Christians on the environment

On Berry and Single-Issue Movements

The word environmentalism ' today invokes an almost instantaneous connection to a range of single-issue environmental movements and for good reason . The past three decades or so have seen the proliferation of organizations with a narrowed-down cause (or a single issue , for purposes of clarity ) ranging from a specific animal or plant to a specific moral issue , such as abortion . While movements such as these heighten the awareness of people to advocacies beneficial to the environment and perhaps to an extent draw in enough attention to have

the cause supported and acted upon by authorities , their very nature works against them . This aims to support Wendell Berry 's argument against single-issue movements , and forwards as its thesis the following statement : Single-issue movements are fated to fail because they are too localized in their solutions , thereby neglecting to give due attention to other factors that are related - directly and indirectly - to their chosen cause

Berry 's stand on the efficiency of single-issue movements in realizing their respective advocacies is best explained by a line of thought (ironically comprising several paragraphs ) he has included in his essay In Distrust of Movements

[We] can show the hopelessness of single-issue causes and single-issue movements by following a line of thought such as this : We need a continuous supply of uncontaminated water . Therefore , we need (among other things ) soil-and-water-conserving ways of agriculture and forestry that are not dependent on monoculture , toxic chemicals , or the indifference and violence that always accompany...