It's been a true pleasure to get to know Anna Clark a bit the past couple of years, through our mutual involvement in the wonderful Creation Care community here at SustainLane. Anna, who is founder and president of the sustainability consulting firm EarthPeople, has gone out of her way to be a friend and encouragement to me and my own work, and we've been privileged to share a number of poignant reflections from her on not one sparrow's blog, including "Bless our Pets?," "The Lorax Project" (a Dr. Seuss review) and "Daniel's Diet," among many others she's posted here and on her personal blog.
Last year, Anna released her first book Green, American Style: Becoming Earth-Friendly and Reaping the Benefits (Baker '10). Anna and her publisher graciously sent me a copy for review, and I'm grateful to have finally had a chance to read it and to pass along just a few highlights, some of which not one sparrow's community might especially appreciate.
While Anna's book is generally concerned with broader issues of environmental care and sustainability, both of which I admit I tend to gravitate toward less than animal concerns, I found myself genuinely engaged throughout the book and as a result a bit more sensitive to my environmental footprint. Anna writes thoughtfully and articulately, and with her usual personal touch and accessibility, drawing from an abundance of personal contacts and interviews from virtually every corner of the environmental movement, along with a rich collection of research, anecdotes and classic quotes.
I was exposed to a wealth of additional motivation and information regarding familiar eco-matters, such as purchasing healthy cleaning products and reigning in household energy and water use, and the true cost of our society's dependence on oil. But I also found myself more interested in areas of the green living and business I'd paid little attention to previously, such as weighing housing options and growing corporate sustainability. Anna features a chapter on the burgeoning creation care ethos and community, and its biblical grounding, though as a whole Green, American Style is more sociological and practical in content than directly theological. But it is still very valuable for its strengths, and certainly grounded in a solid foundation of personal faith and integrity.
As for animal-related highlights which pop up here and there throughout the book, Anna acknowledges honestly in a section on 'Eco-Care Theology' that "we have abused, neglected, and exploited animals," among many other profound degradations of God's creation. I appreciated her attention to how wasteful a meat-laden diet can be in terms of converting harvested grains to nutritious calories, and how standard U.S. dairy cows and milk contain a genetically engineered hormone (rBGH) linked to various cancers. Anna mentions how her skepticism about vegetarian and vegan diets turned to genuine interest once she learned more about "the health, environmental, and economic drawbacks of Americans' meat intake," and shares a unique interaction which she had with a Chick-fil-A marketing representative about animal rights and welfare.
I mentioned some of those substantial "environmental drawbacks" and other abuses in a recent post which was shared here, "Why Creation Care Can't Afford to Overlook Factory Farming." In the precursor to that post, which featured some of creation care's commendable attention to species endangerment and preservation, I shared the following eye-opening and disheartening paragraph from Anna's book:
Nearly one-third of the world’s wildlife has been lost since 1970, according to a report released by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the World Wildlife Fund, and the Global Footprint Network. “You’d have to go back to the extinction of the dinosaurs to see a decline as rapid as this,” says Jonathan Loh, ZSL scientist and editor of the report. “In terms of human times-scales we may be seeing things change relatively slowly, but a decline of 30 percent in the space of a single generation is unprecedented in human history.” Indeed, the scientific data in study after study demonstrate that we are losing species at a rate of 1,000 to 10,000 times the natural rate. (pg. 44)
The protection of wildlife and their habitats is especially close to Anna's heart, which I found out a few pages later in a line which warmed my heart and induced me to leave a smiley face in the margin: "I only started reading about the environment because I have a (rather inexplicable) soft spot for walruses, manatees, and sharks."
Anna's journey into caring for creation has obviously taken on quite a bit more motivation since her initial starting point, as her book makes clear. But amen to inexplicable soft spots, which I imagine many of us can relate to, and to working toward a more sustainable future for ourselves and the rest of God's creation and creatures. Green, American Style is a wonderful contribution to that conversation and community undertaking, and I hope you'll have a chance to discover its bountiful encouragement and advice for yourself!
(This post is adapted from not one sparrow, a Christian voice for animals. Ben lives with his wife Cheryl, 21-month-old son Jadon and three cats in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He welcomes communication at ben@notonesparrow.com or via Facebook.)
