“Q Will Human Species Survive ?” begins its questions with the Book of Genesis.

Genesis tells us that we are to take care of the Earth. It makes us stewards. Have we been? Are we now? Can we ever be? Or, are we no more or less than nature itself; like everything else, neither above it nor below it, animate and inanimate, in our insignificance only an accumulation of energy subject to nature’s unrelenting power.

Political correctness holds us back from open discussion of deep religious subjects such as this. We are not to question the Genesis mandate. We are simply to take it as God’s will. Like our politicians; oversensitive to the religious beliefs of the electorate, we too are careful not to bring religion into the discussion.

It is the same with op-ed writers for the major newspapers and their counterparts in broadcast news. As a result, the religious causes of our ecological dilemma are hidden from the conversation. The underlying culpability of Judeo-Christian-Islamic belief remains, at most, peripheral to the discussion.

Everyone agrees that we must protect and preserve the planet, but there is a lack of willingness to enter into the complexity of the religious thought that would address this issue. Will we be able confront those religious beliefs that have brought our civilization to the precipice of human sustainability? This is the question of our age. We will not survive unless we can find the courage to confront it.