While most people in Europe and the Northern hemisphere in general will be taking advantage of the month long August holiday, ironically heading towards warmer climates, there will be many people in August who will be working up a sweat about certain 'global problems.'
On September 8 there will be a meeting of APEC in Sydney, Australia which is being billed as a potential show-down between the worlds two biggest players in the game of greenhouse emissions- China and the US.
If any of you have been following the whole 'greenhouse thing', and I mean follow it as opposed to being lead by the discussion, you would no doubt have seen a certain shift in journalistic emphasis. The greenhouse emissions problem was originally sold to us under the banner of the big mean corporate bad guy who was selling out our future just to make quicker and bigger bucks. The 'sale' of the greenhouse project needed a bad guy, and what better bad guy then the corporate bad guy whom no one ever knows and about whom everyone can be suspicious. It also fed into another typical human emotion- relief- 'thank God it's not my fault!'
What started out as an exercise of corporate criticism slowly mutated into the problem of the carbon footprint. It went from being a problem of big business to the business of the big problem or people- you and I. We went from berrating the bad to being the bad guy. Again this fed another human emotion- panic.
Now this may not be a problem, but it seems that the Holy See has bought into the whole "greenhouse carbon-neutral environmentally responsible" thing with a vengeance. After all , the Vatican is the only carbon neutral state in the world! That's a relief. I was worried the Church was spending resources on families, the homeless and the weak. Cynical you might say- isn't what's best for the world best for the people? Well maybe, but not necessarily. And certainly not when there is more to the story than what they are telling you.
Thanks to the Sierra Club we have all been enlightened as to the real problem of global warming. It's not the problem of greed, consumerism, pollution or questionable multi-billion dollar business practices! It's not that people consume to much rather that there are too many people consuming. It's not the fat West that is the problem, rather its the Africans and their dirty technology. Of course their answer is not to give Africa better technology, the answer is give Africa less Africans! This must come as a great relief to the Sierra club and its members- no need to worry about subscriptions, after all there isn't much of a membership base in Africa. How easy it would be to solve the world's problems if the Africans would only just hold their breath! How long you say- until they no longer emit any CO2!
The dominant version of the environmental cause is unfortunately tied to an ideology that is not compatible with the Gospel. It is risky when some actions of the Church seem to support, even remotely, what is another arm of the culture of death. The Church must act with great prudence, lest the efforts of some of her sons be used against us. I understand that sharing a concern doesn't mean being married to the cause, however we must be careful because the focus of the argument is changing- corporate greed, the greed of peoples, people.
We all too often give our enemies the means with which they can attack us!
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