Unless and Until: A Baha-I Focus on the Environment

As Deputy Director of the Oceans and Coastal Areas Programme Activity Center of the United Nations Environment Program, Arthur Dahl had first hand experience of the environmental problems we face which may be summed up in these words: "Whether we like it or not we are collectively guilty of the crime of 'ecocide' - the murder of the environment. Whereas murder is usually deliberate and often premeditated, today our environment is being killed just as much by our thoughtlessness and outmoded ideas or unwillingness to take action, as it is by predatory commercial and political interests. Governments are only now waking up to the scale of our common plight, while others warn that the clock has already begun to strike midnight." There are two components of the solution: "The first is that we must all take responsibility for our own actions. This demands a new maturity in our values, attitudes and behavior in our relationships with each other, and especially with other species with whom we share our planet. The second factor is the recognition that our world functions as one single, amazingly complex yet interdependent system."The environmental crisis first came to the world's attention with the great London Fog of 1952 that killed thousands of people. At that time environmental problems were still manageable and within a relatively short time the city had clean air and fish had returned to the river Thames. Since then, however, we have increased both the rate and scale of our impact on the environment. Humankind is like a man jumping from the 100th story enjoying the view and breeze but giving no thought for the future or the painful landing that awaits. It is hard to see what can stop the downward spiral in which we find ourselves but there are forces of transition breaking down the old structures of a fragmented world of sovereign nations to be replaced by new types of organization adapted to a united world. The real solution to our environmental problems does not lie in technological fixes but in the restructuring of world society and of the values by which people live. Unity of the human race must be the guiding principle and this in turn is based on the recognition of the value of unity in diversity to take advantage of the fantastic richness of human experience. Humankind's response to the environment is expressed in many different qualities, social structures, languages, sciences, technologies, arts and culture; these are our heritage of thousands of years of evolution. Too often the differences have been the cause of prejudice, fear, misunderstanding, war and genocide but they must be appreciated, preserved and enriched as contributions to a world civilization.All through history, religion has been one of the most powerful forces in the advancement of human civilization by providing the moral values which support the structures of a social system. Religion is the greatest of means for establishing a new ecological ethic. The dichotomy between