Sustainability and the Arc of the Moral Universe

During a 30-minute drive I took earlier today, I had the pleasure of listening to a 1964 talk that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered at the Baccalaureate sermon at the commencement exercises for Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, which included that fabulous line: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  For what it’s worth, this quote has a long and very interesting history, an article on which is linked above.

Regardless of its history, we’d all like to believe that its message is, in fact, true, insofar as it forms the basis of our optimism – at least our hope – that humankind can somehow find its way to a just, kind, and sustainable world.

The speech hit on several other related ideas, for example, the teachings of Jesus, Gandhi, the Quakers and so many others to the effect that we should love our enemies.  King also mentioned Henry David Thoreau and the concept of civil disobedience, pointing out that we have the same moral obligation to oppose evil as we do to support good.  Obviously, there are plenty of people in the sustainability movement who involve themselves in civil disobedience, and even more, myself included, who participate in legal, non-violent protests against “environmental evil.”

If you happen to be looking for a low-force way to get behind all of this, you may wish to consider what legendary environmentalist Bill McKibben recommends:  divest.  By simply refusing to own stock in companies whose businesses are based on raping the environment for profit, you are raising their cost of capital and making their job that much tougher.  And how hard is that? You don’t have to risk arrest, or even walk around chanting and carrying a placard.  Just be one of the large and growing number of people and organizations that have divested themselves of stock in the fossil fuel industry, or find another way to demonstrate your concern for the long-term success of the human race.  It’s easy as pie.