Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wagged his left finger high in the air. Then as deftly as Edward Norton in The Illusionist, the right finger delivered a syncopated response while around 800 people sat transfixed in the magic of a vanishing breed – a passionate politician speaking on behalf of the environment.
A new kind of environmental conclave, the 2006 Bellarmine Forum, an annual event at Loyola Marymount University, which presents a different theme every year, accomplished far more than merely bringing top level speakers together to talk to a friendly audience of academics and students and schmooze with benefactors. At a time when everyone seems to be speaking out on the environment through singular positions of business, economics, art, media, politics or religion, this forum actually elevated the dialogue. The ‘together-ness’ brought out another point too, and that is, if things are really going to change with the environment then a critical mass needs to be reached pretty fast, and we shouldn’t be so picky if one particular group has a better argument or more clout in fighting the battle than the others.
LMU students turned out in high numbers, not only since it was held on their home turf, but because the need for environmental protection has reached a red alert. They know they’re getting handed a dirty planet with filthy streams, dying oceans and few energy resources remaining. They also were able to witness a leader and they left with an inkling of what it might have been like to have been part of the ‘60s anti-war movement and the birth of the environmental movement.
Not coincidentally, the activism of the ‘60s also produced another leader on environmental protection who spoke at the forum, Yvon Chouinard. While Kennedy, as chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper, hunts down and prosecutes environmental polluters, many of them large corporations (“You show me a polluter, and I’ll show you a subsidy!), Chouinard leads through the example of running an environmentally responsible mega-corporation. Chouinard is the founder of Patagonia, Inc, the mountaineering supply company turned environmental clothing retailer that gives 1% of sales to groups taking action to support the environment. He quotes Thoreau, Emerson and John Muir as shaping his mountain climbing philosophy of “leave no trace behind,” the gift humans can give to the earth and to future generations.
Kennedy railed against corporate profiteering at the expense of the environment while Chouinard stood as the example of corporate responsibility. He agreed with Kennedy that the U.S. government is not an entity that can, in its current condition, turn things around. In fact, Chouinard says “government is the problem.”
Chouinard told the audience that he’s “been a student of Zen philosophy all my life.” Living that philosophy, he is convinced that business people can make profits without losing their soul. And in yogic nomenclature, he said “once you realize you’re doing something wrong, stop doing it,” and echoing Ayurvedic thought, he said “ask questions until you get to the cause.”
How intertwined the philosophical beliefs of the Forum speakers were, was really what brought them together. Professor Chris Chapple, Ph.D., of the Theological Studies Department and director of the Yoga Studies program, organized and moderated a panel titled “World Religions: Ecological Awareness and Activism.” Michael Cunningham, a bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, Rabbi Lee Wallach, Green Yoga Association founder Laura Cornell and Amir Hussain, Ph.D., a Muslim, spoke. “All faiths share the same commitment and moral responsibility to the environment,” said Rabbi Wallach.
Within all religious traditions respect for the environment is inherent. Unambiguous guidelines exist as well as positive and negative consequences for following them, or not – the ultimate cause and effect upshot. Cunningham said that his work is on behalf of “my children’s grandchildren…responsibility for 4-7 generations that come after us.” When it came time for Kennedy to speak toward the close of the Forum, it was unremarkable but apt that he, too, brought in religion.
Moving seamlessly without notes from one thought to another for over an hour and a half, whether discussing the main stream media of propaganda or the clean up of Santa Monica Bay, Kennedy reminded the audience that prophets of all faiths have gone into the wilderness to find their God and the answer is there. Moses spent forty years wandering in the wilderness, the Buddha and Christ mined nature, John the Baptist lived in a cave. Kennedy spoke of how parables are taken from nature and that all prophets were revolutionary. The values of this country, he said, come from nature and the land.
Students left with a new understanding of the environment and with a sense of having witnessed what it must have been like to be at the beginning of a movement – just like the one Bobby Kennedy helped ignite close to forty years earlier here in California.
