Take this Environmental Job and Shove It!

 
Nicolas Hulot

 1    Touch the earth lightly, use the earth gently,
        nourish the life of the world in our care:
    gift of great wonder, ours to surrender,
        trust for the children tomorrow will bear.

2    We who endanger, who create hunger,
        agents of death for all creatures that live,
    we who would foster clouds of disaster,
        God of our planet, forestall and forgive!

3    Let there be greening, birth from the burning,
        water that blesses and air that is sweet,
    health in God's garden, hope in God's children,
        regeneration that peace will complete.

4    God of all living, God of all loving,
        God of the seedling, the snow and the sun,
    teach us, deflect us, Christ reconnect us,
        using us gently and making us one.

 Shirley Erena Murray

 An environment minister in a country with the "green" message of "make our planet great again" goes on a radio show to promote the environmental record. Instead he gets partway through the interview and declares that he quitting. Hand-picked for the role, he is so exasperated by the lack of action by his government that he shocks everyone by spontaneously saying "enough!"

As improbable as this sounds, it's what happened in France last week.

PARIS (Reuters) - French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot resigned on Tuesday in frustration over sluggish progress on climate goals and nuclear energy policy, dealing a major blow to President Emmanuel Macron’s already tarnished green credentials. 

 Hulot, a former TV presenter and green activist who consistently scored high in opinion polls, quit during a live radio interview following what he called an “accumulation of disappointments”.
“I don’t want to lie to myself any more, or create the illusion that we’re facing up to these challenges,” Hulot said on France Inter. “I have therefore decided to leave the government.” 

Hulot was among Macron’s first ministerial appointments following his May 2017 election victory. His inclusion helped to sustain a green image France had earned 18 months earlier by brokering the Paris Agreement to combat global greenhouse emissions.But the centrist president has watered down a series of campaign pledges on the environment, including a commitment to cut the share of nuclear power in French electricity to 50 percent by 2025 and boost renewable energy. 
 


In the United States the directors of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior are shills for the industry-first, environment-last policies of the Trump administration. Sad to say, Catherine McKenna, Canada's Minister of Environment and Climate Change makes a lot of "sunny green ways" statements but they aren't backed up by action which makes the hard choices about climate change and the future of the planet.

On this Labour Day, which falls during Creation Time, should we admire Nicolas Hulot for his on-air, take this job and shove it" tantrum? Perhaps we all need to get crankier about what is happening to the planet, even us meek-and-mild Christians. If Jesus could throw over a few tables in the temple...