There is something I have never understood about the argument over global warming.
That argument was, of course, renewed last week with the leaking, and then the official release, of a new papal letter excoriating human mistreatment of “our common home.” In this latest encyclical, Pope Francis calls for a “bold, cultural revolution” to stem the harm done to the planet from warming that is occurring “mainly as a result of human activity.”
He condemns a fixation on technological advance at the cost of the planet’s health — and the “magical” idea that the free market can reverse this damage if corporations and individuals enjoy a sufficient increase in profits. The refusal to accept that Earth’s resources are finite has led, the letter says, to “the planet being squeezed dry at every limit.”
Nor does all humanity suffer the consequences equally. Pope Francis writes that while global warming is disproportionately caused by wealthier nations, its effects are disproportionately borne by poorer ones. He calls upon the world to come together and reach a consensus for change. “Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain,” he writes.
In one particularly anguished paragraph, the pope tells us the Earth is our sister and this sister “now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of human life.”
