Global Warning

Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si’ advocates nothing less than a cultural revolution. In refreshingly readable prose, the pontiff calls on people of all faiths to urgently address a climate crisis of our own making. While the text clearly affirms the scientific consensus about global warming, Laudato si’ is more concerned with political and economic power than with science. In this way, the encyclical draws from and builds on the tradition of church teaching on the environment, dating back to Paul VI and continuing through the pontificate of Benedict XVI.
The scope of the encyclical could hardly be broader. Francis emphasizes solidarity between all God’s creatures, between human beings and the rest of creation. Yet the pope doesn’t shy away from more detailed policy analysis. For example, he urges nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other pollutants.
But the first source of the encyclical, very visible in the introduction, is Francis of Assisi (the encyclical takes its title from Francis of Assisi’s “Canticle of Creatures”). Francis draws inspiration from John XXIII’s Pacem in terris (1963), written during another global crisis—the cold war. Like Pacem in terris, the new encyclical is addressed to people of goodwill, in order to “enter into a dialogue with all about our common home.” Naturally, the pope cites Vatican II (Gaudium et spes), along with the teachings of Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI (especially the latter’s Caritas in veritate). Other important citations come from from Teilhard de Chardin and Romano Guardini. He also mentions the letters of bishops conferences (especially the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean). He also cites the work of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who has spoken movingly about environmental issues.
In some ways, Laudato si’ picks up where Evangelii gaudium left off. Francis decries the “culture of waste,” abuses of technology, and profit-mad globalization. As expected, he affirms the scientific consensus on global warming. In order to better listen to what the earth is telling us, Francis writes, the church must advocate for the poor—the first to suffer the effects of climate change. The pope rejects “demographic solutions” (like Paul VI in Humanae vitae, but Francis does not quote that text here), such as population control. He criticizes wealthy nations that leverage the needs of poorer ones for political control. Particularly strong is the pope’s analysis of the relations between politics, the global economy, and information, which is manipulated by business interests. Francis laments that in the debate on the environment, the role of politics is largely absent.
The Gospel calls the church to speak out against whatever threatens the dignity of every human being, including inequality. In this sense, the ecology of Francis is fully prolife: respect for people and respect for other creatures are closely connected. The strongest section of Laudato Si’ is its critique of technocracy (a skepticism shared by Benedict XVI). The “technocratic paradigm” is reflected in our failure to grasp the fact that many of the earth’s resources are finite. For Francis, technology is never neutral—it can be used to ill effect. The market itself will not correct this on its own. Therefore the church itself should offer a unifying voice in order to help us break free from the technocratic paradigm. To that end, Francis urges us to rethink our consumerist excesses: a good relationship with creation presupposes a good relationship with the Creator.
Ecology, according to Francis, always includes care for the poor, for the marginalized, and for nature. It also means protecting culture: the word “inculturation” does not appear in the text, but for Laudato si’ true ecology must be inculturated, not imported with a colonialist mindset. Authentic “human ecology” does not ignore sexual differences: accepting masculinity and femininity is a way of respecting creation, the pope writes, rather than imposing our will on it. In this Catholic presentation of ecology, society has a role in defending the common good, as do nations and governments.
Francis partly blames a failure of global governance for the climate crisis. Here the pope repeats the appeal to a global political authority that began with John XXIII. Where citizens see political corruption, they must resist it. It is corruption, after all, that subjugates politics to financial interests. Pope Francis does not mince words. He calls the financial crisis of 2007-08 a missed opportunity to change the whole economic system (instead, he argues, the West focused on saving large banks). For Francis, the key issue is “redefining progress” in order to bolster politics in the face of an all-dominating, profoundly exclusionary economic system. In this sense, the role of the church is largely educational. Laudato Si’ encourages grass-roots movements of socially responsible consumers, and encourages Catholics to be politically active in various ways.
The encyclical ends with two prayers. In the interreligious prayer, we find Francis’s favored themes: tenderness, the poor, and the “struggle for justice, love, and peace.” The ecumenical prayer calls for the conversion of the rich and powerful toward serving the common good—by protecting the poor and the earth.
Like all Catholic social teaching, this rich document will be subject to interpretation. A few issues seem to me important to understand the impact of Laudato si’ in the United States. First, Francis writes about creation and environment from a cultural perspective that is different from that of many Americans. Francis is a very urban pope, and for him the environment is deeply connected to, and shaped by human beings (the terms “natural law” and “law of nature” do not appear in the text). Second, Francis is not an anti-modernist pope, but neither is he a liberal. Rather, he is a critical progressive. Technology can help us clean up the mess we’ve made—but technology alone is not enough. A “personal and communal” conversion of heart is required. Third, like his predecessors, Francis believes that the common good is served by both individuals and governments. But he is not a “small government” Catholic, unlike those Republican Catholic presidential candidates who have urged the pope to “leave science to the scientists.” The pope rejects the notion of prosperity as a national project. That too won’t sit well with many Americans. A certain level of prosperity, one that entails income inequality, is simply incompatible with economic justice. Fourth, Francis does repeat traditional Catholic teaching on the “life issues,” connecting them with the imperative to care for all creation. But Americans who think of these issues in isolation from economics and the environment will be disappointed. Francis invites us to take a more global view. But whether the half of Americans who deny that climate change is an urgent problem will accept that invitation remains to be seen.
- All
- Editor Featured
"But whether the half of Americans who deny that climate change is an urgent problem will accept that invitation remains to be seen."
But whether the 95% of Americans (including 99% of the political class) who fully believe in the technocratic paradigm, and view economic prosperity fostered by science and technology as the highest goal of public policy, will accept the Pope's invitation to conversion also remains to be seen.
"While the text clearly affirms the scientific consensus about global warming, Laudato si’ is more concerned with political and economic power than with science." Excuse me, shouldn't papal teaching be primarily concerned with matters of faith and morals? That boring stuff?
Of course Pope Francis (and you too I'm sure) would respond that his motivation is religious-- caring for our earth -- and I don't dispute that. But, this man is working on the "science is settled" premise that anthropogenic global warming, primarily due to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, is a catastrophic threat to our world environment. And (like you) he believes that anybody who questions that premise is merely a "denier", or a tool of "big oil"; or just unenlightened, definitely not deserving of being listened to in a serious argument. The fact that I can never get that kind of serious discussion from those who proudly call themselves "green" leaves me convinced that we're dealing here with a mass delusion.
The title of the Papal Encyclical, Laudato Si, may be from the refrain of the Canticle of Creation by Francis of Assisi. But what did the saint really mean by using this phrase? Sometimes it pays to revisit your Medieval History Lesson
http://www.medievalhistories.com/laudato-si-and-franciscan-spirituality/
The first two comments are what is known in the trade as deflection. I'm just saying.
Deflections from what? Just asking.
Deflection from the subject of the encyclical, and deflection from M. F.'s point. The "global warming" encyclical pretty much takes global warming as a fact, as most reasonable people do. He does add, at para. 59:
As often occurs in periods of deep crisis which require bold decisions, we are tempted to think that what is happening is not entirely clear. Superficially, apart from a few obvious signs of pollution and deterioration, things do not look that serious, and the planet could continue as it is for some time. Such evasiveness serves as a licence to carrying on with our present lifestyles and models of production and consumption. This is the way human beings contrive to feed their self-destructive vices: trying not to see them, trying not to acknowledge them, delaying the important decisions and pretending that nothing will happen.
But that is far from the gravamen of his case, as you will see when you read the encyclical. If you stand outside it and discuss it in American political-economic terms, as your comment did, you will never come to grips with it.
Tom Blackburn:
if you have read the encyclical I hardly believe you could think it's about global warming. Global warming is mentioned as one consequence of the technocratic mentality, which has been dominant in American public culture for decades. Hence, my original comment was the very opposite of a deflection: it was a reminder of what is the core of the Pope's argument. If you don't get get, you will not even be able to fight global warming.
Carlo, You are right about that. Tthe TV coverage last night followed a preset pattern: "The pope said we are responsible for global warming. Gee that was tough talk. Jeb Bush disagrees." I put "global warming" in quotes because calling the encycical that leaves out biodiversity, water and trash accumulation, which get similar attention. Beyond that, it leaves out the middle two sections and the conclusion.
Someone, even before the pope started writing, laid out the story of an encyclical on climate change that would upset the deniers and put the Church squarely within the scientific consensus. That story was told and retold so often that when the encyclical came out, that's what the quick readers saw. And it makes a nice story: Pope Francis vs. the Jebster and Rick Santorum. And it even covers two paragraphs of the encyclical, which, I guess, makes it not wrong.Just woefully insufficient as a report on what Francis said.
One more thing that bugs me: The pope wrote to the whole world, not just to the American chattering class. When Francis talks about bioaccumulation in waste dumps affecting people's health, not one American in 100 will register what he is talking about, but in some countries everybody will know. Our chattering class does not include the one in 100, which is what makes the encyclical so urgent.
The encyclical takes anthropogenic global warming as a given, which it scientifically is, and traces the source to human dysfunction, individual and societal. It is an exhortation for a restoration of balance and harmony. In the anthropocene age, disharmony within and among humans will project into the most delicate aspects of the earth. Halfway through the document, I find it's very well put together. It certainly connects with my Catholic weltanschauung. The drama queens should stop honking about "gaia worship" and listen to this comprehensive synthesis.
Let's focus on a main cause of climate change and global warming: pollution. It is harder to argue that there is no pollution. Or that pollution causes no harm. Who can credibly be FOR pollution. We have made some progress in reducing pollution, such as no more burning rivers, more rivers and lakes with edible fish, and less smog in cities like LA. Maybe we could use the old Tom Lehrer ditty, "Pollution," as a theme song.
When I think of pollution, I think of trash and toxic waste, something that poisons living things directly. CO2, in itself, is not poisonous. Changing atmospheric CO2 levels doesn't directly kill things, but does move the climate into a new regime. CO2 is like water or anything. Within a range, a good thing.
Tom Blackburn >> One more thing that bugs me: The pope wrote to the whole world, not just to the American chattering class. When Francis talks about bioaccumulation in waste dumps affecting people's health, not one American in 100 will register what he is talking about, but in some countries everybody will know. <<
Not one American in 100 will know because of our technological progress in waste management. In those countries below our Southern border where the Church's influence has played a predominant role for 500 years everybody will kinow because the Church's hierarchy has alligned itself with the ruling elite to keep the masses in ignorance and poverty. Pope Francis' encyclical shows that he is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Pope Francis should either fix the massive problems in the Church Magisterium and Curia or join Benedict XVI in the Vtican retirement home.
By the way how does Pope Francis and his advisers explain away the historic cyclical climate history of the earth over the last 12,000 years is well known, starting with the end of the last great Ice Age and in the last 1000 years the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice age of the Middle Ages, the warm dust bowl of the 1930-40s, the cold period of the 1950-70s and the warm period of the 1980s-1990s which ended in 1998-2000? It doesn't take computer modeling to study the past, actually today's computer models cannot model the past's history, and today's the AGW driven computer modelers continue to predict disasters based on worst case scenarios based only on C02 despite a cyclical cooling trend over the last 18+ years.
Archeologists and geologists have a better knowledge and understanding of the earth's climate history as described in a recent Smithsonian article on the secrets of the Sphinx
"The Sahara has not always been a wilderness of sand dunes. German climatologists Rudolph Kuper and Stefan Kröpelin, analyzing the radiocarbon dates of archaeological sites, recently concluded that the region's prevailing climate pattern changed around 8,500 B.C., with the monsoon rains that covered the tropics moving north. The desert sands sprouted rolling grasslands punctuated by verdant valleys, prompting people to begin settling the region in 7,000 B.C. Kuper and Kröpelin say this green Sahara came to an end between 3,500 B.C. and 1,500 B.C., when the monsoon belt returned to the tropics and the desert reemerged. That date range is 500 years later than prevailing theories had suggested.
Further studies led by Kröpelin revealed that the return to a desert climate was a gradual process spanning centuries. This transitional period was characterized by cycles of ever-decreasing rains and extended dry spells. Support for this theory can be found in recent research conducted by Judith Bunbury, a geologist at the University of Cambridge. After studying sediment samples in the Nile Valley, she concluded that climate change in the Giza region began early in the Old Kingdom, with desert sands arriving in force late in the era."
No evidence was found of CO2 emitting SUVs, coal fired power plants or oil refineries.
Mr. Davidson, As you quoted me saying, the pope was addressing the whole world, nor just our little corner of it. So his strictures do apply to the benighted countries to our South, where the hierarchy spent a lot of time at dinners with the oligarchs. And also to Africa, where the hierarchy didn't but things turned out as if -- in your theory -- they had. South America and Africa, while not having fat hierarchs for 500 years in common, do have multinational corporations in common.
But let that go. Just look beyond your own piece of the Earth's turf. Forgive me. I just paraphrased the pope.
Mr. Mosman, CO2 does what CO2 does and has been for eons. It's a greenhouse gas but that absorbs upwelling infrared radiation and reradiates it in 4Π steradians which means half goes back down. If you can provide calculations to show it's not a problem, then by all means enlighten us. You'll need a physics-based model and a supercomputer. Good luck. But please do as much work as the climatologists. Meandering narratives purporting to supplant math and science are an insult to hard working scientists.
Stan K.
Mr. Kopacz,
Apparently for the last 18+ years CO2 has not been doing what you suggest it does. Can you explain why? Also explain what caused the end of the Last Geat Ice Age some 13,000 years ago and all of the other major climate changes that I cited and show how CO2 factored into the changes. Scientists must be able to explain the past in order to predict the future. Also explain how citing facts morphs in your mind as"meandering narratives".
Tom Blackburn >> South America and Africa, while not having fat hierarchs for 500 years in common, do have multinational corporations in common. <<
Canada, the U.S. and South America have multinational corporations in common. But whereas Canada and the U.S. have enjoyed liberty, opportunity and prosperity, South American has enjoyed pervasive poverty and desperation under Catholic Church influence. Einstein said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. When one compares in the last centruty the liberty, opportunity and prosperity of countries under democratic capitalism with marxist countries where Stalin killed tens of millions of his own people, Mao killed tens of millions of his own people, the Castros have kept the people of Cuba in slavery and destitution for 60 years, Hugo Chavez destroyed the econimy of Venezuela and then hear Pope Francis calling for the elimination of capitalism, one must conclude that according to Einstein's criteria Pope Francis is insane.
Mr. Davidson, You repeat that well. One small point: Pope Francis did not call for the elimination of capitalism. That makes your recitation beside the point, sort of.
Mr. Mosman,
Your statement about past climate changes, regarding ice ages, as not related to CO2, would make negligible sense if anyone ever said it was the ONLY cause of climate change. It is a factor among others. Thus is not even an understandable error based on a lack of understanding of a complex. It is a basic and egregious logical error. Then there's your statistics. The longer the series of measurements, the more meaningful the detection of a trend. As for the last 18 years, linear regression of ground data shows a positive slope. Where is that lack of change I keep hearing about? But to pull back from playing your game of bad statistics, it's the overall record that counts and the warming us obvious.
Put "subject" after "complex". I think my autocorrect is becoming an auto destruct.
Mr. Kopacz,
"Your statement about past climate changes, regarding ice ages, as not related to CO2, would make negligible sense if anyone ever said it was the ONLY cause of climate change. It is a factor among others."
So why is CO2 at 0.04% of the atmosphere the major factor, if not the only factor, now by the consensus crowd calling or its reduction or removal from the atmosphere?
-does "other factors" refer to "natural climate variability"
- if so,what are these"other factors"?
- how do these"other factors" influence AGW or AGC(cooling)?
-what percent of AGW /climate change is the result of "other factors" vs CO2? These are questions that still need answers and apparently you are the individual who holds the answer since you excuse CO2 and attribute the significant climate changes in the past to "other factors".
In 1996 Fredrick Seitz,President Emeritus of Rockefeller University and past President of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) described the 1996 consensus IPCC report as "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report"..."If the IPCC is incapable of following its most basic procedures, it would be best to abandon the entire IPCC process, or at least that part that is concerned
with the scientific evidence on climate change, and look for more reliable sources of advice to governments on this important question.
A Major Deception on Global Warming by Frederick Seitz Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1996"
Mr. Seitz's comments refer to the fact that after the scientific report which concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support the theory that human activity contributed to warming and that further study was required, the IPCC unilaterally changed the conclusion to indict human activity and, without consulting the contributing scientists, issued the report.
"Mr. Seitz also cited NAS' own study which states, inter alia, the earth
has been subjected to impressive and abrupt swings in climate during recent
periods covering thousands of years and that mankind's role cannot be
assessed without adequate .... baseline documentation of natural climate
variability"..
More recently several other scientists have voiced their concerns of the IPCC's objectivity as reported in the following:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/climate-scientists-mixed-over-... http://judithcurry.com/2014/04/26/stavins-and-tol-on-ipcc-wg3/
Mr. Mosman,
Solar output, the Milankovic cycles, greenhouse gases are all factors. The goal of climatological research is to quantify and sort them out. The only factor that's abruptly changing is the CO2 level. Human CO2 output is 100 times that of vulcanism, which is a natural part of the carbon cycle. The physics of CO2 and why it is a greenhouse gas is obvious to me because of my training as a physicist and optical engineer. That's why the slanderings of deniers like Seitz (now dead) are of no interest to me. He had to talk physics, not repeat the doubt manufacture he did for the tobacco industry. By the way, do you smoke? I hear it's not proved to harm you.
Stan K.
Pope Francis: Our fear-mongering, tree-hugging Pope.
The first chapter of the Pope's encyclical is riddled with doomsday language intended to convince the reader that the earth is being destroyed by humans and that “…the present world system is certainly unsustainable …” (#61).
While the Pope may have the support of many scientists to back him, the fact is that there are also many scientists who don't support such claims. The Pope has clearly taken a stance on a highly controversial scientific issue, and it is a shame. He has set the tone in the first chapter to read as a political and ideological manifesto straight out of the Leftist propaganda machine. For this reason, I have chosen to stop reading, as I believe this encyclical to be a political and ideologically tainted document. The Pope is using it to issue his own personal opinions and calling it the Church’s social teaching. In my opinion this first chapter was void of anything Catholic.
While my Catholic faith is unshakable, I completely disagree with most of the content in Chapter 1, and I am very concerned about Pope Francis' fanatical worries about the environment. We are living in times of brainwashing and madness. I am deeply saddened that he has aligned himself with Al Gore, and has such egregious, one-sided, alarmist opinions, which do not have the unanimous support of the scientific community. This part was particularly disturbing to me:
... yet a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity.
With all due respect Holy Father, there are also a number of reputable scientists who reject the notion that global warming even exists [1][2]. Some even go as far as calling it a scientific fraud [3]. I'm sure you must have known about this, so I can only presume that you have intentionally chosen to ignore these opposing views because they don't suit your ideological position.
http://jasbirtsingh.blogspot.ca/2015/06/pope-francis-our-fear-mongering-...
Mr Kopacz,
Reverting to slandering and smearing a remarkable scientists, typical of the Al Gore/Michael Mann AGW cabal.
Once again a liberal AGW advocate is practicing the old attack the messenger ignore the message. Further it is possible pr probable that you have studied or even glanced at the latest IPCC assessment report Executive Summary page 3 which confirms the hiatus in warming despite a slight increase in atmospheric CO2.
Most simulations of the historical period do not reproduce the observed reduction in global mean surface warming trend over the last 10 to 15 years. "There is medium confidence
that the trend difference between models and observations during 1998–2012 is to a substantial degree caused by
internal variability, with possible contributions from forcing error and
some models overestimating the response to increasing greenhouse
gas (GHG) forcing. Most, though not all, models overestimate the
observed warming trend in the tropical troposphere over the last 30
years, and tend to underestimate the long-term lower stratospheric
cooling trend. {9.4.1, Box 9.2, Figure 9.8"
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter09_FINAL...
Another IPCC scientists confirms the hiatus: http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/27/ipcc-climate-scientist-global-warming-...
"The goal of climatological research is to quantify and sort them out." Why not start quantifying which is exactly what Professor Seitz demanded.
By the way as Kevin Trenberth wrote in oneof the Climategate emails:
"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."
If one of the icons of AGW admits to a lack of warming several years ago why be a Doubting Thomas?
Mr.Kopacz,
Apology for an error, the sentence should have read "Further it is possible or probable that you have not studied"
Jasbir Singh,
Your mind is in an alternate and false world. The more a scientist us a climatology expert, the more they see our CO2 production as a serious problem, to a level of 97%. You don't significantly change the atmospheric content of a greenhouse gas without consequences. It's not alarmism. It's physics and chemistry.
Stan K.
Mr. Mosman,
You call me an AGW liberal which implies I don't have scientific integrity. I am an engineer with physics training and my professional integrity is VERY important to me. When someone impugns that, those are fighting words. Literally. Anyway, climatologist Richard Alley is a Republican. Katherine Hayhoe is an evangelical Christian. Anyway, you seem to have only a superficial view of the whole thing with no context in physics theory or rudimentary statistics. I don't know how to help on this. What is obviously good scientific work to me is an agnostic fog to you. And you have no real desire to understand the subject. You will continually ask questions for which there are reasonable answers you don't want to hear. I am done here. Wasted enough of my time.
Stan K.
Mr Kopack.
Check out the source of the 97%, as phoney as Mann's Hockey stick.
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/09/Montford-Consensus.pdf
or http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/08/Obama-s-97-Percent-... or http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/16/where-did-97-percent-global-warming-co...
Scientific "integrity" is a joke when it comes to man-made global warming or climate change or sustainable future climate.
Mr Kopacz,
"Anyway, climatologist Richard Alley is a Republican. Katherine Hayhoe is an evangelical Christian."
There you go again demeaning, insulting and attacking those we refuse to bow down to AGW. You have yet to admit that there has been a warming hiatus lasting for 18+ years even though the IPCC has done so. I respect your educational achievements but question your inability to separate facts from fiction. I hope you come to realize the complete lack of scientific credibility of man-made global warming after a more in depth study of the historical facts. No doubt we will meet up again. All the best.
Mr. Faggioli begins by saying that there is a scientific consenses on anthropmorphic global warming. This is not true -- there is a political consensus, not a scientific one.
When there is such an important topic that is permitted to have no public debate, then everyone should be skeptical. (Do you really believe that 100% of the climate scientists agree with this? Are any of the computer models published and readily available for peer checking? Why, when anyone tries to debate, is his/her character attacked, rather than the ideas?) When whistleblowers admit that they were required to change the input parameters to their climate model in order to get the "right" answer, everyone should be skeptical. When there are thousands of scientists that sign a statement against anthropomorphic climate change, everyone should be skeptical. When the panic goes from global cooling to global warming to climate change, everyone should be skeptical. When we rely primarliy on secret computer models (which can be easily manipulated) for spending trillions of dollars, everyone should be skeptical.
Regrettably, the political emphasis on climate change is going to hurt the poor in a major way. Energy prices are increasing, raising food and heating costs. We will be spending trillions on "alternative" energy rather than spending it on processes that help the world's poor.
The emphasis of this political religion is power and money, not saving the world. The climate is warming slightly, and has been since the little ice age in the 1800's. The primary source of global energy -- the sun -- is poorly understood (but being studied), and not part of the models. The extreme chaos of the climate cannot be properly modeled. This is a textbook example that if an idea is repeated sufficiently often, it will become truth.
Nurturing our environment is a Christian requirement (as well as for other traditions). However, to believe that it is urgent to "solve" climate change is not at all clear. What is clear is that many seem to believe our politicians, many of whom are strictly self-serving. I have far more faith in a rain dance, which is, at least, a prayer.
Our pope is correct that we have inflicted grave harm on our environment -- we've barely kept our world in one piece, and may yet fail in that. It is clear that only by massive cooperation can we correct some of the evil done. Pollution is affecting many, if not all. We desparately need the dialog Francis has called for. Perhaps we can even get some healthy debate, which has been sorely lacking. One question to ask in the debate is that, given a trillion dollars, would I give maximum help to the poor by spending it on windmills and solar cells, or could I spend it on disease control, water purification, creating economies and dignified jobs, etc?
I'm confused. I thought Frances Kissling, Dan Maguire, et al have all proved that Vatican II was all about respecting "personal and individual conscience." So can't "good and faithful" Catholics in "good conscience" respectfully disagree with the pope on climate change?
The Pope seems to be in denial about the population explosion -- this undercuts his prophetic warnings on the ecology front. John Paul II was more open in Sollicitudo rei socialis 25. "One cannot deny the existence, especially in the southern hemisphere of a demographic problem which creates difficulties for development. One must immediately add that in the northern hemisphere the nature of this problem is reversed: here, the cause for concern is the drop in the birthrate with repercussions on the aging of the population, unable even to renew itself biologically. In itself, this is a phenomenon capable of hindering development ..."
But John Paul II continued in a very defensive fashion: "On the other hand, it is very alarming to see governments in many countries launching systematic campaigns against birth contrary not only to the cultural and religious identity of the countries themselves but also contrary to He nature of true development. It often happens that these campaigns are the result of pressure and financing coming from abroad. and in some cases they are made a condition for the granting of financial and economic aid and assistance. In any event, there is an absolute lack of respect for the freedom of choice of the parties involved, men and women often subjected to intolerable pressures, including economic ones, in order to force them to submit to this new form of oppression. It is the poorest populations which suffer such mistreatment, and this sometimes leads to a tendency towards a form of racism, or the promotion of certain equally racist forms of eugenics."
http://www.samuelsteelpickling.com/New%20SSPC%20About.htm
http://www.sunset-solutions.co.uk/
http://www.masterpiecesforbrides.co.uk/
http://www.thesasig.com/LV/2N/
http://www.thesasig.com/LV/V8M4R0E/
http://www.thesasig.com/LV/MMH6/
http://www.wellsvilleterminals.com/gucc.html
http://www.wellsvilleterminals.com/gucc.html
http://www.wsicorporate.com/sunglasses/XEU89H/
http://www.wsicorporate.com/sunglasses/JT7V2R/
http://www.wsicorporate.com/sunglasses/61T/
http://www.wsicorporate.com/sunglasses/UDR2VW5PS/
http://www.wsicorporate.com/sunglasses/S3ID6/
http://www.wsicorporate.com/sunglasses/EQ1HKND/
http://www.wsicorporate.com/sunglasses/SPKFY/
http://www.wsicorporate.com/sunglasses/YSLQFT/
http://www.wsimarketing.com/handbags/XWQ/
http://www.wsimarketing.com/handbags/8VP/
http://www.wsimarketing.com/handbags/LVAG5/
http://www.wsimarketing.com/handbags/N6NDDV/
http://www.wsimarketing.com/handbags/SIW/
http://www.wsimarketing.com/handbags/LD4VOKW/
http://www.deshka.com
http://www.wrr101.com/sunglasses.html
http://www.wrr101.com/gucci.html
http://www.wrr101.com/hermes.html
http://www.wrr101.com/prada.html
http://www.wrr101.com/celine.html
http://www.wrr101.com/fendi.html
http://www.wrr101.com/dior.html





