Max Oelschlaeger – författare

From the dense forests of the Big Thicket to the limitless vistas of the Davis Mountains, Texas is a land of astonishing diversity and natural beauty. Yet it is also a land where commuters endure endless traffic jams in the major cities and where pollution and environmental degradation threaten the most essential elements of our common living space-the land, air, and water.In this thoughtful, practical book, Pete Gunter and Max Oelschlaeger offer a new vision for living on the land, a 'land ethic' that respects the stability, integrity, and beauty of the "land community." Avoiding harsh rhetoric that seeks only to place blame and foretell doom, they discuss how economic and environmental goals may be reconciled so that Texans can continue to enjoy a reasonable prosperity while living in a land free of pollutants and scars, where some wild lands still exist and animals range freely.In presenting their land ethic, the authors draw on the ideas of Aldo Leopold, whose A Sand County Almanac persuasively urges human beings to respect the land-with all of its animal and plant inhabitants-that supports us. This is an ethic to take Texas into the twenty-first century, in which the wise choices we make now will create a stable and sustainable future.

Many environmentalists believe that religion has been a major contributor to our ecological crisis, for Judeo-Christians have been taught that they have dominion over the earth and so do not consider themselves part of a biotic community. In this book a philosopher of environmental ethics acknowledges that religion may contribute to environmental problems but argues that religion can also play an important role in solving these problems—that religion can provide an ethical context that will help people to become sensitive to the environment and to elect leaders who are genuinely responsive to the ecological crisis. Examining a broad range of Western religious traditions—from conservative Christianity and orthodox Judaism to Goddess feminism and nature religion—Max Oelschlaeger provides a sociolinguistic analysis of their creation stories and finds environmentally positive aspects in each of them. He asserts that religious discourse in the public arena can offer a way for such environmental issues as biodiversity, pollution, and population to be addressed outside the realm of special-interest politics. And he urges local churches to make "caring for creation" a theme for worship in their services; the majority of Americans, says Oelschlaeger, will discover an environmental ethic only through their religious faith.