You Can't Have Green without Blue pt. 1

Moving back to Florida, living among persons who sneer at "green" initiatives, and being an unemployed divinity school graduate have allowed me time to reflect on my last divinity school papers on environmental ethics. The infatuation with "green" to describe environmental ethics, theology, etc by marketing minds certainly illuminates the failure of our self-centered culture to remember 2/3 of our planet is not green, but blue. Water is rudimentary for our and our many eco-systems' survival. Secular environmental ethicists, mostly oceanographers and adventurers, have attempted to raise this very issue with marine conservation campaigns (see a classic work like The World is Blue by Sylvia Earle). However, my own education experience in environmental ethics (which itself is fairly sparse) neglected to acknowledge this nuance.

An ironic thought occurred to me as I was snorkeling off a local beach: the color green is not a primary color and requires the mixture of yellow and blue to create the necessary 520-570 nanometer wavelength. (I was indeed thinking about wavelengths because under the water light refraction causes some interesting twists of color, but you could also return to early elementary school with the mixing of paints to envision how my mind recalled this fact.) Blue is necessary to create green. How then, can we create "green guides" and advocate "green living" without seriously discussing or explicitly acknowledging the role of marine conservation? What would living "blue" mean in popular discourse? In theology, the prominent doctrines of creation always focus on the land-based creature. Psalms and other other poetic metaphors compare the strength and depth of the ocean to God, but I have seen little published material attempting to meditate on a  "blue" theology.  A caveat, of course, is blue and green are intimately connected. Green lives in the ocean as well as on land. Exploring a "blue" theology doesn't exclude "green" environmental theology, but would seek to name in theological terms a profound source of life to all.