SEEING GREEN.

Thinking Ecologically
The Next Generation of Environmental Policy
Edited by Marian R. Chertow and Daniel C. Esty
Yale University Press, $16, 271 pp.

All Creation Is Groaning
An Interdisciplinary Vision for Life in a Sacred Universe
Edited by Carol J. Dempsey and Russell A. Butkus
The Liturgical Press, $27.95, 313 pp.

Redeeming the Time
A Political Theology of the Environment
Stephen Bede Scharper
Continuum Publishing Company, $16.95, 240 pp.

In writing about the environment, the breadth and complexity of the subject allows for a wide range of approaches. In that context, reading these three remarkable, contrasting books brought to mind a scene from the film Inherit the Wind. The protagonist Henry Drummond (played consummately by Spencer Tracy) stands alone, the last person in the courtroom. Fresh from victory defending a high-school biology teacher prosecuted for presenting the theory of evolution to his students, the lawyer pauses in gathering up his things to contemplate two books central to the controversy. In one hand lies Darwin's Origin of Species; the Bible is held in the other. Mentally more than physically, Drummond is seen weighing the secular with the sacred.

Thinking Ecologically, the secular book in this imperfect analogy, ambitiously seeks to reorient this nation's frequently contentious debate between deregulation advocates who wish to scrap antipollution programs wholesale and environmentalists who believe such a change of direction is neither needed nor possible. The chapter-by-chapter presentation of "new generation" ideas is offered not so much as middle ground between opposing forces, but as higher ground where more productive discourse is possible.

These new ideas result from a two-year initiative of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy involving hundreds of experts from around the country (many consciously from "outside the beltway") and a wide array of backgrounds (highway planners, business leaders, scientists, city managers, environmentalists, consumer advocates, farmers-among others). Two major conferences, fourteen workshops, and dozens of papers are distilled into fifteen chapters-each a separately written essay-edited and arranged into a coherent, accessible form.

A volume of essays written by numerous contributors can demand more of a reader than a book written in a single voice. In addition to varying writing styles and subject matter (including land use, the effect of the automobile, the process of goods production, the service-based economy, globalization, technology, private financing for sustainable development, market-based incentives, advances in the science of measurement, and so on), chapters in such a collection tend to be more direct and intensely information-packed than those in a book prepared by a single set of authors. However, if skillfully brought together-as Thinking Ecologically is-the reader will be rewarded for the extra effort required.

Editors Marian R. Chertow and Daniel C. Esty introduce their book with a frankly stated premise. Potential for further environmental progress under "first generation" policies emphasizing pollution prevention is limited. Under this structure (created by a series of federal statutes such as The Clean Air Act and The Clean Water Act), the editors write, environmental problems are attacked in compartmentalized fashion with overly rigid regulation. This structure invites endless litigation and results in compliance that is literal-precisely to the minimum thresholds prescribed by law, and no more. It is better, they argue, to adopt a policy framework that is collaborative rather than confrontational, more comprehensive as opposed to fragmented, less crisis-driven and more responsive to context and circumstance.

Representative of the many cogent ideas brought forth in this volume is the notion of "industrial ecology." By understanding the flow of materials and energy in the production and consumption of goods, the effect on the environment will be better understood and constructive courses of action for firms, government, and individuals can be set accordingly. Industrial ecology leads to a more holistic, longer-term assessment of environmental threats than does the current concentration on a specific type of pollutant or to problems arising at a particular point of production. In practice this approach would emphasize a firm's incorporation of environmental objectives in the engineering of a manufacturing process or design of a product, thus establishing a "green supply chain." Charles Powers and Marian Chertow, authors of this particular chapter, argue that such systems' approaches should form the foundation for the next generation of U.S. environmental policy. They offer seemingly practical views on what may well be a rocky transition from current pollutant-focused regulation.

It is too soon to determine whether Thinking Ecologically will succeed in altering the national policy debate. One of the principal intended audiences for this work will not be determined until the November elections. Nonetheless, it is already obvious that this book provides a wealth of substantive notions sure to be heard in the future.

All Creation Is Groaning is also an edited collection of essays exhorting a less compartmentalized, more connected examination of environmental concerns. This book, however, involves the collaborative, interdisciplinary efforts of a single faculty, the University of Portland.

Fourteen essays, each of which could stand alone, are drawn together and unified by means of a biblical passage chosen and theological reflection written specifically for each chapter. Topics range across the university's curriculum: hunger and food production; cartography of population, various pollutants, and biodiversity; global politics and the environment; nurturing a sense of environmental ethics in children; nature reflected in classical music, among others.

Taking its title from the Epistle to the Romans, All Creation Is Groaning is decidedly Judeo-Christian in orientation. It is also sufficiently open-minded for a concisely written Islamic perspective on the environment, contributed by Khalid Khan, associate dean of Portland's School of Engineering. "According to the Islamic way of thinking...the role of the human race on this planet is that of caretaker and responsible husband of all the creatures and world's resources." Educating Western students about the Koran's legal and ethical reasoning concerning the protection of creation is practical ecumenism that seeds long-term global environmental progress.

Stephen Scharper's Redeeming the Time, briefly noted here, is a comprehensive review of Christian writing on the ecological crisis-a literature which has burgeoned since the 1970s. Usually defining his terms as he goes, Scharper examines numerous concepts. The Gaia hypothesis, for example, regards the entire range of living matter on earth as constituting a single living entity, capable of manipulating the Earth's atmosphere to suit its overall needs, and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts. Process theology, through which creation is viewed as a constantly evolving reflection of an all-loving God, rather than as a finished product of an all-powerful deity, is considered in another chapter. Liberation theology, with its preferential option for the poor, is carefully described and acknowledged by Scharper for its sizable effect on his thinking.

Redeeming the Time concludes with a call for a new "political theology"-a highly abstract integration of previously reviewed concepts and a refinement of language that, unlike preceding chapters, avoids concise definition but at least suggests attributes of a constructive dialogue dealing with the environment. Scharper describes this political theology of the environment as a program of action and reflection that seeks to unite the awe inspired by nature's grandeur with concern for the effects of environmental degradation on the poorest and most vulnerable. Within this framework, morality is just as important as biology.

Both All Creation Is Groaning and Redeeming the Time emphasize the moral and ethical dimensions of the debate on the environment. Such discussion is by its nature more absolute than the policy debates contained in Thinking Ecologically. There, sensitivity to necessary tradeoffs and constituency building sufficient for political and economic progress are implicit. Fortunately, choosing one perspective over the other is not necessary. Neither is perfect: The moral approach isn't likely to lead directly to implementable solutions; the economic approach could easily shortchange future needs in the press of immediate concerns. Yet, considered together, these varying perspectives on environmental progress positively affect one another- the economic isn't so ruthless, the moral becomes increasingly pragmatic.

In the final moments of Inherit the Wind, Henry Drummond looks up from his thoughts on the secular and the sacred. With a resigned half-smile, half-shrug, he slaps the two books together, stuffs them into his briefcase, then strides, bag in hand, through the courthouse door. Thinking Ecologically, Redeeming the Time, and All Creation Is Groaning are companions of the same sort.

Robert Jaquay is associate director of The George Gund Foundation, a private philanthropy in Cleveland, Ohio. He writes frequently on urban sprawl, sustainable development, and other environmental topics.