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.

Either you are either not reading very honestly, or not reading very well, because that is nothing like what I said.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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’ ”.