{"id":2567,"date":"2016-08-02T12:45:05","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T16:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/bulawreview\/?page_id=2567"},"modified":"2018-04-28T13:22:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-28T17:22:03","slug":"schindler-when-god-isnt-green","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/bulawreview\/bulronline\/schindler-when-god-isnt-green\/","title":{"rendered":"Schindler When God Isn’t Green"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>Comments on When God Isn\u2019t Green<\/em><\/h2>\n

Sarah Schindler<\/a>*
\n<\/a>Online Symposium: Jay Wexler’s\u00a0<\/span>When God Isn’t Green: A World-Wide Journey to Places Where Religious Practice and Environmentalism Collide<\/span>
\n<\/em>96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 1 (2016)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

PDF<\/a><\/p>\n

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the symposium and provide comments about Jay Wexler\u2019s great new book, When God Isn\u2019t Green<\/em>. Given that Jay is both a humorist and a serious legal scholar with a penchant for taking trips, it should come as no surprise that this book reads like a mix between a travel guide, a humorous ethnography, and an adventure memoir. In addition to raising important questions about conflicts between two important, competing issues, Jay provides vivid imagery of his trips overseas. I especially appreciated the image of Jay sitting at a bar drinking with a cat.<\/p>\n

In this essay, I\u2019d like to make three small points that struck me as I was reading the book. First, I\u2019d like to situate the book within a larger body of scholarship about the cumulative impact of small harms. I\u2019d then like to talk about how big (or small) the cumulative harms that he\u2019s addressing in the book really are. I\u2019ll conclude with a brief word on animal welfare.<\/p>\n

First, with respect to cumulative harms, a number of legal scholars have written about the fact that individuals, and their actions, cumulatively contribute to significant environmental harms.1<\/span><\/a><\/span> <\/sup>In the book, Jay provides many examples of religious practices that have negative effects on the environment. I view this book as falling within the literature addressing what are known as \u201cenvironmentally significant individual behaviors.\u201d2<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/sup> The book fits well within the works of Katy Kuh, Jason Czarnezki, Jim Salzman, Mike Vandenbergh, Thaler & Sunstein and others on this point.<\/p>\n

The idea is that, if a single person is releasing a turtle into the wild, or lighting a bonfire, or cutting palm fronds, there likely wouldn\u2019t be a problem (or a book), because any harm to the environment would be de minimis. The problem comes from the fact that large numbers of religious adherents engage in these practices. Thus, we can\u2019t look at these actions individually. Rather, we have to look at them cumulatively, and when we do so, we might find that they impose harms that have a substantial negative impact on the environment. Although we historically have focused on large, industrial, point-source type polluters and pollutants, some scholars have begun to acknowledge that we must also focus on the actions of individuals that, when taken together, cause harm to the environment.<\/p>\n

One important question that many of these scholars tackle is how to best regulate these individual actions in order to reduce the overall harm. My preferred framework for matching regulatory tool to harmful action is that set forth by Lawrence Lessig, wherein he discusses four forms of regulation, or constraints on behavior.3<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/sup> These are laws or mandates, social norms, markets, and architecture. In the book, Jay touches on some of these regulatory options by referencing a variety of educational campaigns, bans on engaging in certain activities, and a number of architectural, or technical, solutions. I\u2019ll discuss these shortly, but I want to first address the importance of the religious focus in Jay\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

Here, I would like to ask Jay whether the religious practices that he describes in the book are more akin to norms or laws. Obviously, the answer to this question depends on the religion we are talking about, as well as the specific religious practice at issue and the beliefs of the adherents. But the answer to that question might help to inform the potential \u201csolutions\u201d to the problems that Jay raises in the book. This is because if a given practice is more like a norm, then an educational campaign\u2014even one established by the government as opposed to the religion itself\u2014might be successfully used to change it (although, religious norms are often sticky norms, and thus harder to change). But to the extent a practice is more akin to a law, it would likely need to be changed from inside the religion itself.<\/p>\n

In the book, Jay talks about some countries\u2019 attempts at using laws or mandates to regulate harmful religious practices. But Jay recognizes that this probably isn\u2019t the best approach, and I agree. He points out that laws often have unequal impacts. They might affect poor people more than wealthy ones, and thus might hinder the ability of poor people to express their religious beliefs more than rich.4<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/sup> I would also add that using laws and mandates to control individual behavior is hard because they are difficult to enforce. Jay also notes that mandates tend to force practices underground. It is difficult to know what people are doing inside their homes, or in small groups, and thus it\u2019s hard to stop them. It seems to me that, though acknowledging that no solution will be perfect, Jay is suggesting that architectural solutions might be the best approach for regulating environmentally harmful religious practices. He says, \u201cfinding a technology-based approach will usually be preferable to outright bans.\u201d5<\/span><\/span><\/a> <\/sup>Technology-based approaches are akin to what Lessig refers to as regulation through architecture. When Lessig talks about architecture as a form of regulation, he uses the word quite broadly in reference to \u201cthe physical world as we find it, even if \u2018as we find it\u2019 is simply how it has already been made.\u201d6<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/sup> The idea is that that physical features of the built environment constrain our behavior.<\/p>\n

Jay\u2019s book provides a number of examples of architectural solutions to the harmful religious practices that are discussed. These include:<\/p>\n