed by the religious right.

> Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to

> 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian

> right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist,

> Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick

> Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House

> Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat

> to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Senator Zell

> Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos

> on the senate floor: & quot;the days will come, sayeth the Lord God,

> that i will send a famine in the land.' He seemed to be relishing the

> thought.

>

> And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found

> that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the

> Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think

> the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with

> your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in

> the motel turn some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear

> some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why

> people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected,

> as Grist puts it, & quot;to worry about the environment. Why care about

> the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by

> ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible?

> Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be

> rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to

> solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and

> fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a

> word? & quot;

>

> Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord

> will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book,

> America's Providential History. You'll find there these words:

> & quot;the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and

> views the world as a pie

> that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece.' however,

> & quot;[t]he Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and

> that there is no shortage of resources in God's earth

>

> while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians

> know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of

> resources to accommodate all of the people. & quot; No wonder Karl Rove

> goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, & quot;Onward

> Christian Soldiers. & quot; He turned out millions of the foot soldiers

> on November 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful

> driving force in modern American politics.

>

> I can see in the look on your faces just how had it is for the

> journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me

> put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this

> world without expecting a confident future and getting up every

> morning to do what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an

> optimist. Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I

> once asked: & quot;What do you think of the market? & quot; & quot;I'm

> optimistic, & quot; he answered. & quot;Then why do you look so

> worried? & quot; And he answered: & quot;Because I am not sure my

> optimism is justified. & quot;

>

> I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the

> Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect

> the natural environment when they realize its importance to their

> health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so

> sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that - it's just that I

> read the news and connect the dots:

>

>

> I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection

> Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the

> environment. This for an administration that wants to rewrite the

> Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act

> protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well

> as the National Environmental Policy Act that requires the government

> to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources.

>

> That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle

> tailpipe inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports

> utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

>

> That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep

> certain information about environmental problems secret from the

> public.

>

> That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting

> coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with

> coal companies.

>

> That wants to open the arctic wildlife refuge to drilling and increase

> drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of

> undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal

> wild land in America.

>

> I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental

> Protection Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars - $2

> million of it from the administration's friends at the American

> Chemistry Council - to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides

> in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological

> damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the

> government and the industry were going to offer the families $970

> each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as

> guinea pigs for the study.

>

> I read all this in the news.

>

> I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's

> friends at the international policy network, which is supported by

> ExxonMobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that

> climate change is 'a myth, sea levels are not rising, scientists who

> believe catastrophe is possible are 'an embarrassment.

>

> I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent

> appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene)

> riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species

> protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for

> a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing

> permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken

> protection for crucial habitats in California.

>

> I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the

> computer - pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age

> 10; of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine months. I see the future

> looking back at me from those photographs and I say, 'Father, forgive

> us, for we know not what we do.' And then I am stopped short by the

> thought: 'That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are

> stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world.'

>

> And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are

> greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to

> sustain indignation at injustice?

>

> What has happened to out moral imagination?

>

> On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: 'How do you see the world? & quot;

> And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: & quot;I see it

> feelingly.' & quot;

>

> I see it feelingly.

>

> The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a

> journalist, I know the news is never the end of the story. The news

> can be the truth that sets us free - not only to feel but to fight for

> the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair,

> the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at

> me from those photographs on my desk. What we need to match the

> science of human health is what the ancient Israelites called 'hocma'

> - the science of the heart

> ..the capacity to see

> .to feel

> .and then to act

> as if the future depended on you.

>

> Believe me, it does.

>

>