Thomas Edison Schools Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone
Written by: Rev. Dr. Scott Paczkowski
“You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I the LORD dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.”
Too often, I’ve thought of climate change as a new issue. That isn’t true. Months before Thomas Edison died, he wrote to Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, “The sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
Interestingly, Edison didn’t say, “I hope we can successfully tackle energy alternatives before oil and coal run out.” For Edison, success wasn’t a concern. Edison thought success was a given if we simply address it promptly.
Edison called the guy who invented the car and the guy who invented the tire to focus on the long-term issues with their inventions and challenged each one to look for healthier alternatives. Edison didn’t say, “don’t make cars and tires!” Instead, he wanted them to commit to long-term environmental restoration. Ford and Firestone found it hard to sacrifice the short-term. The Story of More, by Hope Jahren, provides more background. “During the decades that followed, the Ford Motor Company manufactured and sold more than three hundred million motor vehicles that burned upward of ten million barrels of oil and required a minimum of 1.2 billion tires, also partially made from oil.”
What Edison called for is now overdue. We are getting close to our “run out.” Our attempts to “tackle that” have been minimal, and our climate change is advancing quickly. Climate change is a spiritual issue because God calls us to be caretakers for the Divine creation. Today, pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit to intervene on our behalf, to change hearts and minds before it is too late. The “new heaven and the new earth” should not be God’s re-creation, but new care for making this heaven and earth “new” again. It is incumbent upon each of us to be the 21st century Thomas Edison and raise the environmental concerns yet again.
