Baumann: A Comparative Analysis

Baumann has the tricky task of imploring Christians to seek an ethical stance on the environment in this week’s reading. The Genesis tradition with all of its misguided usage of the word “dominion” has given rise to the present state of God’s creation. The unceasing industrialization is a clear example of the misuse of human dominion of the world. She points out that it is the top 1/3 of the world’s wealthy who have and continue to benefit from “free pollution” as they deny recompense to the lower 2/3 who suffer the most from the destruction of environment (p. 223). Reformulating the notion of dominion from “control” to “responsibility” as the Creator originally intended. Perhaps then the virtue of seeking and imposing clean-energy and green resources can be seen as a necessary ethical actions.
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231). Although she doesn’t directly correlate this with an earlier section on the topic, I believe her points about humanity’s weakness to the “space-time crunch” phenomenon (p. 226-8) feed the species-ism as a top culprit, second only to the historical dominion misuse from Genesis. Due to the limited resources in a given timeframe, humanity seeks out ways to ensure its survival (and its bloated sense of comfort) by placing value on, not only the world’s resources, but on its creatures as well. “The natural world is seen as without value outside the human realm.” (p. 227) Moltmann has a similar sentiment as he moves toward a vision of hope. “The world becomes more lovable when we no longer weigh it up according to the criteria of utility and practical value.” (location