We can't do just one thing

In 1996, while I was in divinity school, I had the opportunity to take an unusual course. It was an interdisciplinary class offered at Harvard Law School that was team-taught by four professors: a microbiologist, a law professor, a comparative religions scholar and a professor of ethics. The class was called “Topics in Environmental Ethics.” It had a profound impact on me. It forever transformed the way that my faith life influences my everyday life. The class was an energetic seminar with several well-known guest lecturers coming in to talk about their area of study.

During this semester, we studied the growing environmental crisis in this country and what ethical systems got us into the current situation and more importantly what ethical systems are going to get us out. You may not think that ethics have a lot to do with the environment. However, ethics deal with what is right and wrong in our actions, and it is our actions both as individuals and societies that have caused the dire environmental problems which we now face.

Now, if I had to distill the implications of that class for me into one phrase, this is what it would be: it is virtually impossible to do just one thing in this world. Every action that we make has both intended and unintended consequences. While we may be focused on one desired outcome of an action, there will always be other effects that we may not be aware of or foresee. If there is anything we have learned from Twentieth Century biology and physics, it is that we live amidst a complex, and interconnected world; one where small actions here can have enormous effects far away. For every action, there is almost always one - if not several - unintended reactions because we live amidst a great huge web of interconnections—whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not.

Allow me to tell you a true story to illustrate my point. The story is called “Operation Cat Drop.” It is the founding parable for the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado. The story takes place on Borneo, that big island located along the equator just north of Australia and south of Southeast Asia. The nations of Malaysia and Indonesia share it today. Well, in the early 1950s, the Dayak people, the indigenous people of Borneo, suffered from malaria. The World Health Organization was called in. They had a solution. As some of you know malaria is a disease that is spread by mosquitoes. Thus, the World Health Organization, sprayed large amounts of the pesticide DDT to kill the mosquitoes that carried the malaria. Well, the mosquitoes died; the malaria declined; so far, so good.

But there were some side effects. There is a reason that DDT was made illegal in many countries including our own in the 1960’s. Among the first side effects on Borneo was that the thatch roofs of people's houses began to fall down on their heads. It seemed that the DDT had an unforeseen and unintentional effect. In addition to killing the mosquitoes, the DDT was also killing a parasitic wasp that had previously controlled thatch-eating caterpillars in that area on the island. When there were no wasps to control the number of thatch eating caterpillars, all of the sudden people’s thatch roofs caved in. Worse yet, the DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckos, small lizards indigenous to the island. And these geckos were in turn eaten by cats. As the cats started to die off, the rats, whose numbers had been controlled by the cats, flourished. The people were all of the sudden threatened by outbreaks of typhus and even the plague, diseases associated with rats. To cope with these problems, which it had itself created, the World Health Organization – remember this is a true story - was obliged to parachute 14,000 live cats into Borneo. It was called Operation Cat-Drop. And all because the World Health Organization wanted to control the spread of malaria by spraying for mosquitoes. Every action invariably has unintended consequences. You can never do just one thing. This fundamental reality of our existence is what we celebrate and hold up on Earth Day.