In case you missed it: Ecuador and Bolivia have granted (literally) “rights” to “nature,” that are co-equal with those of humans. And Bolivia has stated it will soon try to obtain a UN Treaty doing the same.
Don’t roll your eyes. There are some very powerful forces that seek to mutate environmental advocacy into a neo earth religion. Also, to make any major exploitation of natural resources a “crime against peace” co-equal to crimes against humanity, known as “ecocide,” also intended for UN consideration.
The increasing radicalism that is the horse pulling environmentalism’s cart would destroy human exceptionalism and, in the process, create mass poverty. Think about it. Viruses are part of nature. So are pond scum and flies. In any event, I opine over at Secondhand Smoke on the “rights of nature” for anyone interested. And here’s an article in the Weekly Standard I wrote last year about the ecocide threat. Forewarned is forearmed.
April 13th, 2011 | 9:08 pm
Caritas in Veritate – Chapter Four
49. Questions linked to the care and preservation of the environment today need to give due consideration to the energy problem. The fact that some States, power groups and companies hoard non-renewable energy resources represents a grave obstacle to development in poor countries. Those countries lack the economic means either to gain access to existing sources of non-renewable energy or to finance research into new alternatives. The stockpiling of natural resources, which in many cases are found in the poor countries themselves, gives rise to exploitation and frequent conflicts between and within nations. These conflicts are often fought on the soil of those same countries, with a heavy toll of death, destruction and further decay. The international community has an urgent duty to find institutional means of regulating the exploitation of non-renewable resources, involving poor countries in the process, in order to plan together for the future…
50. This responsibility is a global one, for it is concerned not just with energy but with the whole of creation, which must not be bequeathed to future generations depleted of its resources. Human beings legitimately exercise a responsible stewardship over nature, in order to protect it, to enjoy its fruits and to cultivate it in new ways, with the assistance of advanced technologies, so that it can worthily accommodate and feed the world’s population. On this earth there is room for everyone: here the entire human family must find the resources to live with dignity, through the help of nature itself — God’s gift to his children — and through hard work and creativity.
At the same time we must recognize our grave duty to hand the earth on to future generations in such a condition that they too can worthily inhabit it and continue to cultivate it. This means being committed to making joint decisions “after pondering responsibly the road to be taken, decisions aimed at strengthening that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we come and towards whom we are journeying”[. Let us hope that the international community and individual governments will succeed in countering harmful ways of treating the environment.
It is likewise incumbent upon the competent authorities to make every effort to ensure that the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations: the protection of the environment, of resources and of the climate obliges all international leaders to act jointly and to show a readiness to work in good faith, respecting the law and promoting solidarity with the weakest regions of the planet. One of the greatest challenges facing the economy is to achieve the most efficient use — not abuse — of natural resources, based on a realization that the notion of “efficiency” is not value-free.
- Pope Benedict XVI, June 29, 2009
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html
April 14th, 2011 | 1:20 am
Ecuador, Bolivia…sovereign countries. Not our business. We do some pretty crazy things in our own country.
April 14th, 2011 | 6:24 am
@R Hampton: Are you saying the Pope is in favor of people dying now so that we can have an unspoiled landscape?
Perhaps I am simply too versed in biology, but when I see an organism cutting back on its growth – a living system experiencing drastic population decline – I do not see anything being preserved for future generations. I see an organism that is dying.
If we are going to value truth, we need to recognize the biological truth of the situation: growth is the way of nature – and the only real choice we face is whether to keep growing, and expand beyond our current atmospheric limitations if necessary, or not – in which case we are choosing biological death. (Moreso if you really do believe the planet or planetary system is alive – in which case, let it reproduce itself! Such is the way of nature!)
April 14th, 2011 | 8:26 am
Joe, in the first place, Bolivia has said they will work to make this a UN treaty. As long as we remain part of the UN, it looks like it is our business, and it wouldn’t hurt to start thinking a little in advance.
Secondly, just because they are sovereign countries entitled to do what they want, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about or discuss whether it’s a good idea, based on sound premises, and why or why not.
April 14th, 2011 | 3:15 pm
“when I see an organism cutting back on its growth – a living system experiencing drastic population decline – I do not see anything being preserved for future generations. I see an organism that is dying.”
By organism, do you mean just Man or any living thing? In our case, our global population continues to increase so I see no threat of Man – the species – dying. But in the case of all living things, then there are a great number of species that are dying. If so, what do you propose to do about it. Anything at all?
As for the Pope, the Vatican believes Man has been given the responsible for tending to Creation so that is provides for us now and well into the future. That means living in cooperation with the environment, keeping it healthy so it can keep us healthy. That’s as much a divine mandate as it is common sense.
More from Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical:
…The Church has a responsibility towards creation and she must assert this responsibility in the public sphere. In so doing, she must defend not only earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to everyone. She must above all protect mankind from self-destruction. There is need for what might be called a human ecology, correctly understood. The deterioration of nature is in fact closely connected to the culture that shapes human coexistence: when “human ecology” is respected within society, environmental ecology also benefits. Just as human virtues are interrelated, such that the weakening of one places others at risk, so the ecological system is based on respect for a plan that affects both the health of society and its good relationship with nature.
April 14th, 2011 | 5:16 pm
By organism, do you mean just Man or any living thing?
I am referring to our ecosystem as a living system – a complex dynamic interactive system, I think they call it.
The deterioration of nature is in fact closely connected to the culture that shapes human coexistence: when “human ecology” is respected within society, environmental ecology also benefits.
If you want the satisfaction of knowing that the human race will enjoy a secure future on a well-tended planet, you need to find a solution that doesn’t involve throwing poor people into poverty and starvation.
Because there is no incentive for people to obey any regulation that is really nothing more than the wealthy redistributing resources away from the poor and toward the wealthy.
We’re all in this together. Throwing people overboard to save yourself is not the correct way to solve the “overpopulation” problem.
April 14th, 2011 | 9:05 pm
I am amazed at the comments. The late Colin Clark, an eminent Australian agricultural economist and human fertility expert, had a monograph accepted by the Royal Statistical Society of London, an institution with rigorous standards. In it he demonstrated that the earth could sustain 35 billion people; this was based on a conservative estimate of arable land, the calorie intake of the Japanese male, and excluded the Green Revolution of the 1970′s.
We Catholics are called to be Christian conservationists not environmentalists. The environmentalists consider man the enemy and have depopulation as one of their core beliefs, and they seek political power in order to effect such a belief.
Our present problem is one of declining population in the world. The creates a serious problem for those who are aging; of course, the environmentalists, who support abortion, will also want to eliminate the old folk.
April 14th, 2011 | 10:07 pm
Our present problem is one of declining population in the world.
This is simply not true. While Europe may have a declining population (not including immigrants) the world as a whole is steadily increasing in numbers.
I urge those Catholics who do not seem to and/or appreciate the Church’s opinion on Man and the Environment to first read this before passing judgement:
COMPENDIUM OF THE SOCIAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH (June 29, 2004)
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html
Especially this section (of course a full reading of the entire document is preferred)
III. THE CRISIS IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html#III.%20THE%20CRISIS%20IN%20THE%20RELATIONSHIP%20BETWEEN%20MAN%20AND%20THE%20ENVIRONMENT
IV. A COMMON RESPONSIBILITY
a. The environment, a collective good
466. Care for the environment represents a challenge for all of humanity. It is a matter of a common and universal duty, that of respecting a common good, destined for all, by preventing anyone from using “with impunity the different categories of beings, whether living or inanimate — animals, plants, the natural elements — simply as one wishes, according to one’s own economic needs”. It is a responsibility that must mature on the basis of the global dimension of the present ecological crisis and the consequent necessity to meet it on a worldwide level, since all beings are interdependent in the universal order established by the Creator. “One must take into account the nature of each being and of its mutual connection in an ordered system, which is precisely the ‘cosmos’ ”.
April 15th, 2011 | 7:40 am
Can we add anything better to this? G K Chesterton’s words:
I use the word humanitarian in the ordinary sense, as meaning one who upholds the claims of all creatures against those of humanity. They suggest that through the ages we have been growing more and more humane, that is to say, that one after another, groups or sections of beings, slaves, children, women, cows, or what not, have been gradually admitted to mercy or to justice … I am here only following the outlines of their argument, which consists in maintaining that man has been progressively more lenient, first to citizens, then to slaves, then to animals, and then (presumably) to plants. I think it wrong to sit on a man. Soon, I shall think it wrong to sit on a horse. Eventually (I suppose) I shall think it wrong to sit on a chair. That is the drive of the argument. And for this argument it can be said that it is possible to talk of it in terms of evolution or inevitable progress. A perpetual tendency to touch fewer and fewer things might–one feels, be a mere brute unconscious tendency, like that of a species to produce fewer and fewer children. This drift may be really evolutionary, because it is stupid.
April 15th, 2011 | 3:23 pm
Provided there are enough horses for everyone to sit on, and enough trees to make enough chairs, then I don’t see that G.K. Chesterton’s words are applicable. Of course, people sit “on” cars moreso than horses these days, so we would need to amend the words accordingly.
But lets look at a real world example: Haiti. The inhabitants have stripped the landscape of once lush forests trees, which led to a massive erosion of topsoil, and now the environment can’t support the human population let alone itself.
What do you suppose G.K. Chesterton would propose? What would you propose?
April 15th, 2011 | 3:40 pm
You’re concerned about nature getting rights while the Gulf of Mexico is contaminated with oil and corexit and Japan spews nuclear waste around the world? You can’t understand why these countries want to protect the environment? What a strange simple creature we are.
April 15th, 2011 | 6:24 pm
You’re concerned about nature getting rights while the Gulf of Mexico is contaminated with oil and corexit and Japan spews nuclear waste around the world? You can’t understand why these countries want to protect the environment? What a strange simple creature we are.
Ah but is “nature” actually the ones gaining the right? Somehow I do not think “nature” will be the one representing “herself” in court.
Really what we are doing is passing a law saying that poor people should make sacrifices so that rich people can enjoy benefits.
Now if the poor people simply decide to go along passively with your plans to appropriate their resources (to add to your hoard) everything should work out just ducky. And maybe one or two of them can get jobs at the eco-tourism resort, if their skin color isn’t too offensive to the rich white people who found yet another way to steal their land.
April 15th, 2011 | 9:13 pm
Blake,
Care to answer my question regarding Haiti’s environment?
April 16th, 2011 | 10:14 am
But lets look at a real world example: Haiti. The inhabitants have stripped the landscape of once lush forests trees, which led to a massive erosion of topsoil, and now the environment can’t support the human population let alone itself.
The correct answer is this:
We are all in this together.
We need to find a solution.
Simply passing a law commanding Haitians to stop using up resources is not a solution.
(You can tell when a policy is left wing – it always seems to involve an affluent liberal volunteering someone else’s wealth and resources, doesn’t it?)
If you want a real solution, you have two options.
The first is, instead of volunteering them to be the ones to stop using resources, you should be the one to stop using resources. You can invite them all to your house and spend all your resources feeding them, then they won’t want to exploit resources.
The second is, to find a solution that doesn’t involve throwing anyone overboard.
The only such solution I can see is to start colonizing resources in space. We are very close to the technology, and expanding beyond the current boundaries of our atmosphere is the only way we can hope to relieve overpopulation without dramatic depopulation.
I simply don’t recognize your (or anyone else’s) right to demand someone else die so that you can enjoy security.
April 16th, 2011 | 5:32 pm
So until Haitians can start mining space for wood and food, we should do nothing. Is that your understanding of what the Bible commands us to do?
April 17th, 2011 | 2:42 pm
So until Haitians can start mining space for wood and food, we should do nothing. Is that your understanding of what the Bible commands us to do?
Either you are either not reading very honestly, or not reading very well, because that is nothing like what I said.
April 19th, 2011 | 10:51 pm
…You can invite them all to your house and spend all your resources feeding them, then they won’t want to exploit resources.
The second is, to find a solution that doesn’t involve throwing anyone overboard.
The only such solution I can see is to start colonizing resources in space.
Option one requires the immigration of Haitians – how else can one a Haitian into our home? Given the decade-long waiting list for legal immigration, and the number of Haitians needing help dwarfs immigration allotments, that’s not a practical solution. That leaves us with option two, colonizing space – again, not a practical solution for very obvious reasons. So I don’t see how your suggestions comply with Biblical teachings.
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