The article discusses the links between traditional sacred practices and care for the environment and the world, and then asks about modern secular societies:
Where does this leave secular societies in which technological or policy-focused solutions to environmental problems are not working, but where identification with the sacred has waned over time? Can something as deeply personal and experiential as the sacred be meaningfully shaped by design? Could mundane, often thankless tasks — cycling, tree-planting, recycling — be reframed not as chores, but as rituals of care and connection that inspire deeper commitment to environmental stewardship?
And continues, pointing out sacred spaces don't require religious belief:
The sacred need not be confined to formal religion. While the Grand Bassin’s significance is rooted in Hindu mythology and practice, the orientation it reflects — a sense of reverence, moral weight and emotional resonance — can arise in many forms. Sacredness emerges wherever people set something apart as meaningful beyond its utility: a forest grove, a war memorial, a national flag, a moment of collective silence. What matters is not the doctrine behind it but the way it shapes how people think, feel and act.
Of course, one might ask whether it’s even possible to promote rituals of care in the absence of care itself. Wouldn’t such efforts ring hollow or fail to resonate with those who feel disconnected from the natural world in the first place? But this is precisely where sacralization matters most. Sacredness does not only emerge from what people already revere — it actively helps generate that reverence. Rituals can bring people into a different frame of mind, one in which meaning accumulates through repetition, symbols take on weight and ordinary acts begin to feel purposeful. If environmental stewardship is to take root, it may not be enough to wait for people to care. Sometimes the path to care begins with practice.
Ritual helps people to care. Ritual, to put it another way, helps create empathy. And the natural world could definitely use some care and empathy these days.
I think the reasoning expressed here is taking the wrong approach. The type of person in most need of convincing that we should consider ritual as an important (if not outright necessary) tool for changing society (especially if it's to "save" the environment) is the type of person for whom:
To convince such a person (for whom I expect Carl Sagan's words on science being a "candle in the dark" deeply resonate), I think it would be much more productive to talk about how we came to care so much about democracy and human rights given neither are, to my knowledge, falsifiable.
The acts of voting and holding an election are deeply secular rituals; we imbue them with power by performing them, and we perform them because we view them as imbued with power (specifically, the power to confer legitimacy on the decision made by their own outcome). Similarly, writing down on a piece of paper that human beings should be treated on equal footing has been effectively ritualized[0] to help convince others - including those born long after the paper was written on - that we should act as if it were true, despite any evidence our senses may provide us for the contrary.
A third, even more mundane example of a secular ritual is when two parties sign a contract.
A fourth, much more fun example of a secular ritual is gift-giving on certain significant moments in time - birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas.
I would wager this hypothetical reader-in-need-of-convincing thinks all four of these rituals are good - for them, for everyone, and also just plain Good. They don't need to be scientifically proven to "work" so much as they need to be scientifically "cleared of harm" - we don't give up on contracts just because they can be used for harm, we pass laws so that we can ignore and/or annul any harmful contracts that might otherwise take effect. Similarly, maybe we can make "coexisting with the environment" sacred without involving notions of heaven, hell, or any sort of higher power. We certainly seem to want to treat human rights as sacred, even though that isn't a perfect approach either.
In any case, I would have been much more receptive to this line of reasoning back when I would have dismissed the article itself as not-that-deep and somewhat fetishistic.
[0]: both by repetition and by continued transmission of reverence. Not only have there been multiple signings of declarations of human rights over the years, many of them were directly inspired by previous one(s). From the USA's "bill of rights" to the French "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" to the UN's "Universal Declaration of Human Rights", most continue to be taught about in Western education as being important milestones for society as well having a net good impact on us.
Just as we are creatures of habit, we are creatures of belief. Ritual is belief + habit + (ideally) intent.
To be clear:
I don't argue for abandoning objective reality, but rather that the path to there, from within our own minds, will need to incorporate rituals on some level. The scientific method is really just a very specific kind of ritual. Let's lean into all of our strengths as human beings, not just our capacity for reasoning.