Oil production is already leveling in China, Mexico, and India, but without the alternatives already in place. Water supplies are diminishing in China and the Middle East. This leads to the possibility of inter-state confl icts over resources, with regimes deeming it necessary to battle others to maintain stability in their own nations.global trends, 2025We live in an age of declining energy reserves, and it is likely that by 2025 nations will be battling other nations in order to secure scarce resources. At least that is what a recent report from the National Intelligence Council proposes. Optimistically minded theologians might counter that if people lived with compassion and a willingness to share resources, the resources might not be so scarce. Finite resources are real, they say, but scarcity lies in the eyes of its beholders. Theologians with more suspicious leanings might add that the rhetoric of scarcity is but a tool used by powerful people to hold the poor in bondage and engage in profi table warfare. There is wisdom in both of these perspectives. Nevertheless, our fi nite energy reserves do have their limits, and our compassion may have limits, too. Whether we adopt a hermeneutics of trust or suspicion, we cannot avoid the fact that if violence is to be averted and life is to fl ourish, nations must evolve into what the Chinese call "ecological civilizations." These civilizations simultaneously embody two kinds of harmony: harmony with the earth and harmony among people. Harmony with the earth entails living within the limits of the earth to absorb pollution and supply resources; harmony among people entails living in

{"container_title":"Cosmology, Ecology, and the Energy of God","first_page":85,"last_page":105,"publisher":"Fordham University Press"}