« Words that Describe This OneEarth Website! Which Do You Use? »

How can a person who does not know about this website find it? Or let me say it another way, if you were looking for a website(s) on the topics covered here on “The OneEarth Project,” what words and phrases would you type in, hoping the mysterious search engines would get to a site where you’d go, “Wow! Just what I was looking for!” I want your help. Send me an email, lee@jubilee-economics.org, with your suggestions.

Words I’ve thought of follow. But some of them, though accurate, name emerging thinking. I like the words, but if they don’t help people find us online, then other words need to be used.

How about typing in the word “ecospirituality?” MultiEarth thinking has long been skittish about connecting science and spirituality, but OneEarth ways are soundly ecospiritual. The OneEarth thinking we need to keep Earth livable reconnects the sciences of ecology with various spiritualities.

How about the words “ecological conversion?” Pope Francis used this phrase in his encyclical “Laudate Si’,” often called an “environmental encyclical.” He urged us strongly to pursue personal and systemic “ecological conversion.” 

Maybe “ecosystem stewardship” can get you what you want. This site certainly urges us to be stewards of the ecosystems and watersheds where we live. Stewardship of our ecosystems contrasts with the MultiEarth approach focused in utilization and commodification. In other words, Earth is here for our use, production, and profit. Stewardship looks at Earth with an eye for how she can sustain life for all creatures, and how we can be part of Earth’s life-giving processes. 

Closely related to stewardship is the phrase “caring for the planet.“ Creation Care is a term used by many. Caring takes a different posture than utilizing does. Would that caring was more present in many decisions having to do with metallic and toxic waste, where to put spent uranium, or using fertilizer and pesticides in amounts that assures runoff into rivers and finally creating dead zones in oceans. Overfishing the oceans, overgrazing grasslands, overfarming soils—all show aggression and profit-taking to be a more familiar approach to Creation than caring.

Don’t forget the phrase ”Indigenous Wisdom.“ This website has some voices of First Peoples; many more will be coming on board in the days ahead. Indigenous peoples who practice traditional ways show the consciousness, thinking, and practices that have resisted MultiEarth ways for hundreds of years. Indigenous wisdom articulates how to keep Earth livable. Producing from Earth is secondary to thanking Earth for what she produces and the creatures she sustains.

This site and OneEarth thinking is enriched beyond measure by the conviction that humans are participants in Earth’s community of life, not its rulers. This treasured thought is sometimes called “deep ecology.” All species have the right to live, deep ecology asserts, even if they offer no obvious utilitarian purpose to humans.

So there you have half a dozen words or phrases that say what the OneEarth Project is committed to. Learning the language of OneEarth thinking is part of communicating its stories and practices. Which words do find most helpful?