The Church of Euthanasia
e-sermon #13
Today's sermon will be delivered by one of our most distinguished members.
Founder of the Council on Economic Trends, author of Entropy: Into the
Greenhouse World, as well as The End of Work: The Decline of the Global
Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era, and most recently
Beyond Beef: The Rise and fall of the Cattle Culture, he is a tireless
advocate of the Green Revolution who needs no introduction. It is with great
pleasure that I give you Jeremy Rifkin. May the Great Spirit grant each and
every one of us the heart to realize his unique vision, in a world no longer
dominated by the ruthless paradigm of efficiency.
The elimination of beef will be accompanied by an ecological renaissance, a
grand restoration of nature on every continent. America's western range will
come to life again. Ancient rivers will flow, their waters bathing and healing
thousands of damaged riparian zones across the great plains. Native wildflowers
and perennial bunchgrasses will sprout and bloom, spreading a verdant carpet
across the western landscapes. Cottonwood trees will shade the prairie once
again, providing refuge for thousands of native birds. Streams and springs will
come to life, bringing back freshwater trout and other native fish. The large
mammals of the plains--elk, moose, pronghorn, antelope, bighorn sheep--will
repopulate the western range of restored grassland. Predator species will
thrive. Coyotes, wolves, bobcats mountain lions, and lynx will steal their way
back onto the great western range, performing their traditional role of culling
big animal herds to ensure that native species do not exceed the carrying
capacity of the plains ecosystems. Buffalo will once again roam the west,
sharing the grassland with wild horses and burros.
In Central and South America, the dissolution of the cattle complex will idle
tractors and bulldozers and silence the familiar drone of thousands of machine
saws cutting their way through the thicket of ancient forest ecosystems. The
thousands of fires that have been set across the Amazon forests will be snuffed
out. Countless species of plants, insects, and animals will be granted a
reprieve from what once appeared to be sure death at the hands of cattle ranchers
and multinational corporations. Millions of creatures, many of whom have
inhabited this earth for millennia, will regroup, reproduce, and repopulate the
forests, bearing testimony to the wonders of God's creation. Future generations
will have the opportunity to know, interact with, and appreciate these many
diverse life forms; this multitude of wild and exotic creatures that creep,
crawl, dart, fly over, swing through and stalk the ancient forests, all fellow
travelers in the unfolding evolutionary saga.
In Africa, the spreading desert will be slowed, allowing nature to regenerate.
Wildlife, once abundant in the sub-Sahara will slowly return. So too will the
rich native flora, turning a semibarren continent back into the world's richest
garden. Wildebeest, elephants, zebras, rhinos, and lions will roam again over
the open savannas, a collage of creation bursting forth, repopulating ancient
habitats.
In Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Asia, the dissolution of the global
cattle complex will lead to a similar restoration of ancient forests and
grasslands, as well as native flora and fauna.
Fewer cattle will lessen the strain on the world's remaining freshwater
reserves and decrease the emission of global warming gases into the atmosphere.
While the biosphere will still be choked with man-made chlorofluorocarbons, the
worldwide reduction in cattle will greatly reduce methane emissions as well as
carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the burning of forests and other biomass
to provide pastureland. The biosphere, the thin chemical envelope that stretches
from the ocean depths to the stratosphere and that sustains all of the life on
the planet, will be the ultimate beneficiary of the historic decision to
transcend the beef culture.
As millions of Americans, Europeans, Japanese, and others make personal
choices to move beyond beef, the artificial protein ladder, erected during this
century, will begin to collapse. The societal decision to forgo beef will
profoundly affect the economics of human survival in the coming century. In the
new world that is coming, millions of human beings will voluntarily choose to eat
lower on the food chain so that millions of others may obtain the minimum food
calories they need to sustain their lives. This grand redistribution of the
earth's bounty, the most spectacular and far-reaching in history, will unite the
human race in a new fraternal bond. A new species awareness will begin where the
rich meet the poor on the descending rungs of the world's protein ladder.
Moving beyond the beef culture is a revolutionary act, a sign of our
willingness to reconstitute ourselves, to make ourselves whole. Restoring
nature, resacralizing our relationship to the bovine, and renewing our own being
are inseparably linked. They are the essential elements of a new postmodern
sensibility, the harbingers of a new earth-centered awareness. The dissolution
of the cattle complex and the elimination of beef from the diet of the human race
portends a new chapter in the unfolding of human consciousness. By doing battle
with "the world steer," a new generation expresses its sensitivity to the
biosphere and its regard for the plight of the poor. By eliminating beef from
the human diet, our species takes a significant step toward a new species
consciousness, reaching out in a spirit of shared partnership with the bovine
and, by extension, other sentient creatures with whom we share the earth.
On August 20th, 1994, at the same time that the Sun Dance was occurring
at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, "Miracle" arrived. A North American Bison, she was
born on a "buffalo" farm in Janesville, Wisconsin. Not an Albino, she is a
white buffalo--a unique phenomenon in nature. The farm's owner has
sworn to protect her granting full access to indigenous people, 24 hours a day.
According to the philosophy and theology in the legends of the Northern Plains
Native American people a great event was to occur in 1994. It has happened. The
White Buffalo has returned and this significant incident is a message heralding
what is to come. The fourth and final age of humankind is upon us and with it
comes the spiritual awakening for the human race. All indigenous people of the
Earth today know of this final age of humankind, and we feel that the ceremonies,
songs, and paint are the key factors in maintaining the balance of the Earth and
our connection to Her; as well as direct action to prevent Her desecration. We
still acknowledge the spiritual and natural laws governing this planet who is a
living, breathing being. White Buffalo's return is a sign that the age of
reconnection to the Earth is upon us, giving us hope and guidance for the times
ahead.
-Coyote
|