Clinton St. Quarterly, Vol. 4 No. 4 | Winter 1984 (Seattle) /// Issue 2 of 24 /// Master# 50 of 73

metrically opposed. Ecology is stewardship, participation, frugality, and it’s basic premise is to sustain resources for future generations. Genetic engineering is controlling, dominating, turning nature into pure utility for expedient ends. It’s basic purpose is the quick-fix in the marketplace to provide for the present generation. I think if one were to put sexual symbols on each, the ecological approach would be very heavily involved with the female symbol, stewardship, nurturing, and genetic engineering would be very much attached to the male symbol, dominating, controlling. I think that those are the two major options available for every economy on the planet. I emphasize this because many environmental leaders are not yet aware that these are two different choices. We all assume that once a state or regional economy moved to renewable resources, it would automatically mean the ecological approach. What we didn’t take into consideration was genetic engineering. Now, let us assume that one chooses not to go the route of the high-tech, Atari school. If one chooses the ecological approach, there are many ways that capital can be raised to finance it. In the book, The North Will Rise Again, we pointed out that there is a new pool of social capital which has become prominent in the last 30 years, pension funds. Pension funds are now worth over $700 billion, and they own 25% of the stock in the equity exchanges of the bond market. They will be worth a trillion dollars by the end of this decade and will basically control the finance markets of this country. They already do. Well, this in interesting and ironic, because this is the workers’ money. So in a sense, millions of workers own this country. They just don’t know about it and have no control over their funds. What we said in The North Will Rise Again is that state governments are begging Washington for a handful of financial privileges or they’re begging Volkswagen to locate a plant in their state economies and will give up half the treasury to get any jobs. At the same time, they might have billions and billions of dollars of public pension funds that they generate from their local tax base which is flowing right out of the state. In other words, a handful of banks in San Francisco and New For most of Christianity's long sojourn on the planet, dominion has meant subdue nature, harness it. Now a younger generation of theologians are saying that dominion means stewardship. York will be controlling these funds and investing in jobs in Taiwan or Atlanta, Georgia or whatever. What we would like to see is these funds being used to generate a transition to a renewable resource economy, to begin developing economic initiative through the state or region from an ecological approach to biology to create jobs, create new appropriate technology, new insitution- al frameworks, new distribution systems for production, all based on using social capital. I don’t believe the funds should be used indiscriminately. There is a prudent person rule which says that these funds must maximize the investment of the beneficiaries. I think one can maximize the beneficiaries’ investment and at the same , time create a multiplier effect by investing in economic initiatives that help the local economy. It’s ironic and criminal to generate money on pension funds for public employees and then have that money invested out of state which deteriorates the local tax base and the ability to pay public employees. The same is true with private pension funds. There needs to be a relationship between the unions and the state government for long-range economic planning, so that union pension funds in the private sector can be used for economic planning in the local state economy, so that those funds are not only being used to get a maximum return on investment for the beneficiaries, which is critical, but also used to create jobs and to maintain jobs in the local economy. CSQ: If you had access to those funds here, what kinds of projects would you do? JR: Well, I can say that it’s already being done all over the country. The North Will Rise Again has become the strategy of the AFL-CIO, and it has also become the strategy for many state governments that have already set up all the mechanisms. They have started to shift money. Now the question is what are we going to do with that money. My interest in having that money used to make a transition into an ecological approach to the age of biology. Unfortunately, many state governments and unions and others will see the need to use that money for the high technology bio-engineering, computer society which is typically opposed to an ecological approach. CSQ: It’s almost a religious movement that you are asking for. That is the only way I can see it. JR: Well, it is interesting that within the religious community there is a comparable reformation that’s very compatible with the entropy law. I wrote a book called The Emerging Order, which was an outsider’s look at the evangelical and charismatic phenomenon, both the positive and negative influences it is having on this culture. One of the things we found is a younger generation of evangelicals who are very different from some of the TV preachers, and are redefining the second instruction in the book of Genesis: God says you shall multiply and then He says you shall have dominion. And for most of Christianity’s long sojourn on the planet, dominion has meant subdue nature, harness it, with some’excep- tions, like St. Francis of Assisi. Well, now a younger generation of theologians in the evangelical and the mainline church communities are saying that dominion does not mean subdue nature, it means stewardship. That is a potential revolution very compatible with an ecological approach and with the entropy law. And what this younger generation is saying is that this is God’s creation, and it is meant to be protected and preserved, because we are stewards, and any time that we undermine, despoil it, manipulate it or turn it into our own construction, we are acting in rebellion to God’s covenant. We are not acting as a steward. Well, this is potentially a very profound change in Christian thought. If it ripples beyond rhetoric and doesn’t peter out into just a slogan, we could see hundreds of years of the Christian work ethic substituted with the Christian conservation ethic. It would certainly be more congenial with an ecological approach to biology, and very much opposed to genetic engineering, which is the ultimate hubris, human beings believing that we can create the second A Practical Gift Giver's Dream Come True City People’s Mercantile 1463 E. Republican Mon 324*9510 Sundays 12*5 do-it-yourself framing custom framing gallery 1822 BROADWAY 322-4455 open seven days a week FRAME-IT ON BROADWAY 2abmin£(^QGm. VINTAGE CLOTHING FOR MEN & WOMEN LACES LINEN AND COLLECTIBLES 709 1st Ave. S. 624-0853 REFIEWfiL records 4548 University Way N.E. 634-1 775 Buy Sell Trade select quality albums .... a new ccncept Clinton St. Quarterly 29

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