Geo-Justice: A Preferential Option for the Earth

Ian Wylie Toal is a free-lance writer living in Flesherton, Ontario.

This book represents one person’s spiritual and emotional response to
the crisis of the environment. Conlon maintains that we are witnessing
Earth’s destruction—a process analogous to Christ’s Crucifixion.
He believes this “Cosmic Crucifixion” will become a “transforming
act,” to be followed by a global Resurrection and Pentecost, when a
new world order will emerge. Geo-Justice equates justice with peace with
the Earth and “implies a transformation of people and society.”

As a concept, Geo-Justice has three components: a global component (in
which we experience the Earth as a whole); a local component (which
encourages concrete actions); and the Psycho-Social component (which
treats personal growth as a way of achieving harmony with the universe).
By following one or a combination of these components, this process
“moves people towards a wholistic world view.”

As a heartfelt response to current environmental issues this book has
appeal. In any other sense, however, its value is dubious. Conlon’s
rambling and unpredictable writing style makes reading difficult. The
text constantly wanders from the main point, in a language that confuses
more than it clarifies. For example, such statements as “spend 15
minutes a day reading the primary scripture of the cosmos by spending
time in creation” are unnecessarily convoluted. Jargon is defined
neither in the text nor in a glossary. And finally, the book has no
index.

Little factual material appears between these covers—and what Conlon
does use is very sloppily treated. Quotations are not always referenced,
and sources are not given for statements of fact. In an odd way, though,
this approach reflects the book’s main thrust: that mythology is more
essential than fact to understanding environmental degradation.

Geo-Justice is a modern myth that Conlon understands well but fails to
explain adequately, either in terms of how to achieve it or how it is
supposed to function.