And here luxury and covetousness, with numerous oppressions and other evils attending them appeared very afflicting to me, and I felt in that which is immutable that the seeds of great calamity and desolation are sown and growing fast on this continent. Nor have I words sufficient to set forth the longing I then felt that we who are placed along the coast, and have tasted the love and goodness of God, might rise in his strength and like faithful messengers labour to check the growth of these seeds, that they may not ripen to the ruin of our posterity.                —John Woolman, Journal, 1763

On the afternoon of May 22, 1787, a group of nine Quakers and three Anglicans in a Quaker bookstore and print shop at 2 George Yard, London, started a campaign for economic and social change unprecedented in human history. These men were determined to end British participation in the slave trade and slavery in the Empire. Quakers in both England and America had already been working to arouse the conscience of their nations against the political economy of slavery, but had had little effect because “everyone knew” that slavery was ordained by “natural law” and essential to the economic growth of the Empire and the United States of America. With a printing press, a potent manuscript, and an idea about the power of information the organized campaign of moral suasion launched from that print shop successfully challenged the “natural law” of slavery and its economic status.

Moral Challenge of the High-energy Global Economic System

On the first weekend of June in 2003, 30 Quakers met at Pendle Hill in Wallingford Pennsylvania to consider the moral challenge now posed by another political economy; the high-energy, global economic system that is heedlessly destroying the integrity of Creation and failing to serve the well being of millions people in an equitable way. The gathering was determined to look deeply into this morally regressive regime.

The moral challenge is easy to state: There is a growing incoherence between the human economy and the integrity of Earth’s ecological and social systems.

The depth of this crisis is revealed in the fact that it is now easier to imagine the breakdown of Earth’s life support systems than to imagine a significant alteration of our destructive economic system. Most citizens have been conditioned to accept the operation of our current economic system as an article of faith. Unlimited growth and wealth accumulation are seen as the “natural law” and nothing can be done to alter this fact, even if it means the integrity of Earth’s ecological and social systems are being weakened and severely damaged in the process. This “inconvenient truth” is now a moral challenge.

The participants at the Pendle Hill consultation were not stymied by this inconvenient truth. Even the economists present argued for a larger moral context for economic analysis, and for re-conceptualizing the economy within a paradigm of ecological stewardship, resilient human communities, and the well-being of the whole commonwealth of life. The result was the development of the Friends Testimonies and Economics Project and Quaker Institute for the Future. (See “What Friends Can Do” on p. 4 for contact information.)

Humankind has now come to the time when the options are perfectly clear: Either follow the road of unlimited economic growth and increasing energy use until ecological breakdown stops cultural momentum and leads to societal breakdown, or place ecologically coherent adaptation at the center of the economy.

This dilemma bears a striking resemblance to the dilemma of slave holding and its political economy. In both cases the fundamental issues are the same: (1) control and use of energy, (2) economic productivity, (3) convenience, (4) aggrandizement, (5) massive inequities, and (6) the effect on the souls of all those enmeshed in a system of unsustainable exploitation.

The end of slavery in America coincided with the rapid development of the machine-based factory system, the expansion of coal use, and the discovery and utilization of petroleum. The exploitative mind-set and inequitable relationships of the old economy were carried over and preserved in the new. Because the whole political economy was driven by the unquestioned assumption of endless growth and unlimited wealth accumulation, no reflection on ecologically sustainable and resilient adaptation ever gained a significant public hearing. American society has heedlessly neglected to fully consider the fundamental values, attitudes, relationships, technologies, and practices required to achieve a resilient and sustainable pattern of settlement and economic activity within regional ecosystems, and over the continent as a whole.

When Friends voluntarily gave up slave holding, and later when slavery was legally abolished, the primary economic activity of farming could still be carried on with draft animal and human energy. John Woolman’s analysis of this economy places its energy use within a cautionary moral context. But with the subsequent shift to an economy powered primarily by coal and oil, and with the industrialization of manufacturing and, eventually, farming, the cautionary moral dimension around energy use disappeared. The new technologies gave rise to a new morality of energy use which said, in effect, “the more the better.” We now understand that this era of unlimited high-energy, carbon-rich fuel use has been a terrible adaptational mistake. Despite the great accumulation of wealth and advances in convenience that this high energy economy has afforded, the damaging impact of the fossil fuel era on Earth’s biotic integrity, and its lethal disruption of climate dynamics, now brings us to a moral dilemma similar to that of the use of slave energy.

When slavery was abolished, it mainly affected only those still exploiting the energy of slaves. Replacing the high-energy political economy today is a considerably more difficult matter. Virtually everyone in our society lives off the pattern of energy production and use that is damaging Earth’s life support systems. Nothing less than a major re-adaptation of human settlements and economic activity is required to address this situation. Because the magnitude of our dilemma encompasses the whole adaptational stance of our culture, it reaches deeply into our spiritual life; it reaches right into the center of our Quaker identity within Creation. In this centering experience, the peace testimony comes to our spiritual rescue. It reveals that peace on Earth means peace with Earth.

 

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