Just posted to our site, in light of the ongoing UN conference on climate change in Durban, South Africa, Elizabeth Groppe makes the case for climate change as a pro-life issue:
Unlike abortion and the death penalty, climate change does not entail an intentional act that ends the life of another human being. It is the unintentional outcome of the industrial and agricultural processes that have accompanied our economic development. As early as 1979, however, scientists testified to Congress of the possible consequences of climate change, and our inaction is already taking the lives of vulnerable human beings. In 2009, a study conducted by the Global Humanitarian Forum found that climate change was already responsible for 300,000 deaths a year, the suffering of 325 million people, and economic losses of over $100 billion. Over 90 percent of those persons most severely affected were from developing countries that have contributed least to global carbon emissions.
In the coming decades, climate change can bring deadly famine, displacement and disease to large sectors of the human population and spawn mass extinctions of other species. In the long term, the climate could change so radically that the earth could no longer support human civilization. In this sense, caring for the climate and the biosphere is a paramount pro-life issue.
Pope Benedict XVI lamented the failure of the international community to take appropriate action on climate change at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009. The Vatican has installed solar panels on the roof of the Paul VI auditorium and declared the intention to make Vatican City the first carbon neutral state. In the United States, the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change supported by the bishops’ conference and other Catholic bodies is leading multiple initiatives, including the Catholic Climate Covenant. Participants in this covenant pledge in the spirit of St. Francis to educate themselves, pray, change their own energy-intensive patterns of living and lobby for policies that will address the climate crisis. These essential initiatives can be strengthened by recognizing climate change as a life issue that merits our attention in October’s annual Respect Life programs and January’s National Prayer Vigil for Life. We should also pursue new pro-life initiatives specific to the climate crisis, such as legal action to hold our government accountable for its repeated failure to protect the earth for generations unborn.
Read the rest here.
Tim Reidy
The indirect Killing of a human does have other factors that need to be considered in order to determine the morality of the act.
I can turn your hypothetical around and say that if we spend a trillion dollars in order to prevent the hypothetical situation of a person dumping xylene in your back yard then we would be indirectly killing those who will suffer from not having that trillion dollars for ather life saving endeavors.
You see Stanley this is a much more complex issue concerning life than the more absolute issue of directly killing an innocent person. It seems that arrogant people who think there is only one right way to protect the environment need to take a class in humility.
I myself am not convinced by the arguments that we are at the edge of the abyss or anywhere near it .
I remember 12 years ago in Geneva a lady who worked in the U.N told me that her homeland of the Maldives would not exist by 2010.It impressed me a great deal and so I remembered her prophecy (which she explained scientifically) and here we are with the Maldives still there.
What to do?Appeal to human vanity and ask every human being with a few bob(that means you America reader) to sponsor a tree somewhere.
We could have our name on it etc and visit it on holidays.
If we appeal to human virtue you can be sure the result will be a disaster and every hangup that people have with regards this issue will be a dead-end.
Moral outrage ,the type exhibited by everybody who writes on this subject is tiresome and getting us nowhere.
Let is say a big yes to greedy corporations and Power Plants that would make Monty Burns smile and also to an abundance of trees.
Having said that I do not want to thwart the plan of the Lord (Luke 21:25), and maybe us Christians should just say a collective "Bring it on " to Armeggedon.
In the 1970s, the computers were slow and the science wasn't in yet so your statement makes no sense to me. Science actually DOES accumulate knowledge. THe actual history of scientific thought and progress on the matter, if you think science has any value except for making big money for big concerns, is at
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Your comment about the unpredictability of weather has some truth to it. The atmosphere is a non-linear system, so deterministic chaos theory does apply, for predicting short term variations in the future. However, having once modeled an optical non-linear system, I know that the absorption of more energy in the system will result in even greater chaos and unpredictability, which is another negative effect. And the climate we are used to for growing crops and planning our home construction will not be there any more. Some people in some areas may actually do better, but it will be drought and floods, most probably, for the rest.
My comment about planes was for Mr. SMith, who seems to think we are not adventurous enough. I gave him another way to be adventurous. That radiative material spewed from Fukushima had to go somewhere. I wouldn't take those tests too seriously. An undetectible small particle of radioactive material can be lodged in the lungs, banging away for years. Also. a beta emitter would probably not be detected. The radiation doesn't get far. Monitoring the health of a large set of living human beings over time will be the best indicator of what really happened.
As for me, I don't seee why we need large nuke plants when we can use that big fusion reactor 93M miles away. A system less susceptible to the terrorists you're so afraid of and to Coronal Mass Ejections, too.
By the way, I don't think you're a cretin. I just wouldn't let you near any dangerous technology.
How to tackle the problems concerning the climate is not absolutely known, though some people arrogantly claim to know the infallible truth concerning this issue.
on the one hand, climate change is quite complicated as it requires the analysis of the energy balance of an entire planet. On the other hand, the conclusions of painstaking research over decades can be reduced to a rather simple set of propositions: the climate is changing; green house gases produced by humanity are responsible; if nothing is done to curb their emissions, the human race is going to be in deep trouble.
The existence of the problem of climate change is nearly universally recognized except among a handful of climate change skeptics and oil company executives. There is no unanimity on the solution, so I am not sure who you are talking about when you excoriate "arrogant people who think there is only one right way to protect the environment".
We need to deal with this problem now. As we pray every Sunday, we will be responsible to God for what we have done and for what we (will) have failed to do.
In the worst civilian nuclear disaster that has ever occurred in the responsible nations of the west, Fukujima, we now have the total deaths attributable to radiation from the accident in its first year: 0. Time to move forward.
Another conservation method would install GPS-based speed governors in all cars to limit to the local speed limit. This might also allow the safer use of bicycles.
You may not be old enough to remember, but back in the early 70's, we were beseiged by scientists and environmentalists all warning us that we were about to enter a new, catastrophic Ice Age, and that by 2000 we would be entombed in ice with all sorts of problems threatening mankind. Those arguing to the contrary were disparaged or censored; those such as myself who were skeptical of the science were cretans who just didn't know or acknowledge scientific facts. Comes 2000, and lo and behold, we are approaching the Sauna Age, and those, such as myself who are skeptical of the science are cretans who just don't know or acknowledge the facts.
Perhaps there is wisdom in regard to these weather prognosticators: in the long run, the weather is unpredictable.
Stanley (@7),
It may be difficult to imagine, but more time has passed between the invention of the first viable nuclear reactor and the present than passed between the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk and the Moon Landing. Nuclear power plants are incomparably more advanced, efficient, and safer than our aging ones from the 70's, which have had nothing short of an amazing safety record. Also far more is known about dosages and dangers of radiation exposure. Many thousands of Japanese, for example, have been tested for radiation levels and none have been found with dangerous levels of exposure to this point. So the argument that the future deaths or health problems resulting from radiation exposure cannot be measured is no longer of great validity.
If you feel your privacy is excessively violated by airport screening, you can (1) take other transportation, or (2) be part of two separate plane departures. One will be for those such as myself who want the screening and tolerate the inspections because they would prefer to reduce the chances of being blown up in the sky. Another can be for those who object to such screenings and can board that plane, assuming they can find likeminded pilots and crews, along with the delighted terrorists.