Francesco Laudato si` Lettera Enciclica Sulla cura della

Francesco
Laudato si’
Lettera Enciclica
Sulla cura della casa comune
English
http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papafrancesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en.pdf
Español
http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papafrancesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_sp.pdf
Français
http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papafrancesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_fr.pdf
Italiano
http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papafrancesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_it.pdf
Português
http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papafrancesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_po.pdf
Vamos todos cuidar da “NOSSA CASA COMUM” a nossa irmã, Mãe terra.
Let us all take care of OUR COMMON HOME our sister, Mother Earth
Photograph: llfaro/Instagram
http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/es/bollettino/pubblico/2015/06/18/0480/01050.html
Conferenza Stampa per la presentazione della Lettera Enciclica
«Laudato si’» del Santo Padre Francesco sulla cura della casa
comune, 18.06.2015
[B0480]
Intervento del Card. Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson
Intervento del Metropolita John (Zizioulas) di Pergamo
Intervento del Prof. John Schellnhuber
Intervento della Prof.ssa Carolyn Woo
Testimonianza della Dott.ssa Valeria Martano
Alle ore 11.00 di questa mattina, nell’Aula Nuova del Sinodo in Vaticano, si è tenuta la
Conferenza Stampa di presentazione dell’Enciclica del Santo Padre Francesco « Laudato si’,
sulla cura della casa comune ».
Sono intervenuti Sua Eminenza il Cardinale Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, Presidente
del Pontificio Consiglio della Giustizia e della Pace; Sua Eminenza il Metropolita di Pergamo
John Zizioulas, in rappresentanza del Patriarcato Ecumenico e della Chiesa Ortodossa; il Prof.
Hans Joachim (John) Schellnhuber, Fondatore e Direttore del Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research; la Prof.ssa Carolyn Woo, CEO e Presidente del Catholic Relief Services e
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già Decano del Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame (USA); e ha portato
la sua testimonianza la maestra Valeria Martano, insegnante delle periferie romane.
Riportiamo di seguito i testi degli interventi:
Intervento del Card. Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson
Testo in lingua italiana
Testo in lingua inglese
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http://newsroom.unfccc.int/es/bienvenida/el-papa-francisco-presenta-su-enciclica-sobre-clima-ymedio-ambiente/
NOTICIAS
Bienvenido al portal de Noticias de la CMNUCC. Aquí encontrará información sobre cambio climático y lo
que hacen para combatirlo gobiernos, empresas, ciudades, ONU y sociedad civil. Su opinión sobre el portal
y sus posibles contribuciones nos interesan. Escríbanos a [email protected]
NOTICIAS
El Papa Francisco presenta su encíclica sobre clima y medio ambiente
Reacción de líderes de la ONU
El Papa Francisco pidió el jueves a los más de 1.200 millones de católicos de todo el mundo
que unan sus fuerzas a la lucha contra el cambio climático. En la primera gran carta encíclica
de su papado, Francisco afirma que la ciencia es clara respecto al cambio climático y que éste
es un asunto moral para la iglesia católica. Hay que afrontar el cambio climático, sostiene,
para proteger tanto a las poblaciones más vulnerables como al planeta.
El título de la encíclica, “Laudato Si” (“Alabado seas” en latín), es una referencia a
una oración de San Francisco, de quien el Pontífice tomó su nombre papal y que es, además,
el santo patrón de la ecología.
El documento papal llega a pocos meses de que los gobiernos se reúnan en la
conferencia de la ONU sobre cambio climático de París, en la que suscribirán un acuerdo
universal para limitar las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero y evitar que el incremento
de la temperatura media global supere los 2°C.
Antes de esa conferencia, las naciones del mundo se reunirán en Nueva York, en
septiembre, en la Asamblea General de la ONU para acordar una nueva serie de objetivos de
desarrollo sostenible. Estas dos citas están interconectadas y se espera que pongan al mundo
camino de un futuro sostenible en el que el crecimiento no esté asociado con la contaminación
y la degradación ambiental.
El portavoz del Secretario General de la ONU, Ban Ki-moon, publicó el siguiente
comunicado:
El Secretario General se congratula de la encíclica papal que hoy publicó su Santidad el Papa
Francisco que llama la atención sobre el hecho de que el cambio climático es uno de los
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principales restos a los que se enfrenta la humanidad y que se trata de una cuestión moral que
requiere un diálogo respetuoso entre todos los sectores de la sociedad. El Secretario General
subraya el hecho de que la encíclica concluye que existe un “consenso científico muy sólido”
sobre el calentamiento significativo del sistema climático y que la mayor parte del
calentamiento de las últimas décadas ha sido causado “principalmente por las actividades
humanas”.
El Secretario General reafirmó que la humanidad tiene la importante obligación moral
de cuidar y proteger nuestro hogar común, el planeta Tierra, así como ser solidaria con los
miembros más pobres y vulnerables de la sociedad que son quienes más están sufriendo el
cambio climático. Así, el Secretario General urge a los gobiernos a que pongan el bien común
global por encima de los intereses nacionales y que adopten un ambicioso acuerdo universal
sobre cambio climático en París este año.
El Secretario General da la bienvenida a las contribuciones de todos los líderes
religiosos y personalidades influyentes en dar una respuesta al reto del cambio climático y en
reforzar un desarrollo sostenible. El Secretario General está deseoso de recibir al Papa
Francisco en las Naciones Unidas el próximo septiembre para que se dirija a la Asamblea
General de la ONU.
La máxima responsable de la ONU sobre cambio climático, Christiana Figueres,
Secretaria Ejecutiva de la CMNUCC, dio la bienvenida a la encíclica afirmando:
“La encíclica del Papa Francisco subraya que actuar frente al cambio climático es un
imperativo moral para ayudar a las poblaciones más vulnerables del planeta, proteger el
medio ambiente y fomentar un desarrollo sostenible. Esta clara llamada debería guiar al
mundo para que de París a finales de este año salga un acuerdo climático universal duradero y
fuerte. El imperativo económico junto al imperativo moral no dejan lugar a dudas de que
debemos actuar ya frente al cambio climático”.
Por su parte, el director Ejecutivo del Programa de la ONU para el Medio Ambiente
(PNUMA), Achim Steiner, hizo la siguiente declaración tras conocerse la encíclica:
“El Programa de la ONU para el Medio Ambiente da la bienvenida al llamado sin
ambigüedades del Papa Francisco, un llamado a la acción para hacer frente a la degradación
medioambiental y al cambio climático. Esta encíclica es un llamado claro que resuena no solo
entre los católicos sino entre todos los pueblos de la tierra. La ciencia y la religión se han
unido en esta cuestión y ha llegado la hora de actuar.
Compartimos la visión del Papa Francisco de que nuestra respuesta al cambio
climático y la degradación ambiental no puede estar exclusivamente definida por la ciencia, la
tecnología o la economía, sino que se trata también de un imperativo moral. No podemos
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dejar de lado a los más pobres del planeta, ni a los más vulnerables que son quienes más están
sufriendo los cambios que vemos se están produciendo.
La protección del medio ambiente debe hacerse teniendo en cuenta los intereses de las
generaciones presentes y las futuras. Con la adopción de los objetivos de desarrollo
sostenible, en septiembre, y el acuerdo climático, en diciembre, tenemos la oportunidad de
alterar el curso de la historia, creando un mundo mejor y más equitativo para todos. Sabiendo
lo que sabemos sobre el estado del planeta y las decisiones que podemos tomar a día de hoy,
no hay duda de las graves consecuencias que se plantean. Todos debemos reconocer la
necesidad de reducir nuestro impacto en el medio ambiente y hemos de consumir y producir
de manera sostenible. Como el Secretario General de la ONU ha dicho en repetidas ocasiones,
somos la primera generación que puede acabar con la pobreza y la última que puede actuar
para evitar los peores impactos del cambio climático”.
La Directora General de la UNESCO, Irina Bokova, dijo por su parte:
“El Papa Francisco ha llamado a la humanidad a mirar el planeta con una nueva visión, verlo
como nuestro hogar. Es un llamamiento a la valentía y la unidad, para que todos los hombres
y mujeres cuenten con las oportunidades y la capacidad de poner de su parte, especialmente
los más marginalizados, para quienes la sostenibilidad significa mucho más que leyes y
políticas "verdes", significa nuevas formas de pensar y de comportarse como ciudadanos
globales, con una nueva manera de ver los océanos y la biodiversidad. Necesitamos esta
visión y esta valentía más que nunca para alcanzar el nuevo acuerdo climático universal este
año en París”.
Helen Clark, Administradora del Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo
(PNUD), afirmó:
“Doy la bienvenida a la importante contribución que el Papa Francisco hace al debate sobre el
cambio climático con esta encíclica sobre el medio ambiente y la pobreza. Los pobres y
marginados de nuestras sociedades son los más vulnerables al cambio climático y son,
además, los más duramente afectados.
El PNUD trabaja junto a los países en desarrollo para evitar lo que el Papa Francisco
denomina como “economía de la exclusión” y se esfuerza por hacer posible un progreso y un
crecimiento que beneficie a todos. Cuando, deseosos, esperamos el establecimiento este año
de los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible así como el tan esperado acuerdo sobre cambio
climático, hemos de aprovechar esta oportunidad, única para nuestra generación, y establecer
la hoja de ruta de un desarrollo sostenible que beneficie a todos y proteja el planeta”.
http://newsroom.unfccc.int/unfccc-newsroom/pope-francis-releases-encyclical-on-climate-andenvironment/
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NEWS
These new front pages and focus sections capture news of climate change and stories about the groundswell
of climate action by governments, companies, cities, the UN and civil society around the globe. To provide
feedback, email us at [email protected]
Pope Francis Releases Encyclical on Climate and Environment
UN Leaders React
Pope Francis called on Thursday on the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to join the fight against
climate change. In a papal encyclical letter, Pope Francis declared that the science of climate
change is clear and that the Catholic Church views climate change as a moral issue that must
be addressed in order to protect the Earth and everyone on it.
The encyclical is called Laudato Si’, which translates into “Praised Be” – a reference to a prayer
from the pope’s namesake St. Francis, the patron saint of ecology.
The letter comes ahead of the next UN climate change conference in Paris, in
December, where governments will reach a universal climate change agreement that must
keep the average global temperature from rising beyond 2C degrees and secure the ability of
all countries to adapt to the climate change that is already in the global system.
Countries gather before that in New York, in September, at the UN General Assembly
to agree a new set of sustainable development goals. These inter-linked efforts must put all
nations on track towards a sustainable future that decouples human growth from pollution and
environmental degradation.
A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued the following statement:
The Secretary-General welcomes the papal encyclical released today by His Holiness Pope
Francis which highlights that climate change is one of the principal challenges facing
humanity, and that it is a moral issue requiring respectful dialogue with all parts of society.
The Secretary-General notes the encyclical’s findings that there is “a very solid scientific
consensus” showing significant warming of the climate system and that most global warming
in recent decades is “mainly a result of human activity”.
The Secretary-General reaffirms that humanity has a significant obligation to care for
and protect our common home, the planet Earth, and to show solidarity with the poorest and
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most vulnerable members of society who are suffering most from climate impacts. The
Secretary-General therefore urges governments to place the global common good above
national interests and to adopt an ambitious, universal climate agreement in Paris this year.
The Secretary-General welcomes the contributions of all religious leaders and people
of influence in responding to the climate challenge and in strengthening sustainable
development. He looks forward to welcoming Pope Francis at the United Nations in
September to address the UN General Assembly.
The UN’s top climate change official UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres
said:
“Pope Francis’ encyclical underscores the moral imperative for urgent action on climate
change to lift the planet’s most vulnerable populations, protect development, and spur
responsible growth. This clarion call should guide the world towards a strong and durable
universal climate agreement in Paris at the end of this year. Coupled with the economic
imperative, the moral imperative leaves no doubt that we must act on climate change now.”
Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme Achim Steiner issued the
following statement following the release of the encyclical:
“The UN Environment Programme welcomes Pope Francis’ unambiguous call to action in the
face of global environmental degradation and climate change. This encyclical is a clarion call
that resonates not only with Catholics, but with all of the Earth’s peoples. Science and religion
are aligned on this matter: The time to act is now.
“We share Pope Francis' view that our response to environmental degradation and climate
change cannot only be defined by science, technology or economics, but is also a moral
imperative. We must not overlook that the world’s poorest and most vulnerable suffer most
from the changes we are seeing.
“Humanity’s environmental stewardship of the planet must recognize the interests of both
current and future generations. With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in
September and a climate agreement in December, we have the opportunity to positively alter
the course of history, creating a better and more equitable world for all. Given what we know
about the state of our planet, and the choices we can make today, there can be no equivocating
in the face of grave consequences. We all must recognise the need to reduce our
environmental impact, and consume and produce in a sustainable way. As Secretary General
Ban Ki moon has repeatedly stated, ‘We are the first generation that can end poverty, and the
last generation that can act to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.’”
UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said:
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“Pope Francis calls for a new vision of humanity in relation to the planet that is our home.
This is a call for courage and unity, where every woman and man has opportunities and skills
to contribute, especially the most marginalized, where sustainability means much more than
green laws and policies – it means new ways of thinking and behaving as global citizens, it
means a new focus on the ocean and biodiversity. We need this vision and courage more than
ever to reach a new climate change agreement this year in Paris.”
UN Development Programme Administrator Helen Clark said:
“I welcome Pope Francis’ very important contribution to the climate change debate through
his encyclical on the environment and the poor. The poor and the marginalized in our
societies are the ones who are the most vulnerable to climate change, and are also the ones
hardest hit by its impacts.
UNDP works with developing countries to avoid what Pope Francis describes as an
“economy of exclusion,” and strives to enable progress and growth which benefits everyone.
As we look forward later this year to the creation of sustainable development goals and the
expected climate change agreement, we must seize this once in a generation opportunity to
chart a new course for sustainable development which benefits everyone and protects our
planet.”
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http://newsroom.unfccc.int/fr/bienvenue/le-pape-francois-publie-son-encyclique-sur-le-climat-etlenvironnement/
ACTUALITÉS
Bienvenue sur le portail d'actualités de la CCNUCC. Vous y trouverez des informations sur
les changements climatiques ainsi que les mesures prises par les gouvernements, entreprises,
citoyens, l'ONU et la société civile. Votre opinion et vos contributions nous intéressent :
contactez nous à [email protected].
Le Pape François publie son Encyclique sur le climat et l'environnement
Les Responsables des Nations Unies réagissent
Le Pape François a appelé 1,2 milliard de catholiques du monde à se joindre à la lutte contre
le changement climatique aujourd'hui. Dans la première grande encyclique de son pontificat,
François a déclaré que la science est claire, et que l'Église catholique considère le changement
climatique comme un problème moral qui doit être abordé afin de protéger les plus
vulnérables du monde et la terre.
L’Encyclique est intitulée « audato Si », qui se traduit par « Loué sois-tu » – une
référence à une prière de l’homonyme du pape, Saint François, le saint patron de l'écologie.
L’Encyclique arrive quelques mois avant que les gouvernements se réunissent pour les
négociations sur le changement climatique sous l’égide de l’ONU à Paris pour signer un
accord universel visant à limiter les émissions à effet de serre et à empêcher la température
moyenne mondiale d'augmenter de plus de 2 degrés Celsius, et sécuriser la capacité de tous
les pays à s'adapter au changement climatique, déjà inscrit dans le système mondial.
Les pays se réuniront avant à New York, en septembre, à l'Assemblée générale des
Nations Unies pour convenir d'un nouvel ensemble d'objectifs de développement durable. Ces
efforts interconnectés doivent mettre toutes les nations sur la bonne voie vers un avenir
durable qui découple croissance humaine de la pollution et de la dégradation de
l’environnement.
Un porte-parole du Secrétaire général de l'ONU Ban Ki-moon, a publié la déclaration
suivante:
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Le Secrétaire général se félicite de l'Encyclique papale publié aujourd’hui par Sa
Sainteté le Pape François qui souligne que le changement climatique est l’un des principaux
défis de l'humanité, et qu’il est une question morale exigeant un dialogue respectueux avec
toutes les parties de la société. Le Secrétaire général prend note des conclusions de
l’Encyclique, qu'il y a un ‘consensus scientifique très solide’ montrant un important
réchauffement du système climatique et aussi que le réchauffement mondial au cours des
dernières décennies est 'principalement le résultat de l'activité humaine.
Le Secrétaire général réaffirme que l’humanité a une obligation essentielle envers le
soin et la protection de notre maison commune, la planète Terre, et de faire preuve de
solidarité avec les membres de la société les plus pauvres et les plus vulnérables qui souffrent
le plus des effets des changements climatiques. Le Secrétaire général demande donc
instamment aux gouvernements de placer le bien commun mondial au-dessus de leurs intérêts
nationaux et d'adopter un accord climatique ambitieux universel à Paris cette année.
Le Secrétaire général se félicite de la contribution de tous les chefs religieux et des
personnes d’influence à répondre au défi climatique et à renforcer le développement durable.
Il se réjouit d’accueillir le Pape François à l’Organisation des Nations Unies en septembre
pour s’adresser à l'Assemblée générale des Nations Unies.
La plus haute responsable des questions climatiques de l'ONU, la Secrétaire exécutive de
la CCNUCC, Christiana Figueres, a accueilli l'Encyclique et a déclaré:
« L’Encyclique du Pape François souligne l'impératif moral d'une action urgente sur le
changement climatique pour élever les populations les plus vulnérables de la planète, protéger
le développement, et de stimuler une croissance responsable. Cet appel au clairon doit guider
le monde vers un accord sur le climat universel solide et durable à Paris à la fin de cette
année. Couplé avec l'impératif économique, l'impératif moral ne laisse aucun doute sur le fait
nous devions agir sur le changement climatique immédiatement ».
Le Directeur exécutif du Programme des Nations Unies pour l’Environnement, Achim
Steiner, a émis la déclaration suivante à la suite de la libération de l'encyclique:
« Le Programme des Nations Unies pour l’Environnement se félicite de l’appel sans
ambiguïté du Pape François à l’action face à la dégradation de l’environnement mondial et le
changement climatique. Cette Encyclique est un appel de clairon qui résonne non seulement
pour les catholiques, mais avec tous les peuples de la terre. Sur cette question, la science et la
religion sont alignées: il faut agir maintenant ».
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« Nous partageons l’avis du pape François : notre réponse à la dégradation de
l’environnement et au changement climatique ne peut pas être uniquement définie par la
science, la technologie ou l’économie, mais constitue également un impératif moral. Nous ne
devons pas oublier que ce sont les plus pauvres et les plus vulnérables du monde qui souffrent
le plus des changements dont nous sommes témoins ».
« L’humanité et son intendance environnementale de la planète doivent discerner les intérêts
des générations actuelles et futures. Avec l’adoption des objectifs de développement durable
en septembre et un accord sur le climat en décembre, nous avons la possibilité d’influer
positivement sur le cours de l’histoire, la création d'un monde meilleur et plus équitable pour
tous. Compte tenu de ce que nous savons à propos de létat de notre planète, et les choix qui
s’offrent à nous aujourd'hui, il ne peut y avoir aucune équivoque sans faire face à de graves
conséquences. Nous devons tous reconnaître la nécessité de réduire notre impact sur
l’environnement, et de consommer et de produire de manière durable. Comme le Secrétaire
général Ban Ki-moon a déclaré à plusieurs reprises, ‘Nous sommes la première génération qui
peut éradiquer la pauvreté, et de la dernière génération qui peut agir pour éviter les pires
impacts du changement climatique’ » .
La Directrice générale de l'UNESCO Irina Bokova a déclaré:
"Le Pape François appelle à une nouvelle vision de l'humanité vis-à-vis de la planète, qui est
notre habitat. Ceci est un appel au courage et à l'unité, où chaque femme et chaque homme a
les possibilités et les compétences nécessaires pour contribuer, en particulier les plus
marginalisés, où la durabilité signifie beaucoup plus que les lois et les politiques vertes - cela
implique de nouvelles façons de penser et de se comporter comme des citoyens du monde,
cela implique un nouvel accent sur l'océan et la biodiversité. Nous avons besoin de cette
vision et de ce courage, plus que jamais, pour parvenir à un nouvel accord sur le changement
climatique cette année à Paris."
L'Administratrice du Programme de des Nations Unies pour le Développement, Helen
Clark, a déclaré:
"Je me réjouis de la contribution très importante du Pape François au débat sur le changement
climatique à travers son Encyclique sur l'environnement et les pauvres. Les pauvres et les
marginalisés dans nos sociétés sont ceux qui sont les plus vulnérables au changement
climatique, et sont aussi les plus durement touchés par ses effets.
Le PNUD collabore avec les pays en développement pour éviter ce que le Pape François
décrit comme une ‘économie de l’exclusion’, et vise à favoriser des progrès et une croissance
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qui profitent à tous. Alors que nous visons la création d'objectifs de développement durable et
l'accord sur le changement climatique plus tard cette année, nous devons saisir l’occasion de
notre génération pour tracer une nouvelle voie pour un développement durable qui profite à
tous et protège notre planète ».
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http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2015/06/17/actualidad/1434534517_957229.
html
El País, 17 de junio de 2015 – 20:43
Pablo ORDAZ – Génova
ENCÍCLICA SOBRE MEDIO AMBIENTE »
El Papa acusa a empresas y Gobiernos del cambio climático
Francisco publicará este jueves una encíclica sobre la protección del medio ambiente
Un gesto antes de la cumbre para reducir las emisiones
Una bomba de consecuencias imprevisibles está a punto de estallar en el Vaticano. La
publicación oficial de la encíclica sobre ecología del papa Francisco supone una auténtica
declaración de guerra a las grandes compañías y a los gobernantes de los países más
poderosos que, según escribe, han contribuido al cambio climático y a la pobreza por “el uso
desproporcionado de los recursos naturales”. Jorge Mario Bergoglio propone un cambio
radical de estilo de vida para evitar que la Tierra se siga convirtiendo “cada vez más en un
inmenso depósito de porquería”.
La encíclica, de 191 páginas y titulada Alabado seas, tiene un primer capítulo
demoledor titulado Lo que está pasando en nuestra casa. El análisis descarnado del papa
Francisco aborda la interconexión entre la contaminación y el cambio climático, la mala
gestión del agua, la pérdida de la biodiversidad, la gran desigualdad entre regiones ricas y
pobres o la debilidad de las reacciones políticas ante la catástrofe ecológica. Como ya se
venían barruntando sus poderosos detractores –desde Jeb Bush a la extrema derecha italiana y
vaticana–, no solo diagnostica los problemas, sino que señala a los culpables.
MÁS INFORMACIÓN
♦
El papa Francisco ya tiene lista su encíclica sobre ecología
♦
La primera encíclica de Francisco advierte sobre la crisis de verdad
♦
‘Laudato si'’: Francisco evoca a Francisco de Asís
Según el Papa, el calentamiento originado por “el enorme consumo de algunos países
ricos tiene repercusiones en los lugares más pobres de la Tierra, especialmente en África,
donde el aumento de la temperatura unido a la sequía hace estragos en el rendimiento de los
cultivos”. De ahí que Francisco señale muy claramente la responsabilidad del actual sistema
económico mundial: “La deuda externa de los países pobres se ha convertido en un
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instrumento de control, pero no ocurre lo mismo con la deuda ecológica. De diversas maneras,
los pueblos en vías de desarrollo, donde se encuentran las más importantes reservas de la
biosfera, siguen alimentando el desarrollo de los países más ricos a costa de su presente y de
su futuro”.
El Papa atribuye gran parte del problema a la voracidad de las grandes compañías,
pero también a la falta de una respuesta valiente por parte de los gobernantes: “Llama la
atención la debilidad de la reacción política internacional”. Bergoglio se muestra aquí
especialmente duro con los políticos que “enmascaran” los problemas ambientales o
subestiman las advertencias de los ecologistas. “Las predicciones catastróficas”, advierte, “ya
no pueden ser miradas con desprecio e ironía. A las próximas generaciones podríamos
dejarles demasiados escombros, desiertos y suciedad”. El Papa cree que detrás de esa
displicencia de la política hay algo más grave: “El sometimiento de la política ante la
tecnología y las finanzas se muestra en el fracaso de las Cumbres mundiales sobre medio
ambiente. Hay demasiados intereses particulares. Y muy fácilmente el interés económico
llega a prevalecer sobre el bien común y a manipular la información para no ver afectados sus
proyectos”.
La encíclica, que se refiere a la Tierra como una hermana con la que se comparte la
existencia o como una madre que acoge entre sus brazos, llega a tocar aspectos muy sensibles
para algunos sectores de su parroquia. Bergoglio advierte incluso de que la propiedad privada
no puede estar por encima del bien común. Dice que una regla de oro del comportamiento
social –“y el primer principio de todo el ordenamiento ético-social”—es el “principio de
subordinación de la propiedad privada al destino universal de los bienes”. Y añade una de las
frases que sin duda provocarán un respingo a quienes, desde los sectores más conservadores
de dentro y fuera de la Iglesia, ya le venían acusando de comunista. Dice el Papa: “La
tradición cristiana nunca reconoció como absoluto o intocable el derecho a la propiedad
privada y subrayó la función social de cualquier forma de propiedad privada”. Eso sí, el papa
revolucionario se cura en salud apoyándose a continuación en Juan Pablo II: “Dios ha dado la
Tierra a todo el género humano para que ella sustente a todos sus habitantes, sin excluir a
nadie ni privilegiar a ninguno”. La última frase, eso sí, Francisco la resalta con la
intencionalidad de las cursivas.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio cita a sus predecesores para dejar constancia de que también
ellos se mostraron preocupación por la destrucción del planeta. “Hay que eliminar las causas
estructurales de las disfunciones de la economía mundial”, dijo Benedicto XVI, “y corregir
los modelos de crecimiento que parecen incapaces de garantizar el respeto del medio
ambiente”. Pero no hay duda de que Francisco va más allá. En el fondo y también en la forma.
Porque el Papa sale de los recintos del Vaticano e incluso de la fe cristiana para “reconocer,
15
alentar y dar las gracias” a todos aquellos que “trabajan para garantizar la protección de la
casa que compartimos”.
Una vez leído el texto, la polémica de por qué se filtró y quién lo hizo es
insignificante. Como también el debate rancio –y solo para iniciados— de si la primera
encíclica escrita en solitario por Francisco se adecúa a los cánones tradiciones. No hace falta
más que seguir a Jorge Mario Bergoglio desde hace más de dos años para saber que su
objetivo no es obtener un galardón en literatura o en diplomacia. Su encíclica –la primera
escrita íntegramente por él– es un grito para salvar el planeta, al que él llama la casa común:
“Necesitamos una solidaridad universal nueva”.
Un gesto antes de la cumbre para reducir las emisiones
MANUEL PLANELLES, Madrid
La encíclica del Papa forma parte de los gestos que preceden a la cumbre de París de diciembre,
donde se debe aprobar el protocolo que sustituirá a Kioto para la reducción de las emisiones y
cuyo objetivo final es limitar el aumento de la temperatura global a dos grados Celsius a final de
siglo. Que el Papa ponga el foco en este asunto no ha sentado bien a todo el mundo. “No me
dejaré dictar la política económica por mis obispos, mis cardenales o mi Papa”, ha dicho Jeb
Bush, aspirante a presidente de EE UU. El candidato republicano (y católico) puso voz a un sector
de la economía que no está dispuesto a prescindir de las energías fósiles, como propone el Papa. A
principios de mes, seis grandes grupos petroleros europeos reconocían en una carta abierta que el
cambio climático “es un desafío crítico” para el planeta. Los gigantes estadounidenses del sector
declinaron ratificar aquel escrito.
La implicación del sector privado en la lucha contra el cambio climático parece básica.
Pero, también, la coherencia de las principales economías. El G-7, en su reciente declaración de
Elmau, apostaba por “la eliminación de subsidios a los combustibles fósiles ineficientes”. Pero,
paralelamente, Oxfam alertaba de que cinco de los siete miembros del G-7 han incrementado el
uso del carbón desde 2009.
El futuro protocolo de París se basará en gran medida en los compromisos voluntarios de
reducción de gases de efecto invernadero que los casi 200 países deben presentar. De momento,
39 Gobiernos ya lo han hecho, entre ellos la Unión Europea y EE UU. Pero, según han alertado ya
varios expertos y organismos —como la ONU o la Agencia Internacional de la Energía—, las
reducciones de las emisiones que se están poniendo sobre la mesa no son suficientes para limitar
el aumento de la temperatura a dos grados.
16
Otras informaciones en
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



El Papa urge a la política a liberarse del yugo del poder económico
Francisco desconcierta a la derecha católica de Estados Unidos
Francisco, el nuevo teólogo de la Tierra
La encíclica de Francisco, en 12 frases
17
http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2015/06/15/actualidad/1434367284_246688.html
El País, 15 de junio de 2015 – 21:41
Amanda MARS – Madrid
El FMI advierte de que la desigualdad social frena el crecimiento
El Fondo se suma a la OCDE y alerta de que el aumento de la brecha lastra el PIB mundial
El FMI atribuye al paro y al bajo poder sindical el aumento de la desigualdad
Cuanto más concentrada está la riqueza en pocas manos, menor es el crecimiento de un país.
El Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) ha presentado este lunes un informe en el que
advierte de que el aumento de la brecha social en un país supone un freno para el crecimiento
económico, en línea con lo planteado por la OCDE el pasado mes de mayo. La desigualdad
merma expectativas y desincentiva la formación y la productividad.
El Fondo calcula que si el 20% de la población más favorecida aumenta un punto
porcentual la cuota de ingresos que acumulan, el aumento del PIB de un país es un 0,08% más
bajo en los cinco años siguientes. En cambio, cuando el 20% más bajo de un país gana un
punto del pastel de los ingresos de un país, el crecimiento es un 0,38% mayor.
Esta relación entre distribución de la riqueza y dinamismo económico persiste si, en
lugar de mirar ese 20%, se lleva a segundos y terceros quintiles de la escala social, lo que
sería ya la clase media. La defensa de la clase media como valor en sí y como motor de un
país se ha puesto sobre la mesa tras la gran tormenta financiera global. El presidente de EE
UU, Barack Obama, lo ha considerado “el reto que caracteriza nuestro tiempo”.
Pobreza y desigualdad no son lo mismo, aunque haya sido la Gran Recesión la que ha elevado
las diferencias a niveles récord en los países ricos. Por eso hay quien no ve en la desigualdad
un problema en sí mismo. Por ejemplo, Martin Feldstein, de la Universidad de Harvard,
siempre advierte de que las políticas públicas debe centrarse en reducir la pobreza, no tanto la
brecha social.
El experto plantea un ejercicio de imaginación: si un pájaro mágico entrega a cada persona
1.000 dólares, ello no reduciría ninguna desigualdad, pero no deja de ser una mejora para
todos que no recae a expensas de nadie. Es más, señala que esos 1.000 dólares significan más
para el pobre que para el rico, con lo que su situación avanza más en términos relativos.
18
Las organizaciones internacionales muestran cada vez más preocupación por las
desigualdades. Lo que FMI y OCDE plantean es que la desigualdad excesiva no solo supone
un riesgo para la convivencia sino que es también un problema macroeconómico. Afecta a la
productividad de un país y, por tanto, a su progreso: “Por ejemplo, puede llevar a invertir
menos en educación, ya que los niños pobres tienen menos capacidad de ir a la universidad”,
así que acumulan menos capital físico y humano. Además, “cuanta más disparidad de
ingresos, menos movilidad social hay entre generaciones y menores incentivos para la
formación”.
Incremento del coeficinte Gini
En el caso de la OCDE, los cálculos de la organización señalaban que el incremento del
coeficiente Gini (el más común para medir la desigualdad) fue entre 1985 y 2005 de dos
puntos en 19 países de la OCDE y esto supuso un lastre de 4,7 puntos porcentuales el
crecimiento acumulado entre 1990 y 2010.
Hay más argumentos para tratar la desigualdad como un problema en sí mismo, más allá de la
pobreza, desde el punto de vista social. Por ejemplo, Michael J. Sandel, profesor de Política y
Justicia también en Harvard, advierte en cambio de que “si la brecha entre ricos y pobres se
vuelve muy grande, aunque nadie pase hambre, las personas empiezan a vivir vidas cada vez
más separadas, en distintos barrios, distintos medios de transporte, distintos médicos, dejan de
convivir en los espacios públicos... No es bueno para la democracia. La democracia no
requiere igualdad perfecta, pero si la gente vive en esferas cada vez más separadas, el sentido
de ciudadanía y de bien común es más difícil de sostener”, explicaba en una entrevista en este
periódico en 2013.
El 1% tiene el 50%
Si se pone toda la riqueza del mundo en una misma tarta, el 1% de la población
más pudiente concentrará la mitad de todo ese pastel. En EE UU, un tercio de
todo ese patrimonio lo tiene el 1%. Movimientos de protesta contra las heridas
de la crisis se identifican con lemas como “Somos el 99%”.
Este proceso de concentración de riqueza, según el Fondo Monetario
Internacional, se ha dado en paralelo a un incremento de los niveles de pobreza
relativa (población que vive con ingresos por debajo del umbral de la pobreza)
en los países desarrollados.
19
Hay varios factores que han contribuido al incremento de la brecha
entre ricos y pobres. Uno de ellos es el progreso tecnológico, ya que ha
incrementado las ganancias de los trabajadores más cualificados al tiempo que
ha destruido puestos de baja formación y por tanto han perdido demanda.
Más información
♦
♦
♦
La OCDE alerta del lastre de la desigualdad para el crecimiento
¿Es usted rico, pobre o está en la media? Calcúlelo aquí
Un Estado de Bienestar encogido
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Lagarde se escandaliza con los sueldos de algunos ejecutivos
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¿Quién es quién de los candidatos republicanos a la Casa Blanca?
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“El crecimiento en América Latina se desplaza del sur al norte”
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Claves para la visita histórica de Rousseff a EEUU
20
http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2015/05/20/actualidad/1432140402_925382.html
DESIGUALDAD ECONÓMICA »
El País, 22 de mayo de 2015 – 00:01
Amanda MARS – Madrid
La OCDE alerta del lastre de la desigualdad para el crecimiento
Una persona busca comida en una calle de Barcelona
Carles RIBAS
Desigualdad no equivale a pobreza: la primera puede subir aunque una economía crezca e
incluso aunque los más desfavorecidos vean su situación mejorada. Por eso no falta literatura
que defiende que el aumento de la brecha social no es un problema en sí y que la política
económica solo debe preocuparse de la reducción de la exclusión social. La OCDE, en
cambio, defiende que la dispersión de riqueza acaba por lastrar la economía. En concreto, el
informe hecho público ayer señala que el incremento del coeficiente Gini (el más común para
medir la desigualdad) entre 1985 y 2005 de dos puntos en 19 países de la OCDE erosionó en
4,7 puntos porcentuales el crecimiento acumulado entre 1990 y 2010.
Ese crecimiento acumulado en ese grupo de países estudiados fue del 28% en esos
años, lo que significa que, si no hubiese crecido la brecha social, esta expansión hubiese
rozado el 33%.
El motivo es que la mayor desigualdad económica se traslada rápidamente a una peor
formación para los más pobres, lo que supone un gran desperdicio de potencial y reduce la
movilidad social. Y, al revés, el trabajo de la OCDE apunta a que, por cada punto del
21
coeficiente Gini que se reduce la desigualdad, la economía se acelera en 0,8 puntos
porcentuales en los cinco años siguientes.
Al margen de la Gran Recesión, que ha agravado los problemas de desigualdad tanto en
países ricos como pobres, hay otros asuntos estructurales detrás de la brecha social, como el
cambio tecnológico. El porcentaje empleos rutinarios (como contables) se contrajo del 53% al
41% entre 1995 y 2010, mientras que crecieron los extremos: los altamente cualificados
subieron del 28% al 38% y los relativamente poco formados (como los conductores, por
ejemplo), subieron del 18% al 21%.
Una economía más polarizada
La mayor diferencia en 30 años. El 10% de la población más rica en los países
de la OCDE gana hoy 9,6 veces lo que obtiene el 10% menos favorecido. Esta
misma ratio era de 7 a 1 en los años ochenta, de 8 a 1 en los noventa y de 9 a 1
en la década pasada.
Trabajo en los extremos. Mientras los puestos de trabajo de formación
intermedia (por ejemplo, los contables) pierden presencia, aumentan los
empleos de alta cualificación y baja.
Más información
♦
♦
♦
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La OCDE insta a atajar la desigualdad para favorecer el crecimiento
Piketty: “Un impuesto global al capital no debe esperar a un gobierno mundial”
“El mundo sabe cómo viven los ricos y por eso se exigirá más igualdad”
España sufre la crisis más desigual
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Ver todas »Selección de temas realizada automáticamente
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Lagarde se escandaliza con los sueldos de algunos ejecutivos
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El FMI advierte de que la desigualdad social frena el crecimiento
♦
“El crecimiento en América Latina se desplaza del sur al norte”
♦
La correcta redistribución de la riqueza
22
http://www.infobae.com/2015/06/16/1735620-el-papa-francisco-la-iglesia-no-es-comunistacuando-habla-pobres
El papa Francisco: “La Iglesia no es comunista cuando habla de pobres”
El pontífice salió al cruce de las reacciones que generará la encíclica sobre el medio
ambiente, que insta a combatir la pobreza y critica al capitalismo salvaje.
Será presentada este jueves en el Vaticano
Crédito: AFP
El papa Francisco aseguró este martes que es injusto acusar a los sacerdotes y obispos
de “comunistas cuando hablan de los pobres”, una suerte de advertencia ante las reacciones
que suscitará su encíclica sobre el medio ambiente.
“Muchas veces se oye decir: ‘Este sacerdote habla demasiado de pobreza, este obispo
habla de pobreza, este cristiano, esta monja hablan de pobreza... Son un poco comunistas
¿no? Al contrario, la pobreza es el eje del Evangelio”, dijo el Papa durante la misa
matutina en su residencia Santa Marta.
LEA MÁS: Francisco a Santos: "Es la persona por la que más he rezado"
LEA MÁS: "Francisco no es un líder político, pero está generando cambios que van más allá"
Se trata de una respuesta indirecta a las reacciones que generará la nueva encíclica
del Papa sobre el medio ambiente, que será presentada oficialmente el jueves en el Vaticano,
en la que insta a combatir la contaminación y la pobreza y critica el capitalismo salvaje y
las grandes multinacionales como depredadores de la naturaleza y el ser humano.
“TENGO
MUCHOS
AMIGOS
MARXISTAS,
PERO
CONSIDERO QUE ESA IDEOLOGÍA ES EQUIVOCADA”
Francisco, considerado un progresista en asuntos sociales, ha sido acusado por los
neoconservadores de ser marxista por su condena del capitalismo salvaje y el rey dinero.
Una etiqueta que ha desmentido numerosas veces.
23
Poco después de ser elegido papa en 2013, Francisco explicó a la prensa: “Tengo
muchos amigos marxistas, pero considero que esa ideología es equivocada”.
La encíclica de Francisco
El semanario italiano L’Espresso difundió el lunes lo que denominó proyecto de la encíclica
del papa Francisco sobre el medioambiente, cuya presentación oficial se hará el próximo
jueves en el Vaticano.
Se trata de un documento en italiano de casi 200 páginas del que el Vaticano, por
medio de su portavoz, Federico Lombardi, dijo que no es el texto final y recordó que las
reglas sobre su difusión bajo embargo hasta el jueves siguen en vigor.
“Pedimos a los periodistas que respeten las normas profesionales, que exigen
esperar a la publicación oficial del texto final”, indicó Lombardi en un comunicado.
Laudato si (Alabado seas): sobre la protección de la casa común será el título de la
encíclica del papa Francisco que el Vaticano anunciará en una presentación a la prensa el
próximo 18 de junio a las 12:00 horas locales (10:00 GMT).
SERÁ LA PRIMERA ENCÍCLICA REALIZADA EN
SOLITARIO POR FRANCISCO
“Laudato si” es la frase inicial del Cántico de las Criaturas de San Francisco de Asís, el
nombre que eligió Jorge Bergoglio tras ser elegido pontífice el 13 de marzo de 2013, un santo
vinculado por los católicos con la paz, la pobreza y la protección de la Creación.
Será la primera encíclica realizada en solitario por Francisco, pues la anterior, Lumen
Fidei, publicada hace dos años y dedicada a la fe, tuvo sólo que completarla, ya que gran
parte la había escrito su predecesor, Benedicto XVI, quien la dejó incompleta al anunciar
su renuncia al pontificado.
Escrita en original en español, es además el segundo documento pontificio después de
la exhortación apostólica Evangelii Gaudium (La alegría del Evangelio).
AFP – EFE
24
http://www.infobae.com/2015/06/18/1736040-francisco-llama-una-revolucion-culturalsalvar-al-planeta-del-calentamiento-global
Francisco llama a una revolución cultural para salvar al planeta
del calentamiento global
El Vaticano presenta Laudato si, la encíclica papal contra el cambio climático.
Urge a sustituir combustibles fósiles y acusa a las grandes compañías y a los Gobiernos
La encíclica del papa Francisco Laudato si, sobre la protección del medioambiente, es
presentada oficialmente en el Vaticano. Este miércoles, el Papa había hecho una alusión
pública a su encíclica al llamar a la responsabilidad para proteger el planeta, “que se está
destrozando”.
LEA MÁS: El papa Francisco: “La Iglesia no es comunista cuando habla de pobres”
Repasando los papados de Pablo VI o de Benedicto XVI, entre otros, el Sumo
Pontífice hace un llamamiento para el cuidado de la naturaleza como hiciera el papa Juan
XXIII en su mensaje Pacem in Terris.
“Lo que está ocurriendo en nuestra casa” es el título del primer capítulo de esta
esperada encíclica en la que pide que el objetivo de cuidar al planeta no pasa por “reunir
información” o “saciar nuestra curiosidad”, sino que se debe “tomar conciencia” y saber
“cuál es la contribución que cada uno puede aportar”.
LA IGLESIA DEBE PROMOVER
DEBATES CIENTÍFICOS HONESTOS”
Respecto a este tema, el Papa asegura que “sobre muchas cuestiones la Iglesia no
tiene voz definitiva, sino que debe promover debates científicos honestos”, aunque insiste
en que “basta mirar la realidad con sinceridad para ver que existe un grave deterioro de
nuestra casa común”.
En la encíclica, que tiene 191 páginas, el pontífice realiza un profundo análisis en el
que aborda la relación entre la contaminación y el cambio climático, la mala gestión del agua,
la pérdida de la biodiversidad, la desigualdad entre regiones ricas y pobres y la debilidad de
las reacciones políticas ante la catástrofe ecológica.
EL ENORME CONSUMO DE ALGUNOS PAÍSES RICOS TIENE
REPERCUSIONES EN LOS LUGARES MÁS POBRES DE LA TIERRA,
ESPECIALMENTE EN ÁFRICA”
Según Francisco, el calentamiento originado por “el enorme consumo de algunos
países ricos tiene repercusiones en los lugares más pobres de la Tierra, especialmente en
África, donde el aumento de la temperatura unido a la sequía hace estragos en el rendimiento
de los cultivos”.
25
Es a partir de allí que el Papa responsabiliza al sistema económico mundial: “La
deuda externa de los países pobres se ha convertido en un instrumento de control, pero no
ocurre lo mismo con la deuda ecológica. De diversas maneras, los pueblos en vías de
desarrollo, donde se encuentran las más importantes reservas de la biosfera, siguen
alimentando el desarrollo de los países más ricos a costa de su presente y de su futuro”.
"LAS PREDICCIONES CATASTRÓFICAS YA NO PUEDEN
SER MIRADAS CON DESPRECIO E IRONÍA”
Bergoglio hace una dura crítica a los políticos que enmascaran los problemas
ambientales o subestiman las advertencias de los ecologistas. “Las predicciones
catastróficas ya no pueden ser miradas con desprecio e ironía. A las próximas
generaciones podríamos dejarles demasiados escombros, desiertos y suciedad”.
“El sometimiento de la política ante la tecnología y las finanzas se muestra en el
fracaso de las cumbres mundiales sobre medio ambiente. Hay demasiados intereses
particulares. Y muy fácilmente el interés económico llega a prevalecer sobre el bien
común y a manipular la información para no ver afectados sus proyectos”.
"HAY DEMASIADOS INTERESES PARTICULARES Y MUY
FÁCILMENTE EL INTERÉS ECONÓMICO LLEGA A
PREVALECER SOBRE EL BIEN COMÚN"
Francisco pide sustituir los combustibles fósiles por las energías renovables
El Pontífice consideró que se ha vuelto “urgente e imperioso” desarrollar políticas para que
en los próximos años se reduzcan drásticamente la emisión de anhídrido carbónico y otros
gases altamente contaminantes.
“En el mundo hay un nivel exiguo de acceso a energías limpias y renovables.
Todavía es necesario desarrollar tecnologías adecuadas de acumulación”, añadió
Bergoglio.
El Papa identificó que “muchos de aquellos que tienen más recursos y poder
económico y político parecen concentrarse sobre todo en enmascarar los problemas o en
ocultar los síntomas, tratando sólo de reducir algunos impactos negativos del cambio
climático”.
“Pero muchos síntomas indican que esos efectos podrán ser cada vez peores si
continuamos con los actuales modelos de producción y de consumo”, continuó Bergoglio en
el documento. De ahí, la urgencia de la sustitución progresiva del empleo de los
combustibles fósiles.
“Sabemos que la tecnología basada en combustibles fósiles muy contaminantes -sobre
todo el carbón, pero aún el petróleo y, en menor medida, el gas- necesita ser reemplazada
progresivamente y sin demora”, explicó el Papa.
26
"LA TECNOLOGÍA BASADA EN COMBUSTIBLES FÓSILES
MUY CONTAMINANTES NECESITA SER REEMPLAZADA
PROGRESIVAMENTE Y SIN DEMORA”
Y en la encíclica consideró en relación con el calentamiento de la Tierra que “la
humanidad está llamada a tomar conciencia de la necesidad de realizar cambios de estilos de
vida, de producción y de consumo” para combatirlo o “al menos (luchar contra) las causas
humanas que lo producen o acentúan”.
El pontífice señaló que “la mayor parte del calentamiento global de las últimas
décadas se debe a la gran concentración de gases de efecto invernadero (anhídrido
carbónico, metano, óxidos de nitrógeno y otros) emitidos, sobre todo, a causa de la actividad
humana”. Y que “al concentrarse en la atmósfera, impiden que el calor de los rayos solares
reflejados por la tierra se disperse en el espacio. Esto se ve potenciado especialmente por el
patrón de desarrollo basado en el uso intensivo de combustibles fósiles”. De ese uso dijo que
“hace al corazón del sistema energético mundial”.
27
http://www.news.va/es/news/una-vision-de-conjunto-de-la-enciclica-del-papa-fr
Una visión de conjunto de la encíclica
del Papa Francisco ‘Laudato si’
sobre el cuidado de la casa común
Ciudad del Vaticano, 18 de junio de 2015 (Vis).-El texto que sigue brinda una visión
general de las 191 páginas de la encíclica Laudato si' y de sus puntos claves, así como un
resumen de los seis capítulos (“Lo que está pasando a nuestra casa”; El Evangelio de la
creación;La raíz humana de la crisis ecológica; Una ecología integral; Algunas líneas
orientativas y de acción; Educación y espiritualidad ecológica que la componen) y de sus
apartados. La encíclica termina con una Oración interreligiosa por nuestra tierra y una
Oración cristiana con la creación.
LÍNEAS GENERALES DE LA ENCICLICA LAUDATO SI
“'¿Qué tipo de mundo queremos dejar a quienes nos sucedan, a los niños que están
creciendo?”'. Esta pregunta está en el centro de Laudato si, la esperada Encíclica del Papa
Francisco sobre el cuidado de la casa común. Y continúa: “Esta pregunta no afecta sólo al
ambiente de manera aislada, porque no se puede plantear la cuestión de modo fragmentario”,
y nos conduce a interrogarnos sobre el sentido de la existencia y el valor de la vida social:
'”¿Para qué pasamos por este mundo? ¿para qué vinimos a esta vida? ¿para qué trabajamos y
luchamos? ¿para qué nos necesita esta tierra?”': “Si no nos planteamos estas preguntas de
fondo –dice el Pontífice– “no creo que nuestras preocupaciones ecológicas puedan obtener
resultados importantes”.
La Encíclica toma su nombre de la invocación de san Francisco, '”Laudato si’, mi’
Signore”', que en el Cántico de las creaturas que recuerda que la tierra, nuestra casa común,
“es también como una hermana con la que compartimos la existencia, y como una madre bella
que nos acoge entre sus brazos”. Nosotros mismos “somos tierra. Nuestro propio cuerpo está
formado por elementos del planeta, su aire nos da el aliento y su agua nos vivifica y restaura”.
Pero ahora esta tierra maltratada y saqueada clama y sus gemidos se unen a los de
todos los abandonados del mundo. El Papa Francisco nos invita a escucharlos, llamando a
todos y cada uno –individuos, familias, colectivos locales, nacionales y comunidad
internacional- a una “conversión ecológica”, según expresión de San Juan Pablo II, es decir, a
“cambiar de ruta”, asumiendo la urgencia y la hermosura del desafío que se nos presenta ante
el “cuidado de la casa común”. Al mismo tiempo, el papa Francisco reconoce que ''se advierte
una creciente sensibilidad con respecto al ambiente y al cuidado de la naturaleza, y crece una
sincera y dolorosa preocupación por lo que está ocurriendo con nuestro planeta'', permitiendo
una mirada de esperanza que atraviesa toda la Encíclica y envía a todos un mensaje claro y
esperanzado: “La humanidad tiene aún la capacidad de colaborar para construir nuestra casa
común”; “[…] el ser humano es todavía capaz de intervenir positivamente”; “no todo está
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perdido, porque los seres humanos, capaces de degradarse hasta el extremo, pueden también
superarse, volver a elegir el bien y regenerarse”.
El Papa Francisco se dirige, claro está, a los fieles católicos, retomando las palabras de
San Juan Pablo II: “los cristianos, en particular, descubren que su cometido dentro de la
creación, así como sus deberes con la naturaleza y el Creador, forman parte de su fe”, pero se
propone “especialmente entrar en diálogo con todos sobre nuestra casa común”: el diálogo
aparece en todo el texto, y en el capítulo 5 se vuelve instrumento para afrontar y resolver los
problemas. Desde el principio el papa Francisco recuerda que también “otras Iglesias y
Comunidades cristianas –como también otras religiones– han desarrollado una profunda
preocupación y una valiosa reflexión” sobre el tema de la ecología. Más aún, asume
explícitamente su contribución a partir de la del “querido Patriarca Ecuménico Bartolomé”,
ampliamente citado en los nn. 8-9. En varios momentos, además, el Pontífice agradece a los
protagonistas de este esfuerzo –tanto individuos como asociaciones o instituciones–,
reconociendo que “la reflexión de innumerables científicos, filósofos, teólogos y
organizaciones sociales (ha) enriquecido el pensamiento de la Iglesia sobre estas cuestiones” e
invita a todos a reconocer “la riqueza que las religiones pueden ofrecer para una ecología
integral y para el desarrollo pleno del género humano”.
El recorrido de la Encíclica está trazado en el n. 15 y se desarrolla en seis capítulos. A
partir de la escucha de la situación a partir de los mejores conocimientos científicos
disponibles hoy, recurre a la luz de la Biblia y la tradición judeo-cristiana , detectando las
raíces del problema en la tecnocracia y el excesivo repliegue autorreferencial del ser humano.
La propuesta de la Encíclica es la de una “ecología integral, que incorpore claramente las
dimensiones humanas y sociales”', inseparablemente vinculadas con la situación ambiental.
En esta perspectiva, el Papa Francisco propone emprender un diálogo honesto a todos los
niveles de la vida social, que facilite procesos de decisión transparentes. Y recuerda que
ningún proyecto puede ser eficaz si no está animado por una conciencia formada y
responsable, sugiriendo principios para crecer en esta dirección a nivel educativo, espiritual,
eclesial, político y teológico. El texto termina con dos oraciones, una que se ofrece para ser
compartida con todos los que creen en “un Dios creador omnipotente”, y la otra propuesta a
quienes profesan la fe en Jesucristo, rimada con el estribillo Laudato si’, que abre y cierra la
Encíclica.
El texto está atravesado por algunos ejes temáticos, vistos desde variadas perspectivas,
que le dan una fuerte coherencia interna: “la íntima relación entre los pobres y la fragilidad
del planeta, la convicción de que en el mundo todo está conectado, la crítica al nuevo
paradigma y a las formas de poder que derivan de la tecnología, la invitación a buscar otros
modos de entender la economía y el progreso, el valor propio de cada criatura, el sentido
humano de la ecología, la necesidad de debates sinceros y honestos, la grave responsabilidad
de la política internacional y local, la cultura del descarte y la propuesta de un nuevo estilo de
vida”.
CAPÍTULO 1 – “LO QUE ESTÁ PASANDO A NUESTRA CASA” (Calentamiento
global y contaminación; Contaminación, basura y cultura del descarte; El clima como bien
común; La cuestión del agua; Pérdida de biodiversidad;Deterioro de la calidad de la vida
humana y decadencia socia; Inequidad planetaria; La debilidad de las reacciones. Diversidad
de opiniones).
El capítulo asume los descubrimientos científicos más recientes en materia ambienta
como manera de escuchar el clamor de la creación, para “convertir en sufrimiento personal lo
29
que le pasa al mundo, y así reconocer cuál es la contribución que cada uno puede aportar”. Se
acometen así “varios aspectos de la actual crisis ecológica”.
EI cambio climático: “El calentamiento es un problema global con graves dimensiones
ambientales, sociales, económicas, distributivas y políticas, y plantea uno de los principales
desafíos actuales para la humanidad”. Si “El clima es un bien común, de todos y para todos”,
el impacto más grave de su alteración recae en los más pobres, pero muchos de los que
“tienen más recursos y poder económico o político parecen concentrarse sobre todo en
enmascarar los problemas o en ocultar los síntomas, tratando sólo de reducir algunos impactos
negativos del calentamiento”: “La falta de reacciones ante estos dramas de nuestros hermanos
es un signo de la pérdida de aquel sentido de responsabilidad por nuestros semejantes sobre el
cual se funda toda sociedad civil”.
La cuestión del agua: El Papa afirma sin ambages que “el acceso al agua potable y
segura es un derecho humano básico, fundamental y universal, porque determina la
sobrevivencia de las personas, y por lo tanto es condición para el ejercicio de los demás
derechos humanos”. Privar a los pobres del acceso al agua significa negarles “el derecho a la
vida, enraizado en su inalienable dignidad”.
La pérdida de la biodiversidad: “Cada año desaparecen miles de especies vegetales y
animales que ya no podremos conocer, que nuestros hijos ya no podrán ver, perdidas para
siempre”. No son sólo eventuales “recursos” explotables, sino que tienen un valor en sí
mismas. En esta perspectiva “son loables y a veces admirables los esfuerzos de científicos y
técnicos que tratan de aportar soluciones a los problemas creados por el ser humano”, pero esa
intervención humana, cuando se pone al servicio de las finanzas y el consumismo, “hace que
la tierra en que vivimos se vuelva menos rica y bella, cada vez más limitada y gris”.
La deuda ecológica: en el marco de una ética de las relaciones internacionales, la
Encíclica indica que existe “una auténtica deuda ecológica”, sobre todo del Norte en relación
con el Sur del mundo. Frente al cambio climático hay “distintas responsabilidades”, y son
mayores las de los países desarrollados.
Conociendo las profundas divergencias que existen respecto a estas problemáticas, el
Papa Francisco se muestra profundamente impresionado por la “debilidad de las reacciones”
frente a los dramas de tantas personas y poblaciones. Aunque no faltan ejemplos positivos,
señala “un cierto adormecimiento y una alegre irresponsabilidad”. Faltan una cultura
adecuada y la disposición a cambiar de estilo de vida, producción y consumo, a la vez que
urge “crear un sistema normativo que […] asegure la protección de los ecosistemas”.
CAPÍTULO SEGUNDO – EL EVANGELIO DE LA CREACIÓN (La luz que ofrece la
fe; La sabiduría de los relatos bíblicos; El misterio del universo; El mensaje de cada criatura
en la armonía de todo lo creado; Una comunión universal; El destino común de los bienes; La
mirada de Jesús).
Para afrontar la problemática ilustrada en el capítulo anterior, el Papa Francisco relee
los relatos de la Biblia, ofrece una visión general que proviene de la tradición judeo-cristiana
y articula la “tremenda responsabilidad” del ser humano respecto a la creación, el lazo íntimo
que existe entre todas las creaturas, y el hecho de que “el ambiente es un bien colectivo,
patrimonio de toda la humanidad y responsabilidad de todos”.
30
En la Biblia, “el Dios que libera y salva es el mismo que ha creado el universo”, y “en
él se conjugan amor y poder”. El relato de la creación es central para reflexionar sobre la
relación entre el ser humano y las demás creaturas, y sobre cómo el pecado rompe el
equilibrio de toda la creación en su conjunto. “Estas narraciones sugieren que la existencia
humana se basa en tres relaciones fundamentales estrechamente conectadas: la relación con
Dios, con el prójimo y con la tierra. Según la Biblia, las tres relaciones vitales se han roto, no
sólo externamente, sino también dentro de nosotros. Esta ruptura es el pecado”.
Por ello, aunque “Si es verdad que algunas veces los cristianos hemos interpretado
incorrectamente las Escrituras, hoy debemos rechazar con fuerza que, del hecho de ser
creados a imagen de Dios y del mandato de dominar la tierra, se deduzca un dominio absoluto
sobre las demás criaturas”. Al ser humano le corresponde “cultivar y custodiar” el jardín del
mundo”, sabiendo que “el fin último de las demás criaturas no somos nosotros. Pero todas
avanzan, junto con nosotros y a través de nosotros, hacia el término común, que es Dios”.
Que el ser humano no sea patrón del universo “no significa equiparar a todos los seres
vivos y quitarle aquel valor peculiar que lo caracteriza; y “Tampoco supone una divinización
de la tierra que nos privaría del llamado a colaborar con ella y a proteger su fragilidad”. En
esta perspectiva “Todo ensañamiento con cualquier criatura es contrario a la dignidad
humana”, pero “No puede ser real un sentimiento de íntima unión con los demás seres de la
naturaleza si al mismo tiempo en el corazón no hay ternura, compasión y preocupación por
los seres humanos”. Es necesaria la conciencia de una comunión universal: “creados por el
mismo Padre, todos los seres del universo estamos unidos por lazos invisibles y conformamos
una especie de familia universal, [...] que nos mueve a un respeto sagrado, cariñoso y
humilde”.
Concluye el capítulo con el corazón del a revelación cristiana: el “Jesús terreno” con
su “relación tan concreta y amable con las cosas” está “resucitado y glorioso, presente en toda
la creación con su señorío universal”.
CAPÍTULO TERCERO – LA RAÍZ HUMANA DE LA CRISIS ECOLÓGICA (La
tecnología: creatividad y poder; La globalización del paradigma tecnológico; Crisis y
consecuencias del antropocentrismo moderno; El relativismo práctico; La necesidad de
preservar el trabajo; La innovación biológica a partir de la investigación).
Este capítulo presenta un análisis del a situación actual “para comprender no sólo los
síntomas sino también las causas más profundas”, en un diálogo con la filosofía y las ciencias
humanas.
Un primer fundamento del capítulo son las reflexiones sobre la tecnología: se le
reconoce con gratitud su contribución al mejoramiento de las condiciones de vida, aunque
también “dan a quienes tienen el conocimiento, y sobre todo el poder económico para
utilizarlo, un dominio impresionante sobre el conjunto de la humanidad y del mundo entero”.
Son justamente las lógicas de dominio tecnocrático las que llevan a destruir la naturaleza y a
explotar a las personas y las poblaciones más débiles. “El paradigma tecnológico también
tiende a ejercer su dominio sobre la economía y la política”, impidiendo reconocer que “el
mercado por sí mismo no garantiza el desarrollo humano integral y la inclusión social”.
En la raíz de todo ello puede diagnosticarse en la época moderna un exceso de
antropocentrismo: el ser humano ya no reconoce su posición justa respecto al mundo, y asume
una postura autorreferencial, centrada exclusivamente en sí mismo y su poder. De ello deriva
31
una lógica “usa y tira” que justifica todo tipo de descarte, sea éste humano o ambiental, que
trata al otro y a la naturaleza como un simple objeto y conduce a una infinidad de formas de
dominio. Es la lógica que conduce a la explotación infantil, el abandono de los ancianos, a
reducir a otros a la esclavitud, a sobrevalorar las capacidades del mercado para autorregularse,
a practicar la trata de seres humanos, el comercio de pieles de animales en vías de extinción, y
de “diamantes ensangrentados”. Es la misma lógica de muchas mafias, de los traficantes de
órganos, del narcotráfico y del descarte de los niños que no se adaptan a los proyectos de los
padres.
A esta luz, la Encíclica afronta dos problemas cruciales para el mundo de hoy. Primero
que nada el trabajo: “En cualquier planteamiento sobre una ecología integral, que no excluya
al ser humano, es indispensable incorporar el valor del trabajo”, pues “Dejar de invertir en las
personas para obtener un mayor rédito inmediato es muy mal negocio para la sociedad”.
La segunda se refiere a los límites del progreso científico, con clara referencia a los
OGM, que son “una cuestión ambiental de carácter complejo”. Si bien “en algunas regiones
su utilización ha provocado un crecimiento económico que ayudó a resolver problemas, hay
dificultades importantes que no deben ser relativizadas, por ejemplo “una concentración de
tierras productivas en manos de pocos”. El Papa Francisco piensa en particular en los
pequeños productores y en los trabajadores del campo, en la biodiversidad, en la red de
ecosistemas. Es por ello es necesaria “una discusión científica y social que sea responsable y
amplia, capaz de considerar toda la información disponible y de llamar a las cosas por su
nombre”, a partir de “líneas de investigación libre e interdisciplinaria”.
CAPÍTULO CUARTO – UNA ECOLOGÍA INTEGRAL (Ecología ambiental, económica
y social; La ecología cultural; La ecología humana y el espacio de la vida cotidiana; El
principio del bien común;Una justicia intergeneracional bien entendida).
El núcleo de la propuesta de la Encíclica es una ecología integral como nuevo
paradigma de justicia, una ecología que ''incorpore el lugar peculiar del ser humano en este
mundo y sus relaciones con la realidad que lo rodea''. De hecho no podemos ''entender la
naturaleza como algo separado de nosotros o como un mero marco de nuestra vida..'' Esto
vale para todo lo que vivimos en distintos campos: en la economía y en la política, en las
distintas culturas, en especial las más amenazadas, e incluso en todo momento de nuestra vida
cotidiana.
La perspectiva integral incorpora también una ecología de las instituciones. ''Si todo
está relacionado, también la salud de las instituciones de una sociedad tiene consecuencias en
el ambiente y en la calidad de vida humana: ''Cualquier menoscabo de la solidaridad y del
civismo produce daños ambientales”.
Con muchos ejemplos concretos el Papa Francisco ilustra su pensamiento: que hay un
vínculo entre los asuntos ambientales y cuestiones sociales humanas, y que ese vínculo no
puede romperse. Así pues, el análisis de los problemas ambientales es inseparable del análisis
de los contextos humanos, familiares, laborales, urbanos, y de la relación de cada persona
consigo misma, porque ''no hay dos crisis separadas, una ambiental y la otra social, sino una
única y compleja crisis socioambiental”.
Esta ecología ambiental “es inseparable de la noción del bien común”, que debe
comprenderse de manera concreta: en el contexto de hoy en el que “donde hay tantas
inequidades y cada vez son más las personas descartables, privadas de derechos humanos
32
básicos”, esforzarse por el bien común significa hacer opciones solidarias sobre la base de una
“opción preferencial por los más pobres”. Este es el mejor modo de dejar un mundo sostenible
a las próximas generaciones, no con las palabras, sino por medio de un compromiso de
atención hacia los pobres de hoy como había subrayado Benedicto XVI: “[…] además de la
leal solidaridad intergeneracional, se ha de reiterar la urgente necesidad moral de una
renovada solidaridad intrageneracional”.
La ecología integral implica también la vida cotidiana, a la cual la Encíclica dedica
una especial atención, en particular en el ambiente urbano. El ser humano tiene una enorme
capacidad de adaptación y ''Es admirable la creatividad y la generosidad de personas y grupos
que son capaces de revertir los límites del ambiente, (...) aprendiendo a orientar su vida en
medio del desorden y la precariedad.''. Sin embargo, un desarrollo auténtico presupone un
mejoramiento integral en la calidad de la vida humana: espacios públicos, vivienda,
transportes, etc.
También ''nuestro cuerpo nos pone en relación directa con el ambiente y con los demás
seres humanos. La aceptación del propio cuerpo como don de Dios es necesaria para acoger y
aceptar el mundo entero como don del Padre y casa común; en cambio una lógica de dominio
sobre el propio cuerpo se transforma en una lógica a veces sutil de dominio”.
CAPÍTULO QUINTO – ALGUNAS LÍNEAS ORIENTATIVAS Y DE ACCIÓN (El
diálogo sobre el ambiente en la política internacional; El diálogo hacia nuevas políticas
nacionales y locales; Favorecer debates sinceros y honestos; Política y economía en diálogo
para la plenitud humana; Las religiones en el diálogo con las ciencias).
Este capítulo afronta la pregunta sobre qué podemos y debemos hacer. Los análisis no
bastan: se requieren propuestas ''de diálogo y de acción que involucren a cada uno de nosotros
y a la política internacional'' y ''que nos ayuden a salir de la espiral de autodestrucción en la
que nos estamos sumergiendo''. Para el Papa Francisco es imprescindible que la construcción
de caminos concretos no se afronte de manera ideológica, superficial o reduccionista. Para
ello es indispensable el diálogo, término presente en el título de cada sección de este capítulo:
''Hay discusiones sobre cuestiones relacionadas con el ambiente, donde es difícil alcanzar
consensos. (...) la Iglesia no pretende definir las cuestiones científicas ni sustituir a la política,
pero invito a un debate honesto y transparente, para que las necesidades particulares o las
ideologías no afecten al bien común''.
Sobre esta base el Papa Francisco no teme formular un juicio severo sobre las
dinámicas internacionales recientes: ''las Cumbres mundiales sobre el ambiente de los últimos
años no respondieron a las expectativas porque, por falta de decisión política, no alcanzaron
acuerdos ambientales globales realmente significativos y eficaces''. Y se pregunta ''¿por qué se
quiere mantener hoy un poder que será recordado por su incapacidad de intervenir cuando era
urgente y necesario hacerlo? Son necesarias, como los Pontífices han repetido muchas veces a
partir de la Pacem in terris, formas e instrumentos eficaces de gobernanza global:
“necesitamos un acuerdo sobre los regímenes de gobernanza global para toda la gama de los
llamados “bienes comunes globales”, dado que “la protección ambiental no puede asegurarse
sólo en base al cálculo financiero de costos y beneficios. El ambiente es uno de esos bienes
que los mecanismos del mercado no son capaces de defender o de promover adecuadamente”.
Aún en este capítulo, el Papa Francisco insiste sobre el desarrollo de procesos
decisionales honestos y transparentes, para poder “discernir” las políticas e iniciativas
empresariales que conducen a un ''auténtico desarrollo integral”. En particular, el estudio del
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impacto ambiental de un nuevo proyecto “requiere procesos políticos transparentes y sujetos
al diálogo, mientras la corrupción que esconde el verdadero impacto ambiental de un proyecto
a cambio de favores suele llevar a acuerdos espurios que evitan informar y debatir
ampliamente”.
La llamada a los que detentan encargos políticos es particularmente incisiva, para que
eviten “la lógica eficientista e inmediatista” que hoy predomina. Pero “si se atreve a hacerlo,
volverá a reconocer la dignidad que Dios le ha dado como humano y dejará tras su paso por
esta historia un testimonio de generosa responsabilidad”.
CAPÍTULO SEXTO – EDUCACIÓN Y ESPIRITUALIDAD ECOLÓGICA (Apostar por
otro estilo de vida Educación para la alianza entre la humanidad y el ambiente; La conversión
ecológica; Gozo y paz ;El amor civil y político; Los signos sacramentales y el descanso
celebrativo; La Trinidad y la relación entre las criaturas; La Reina de todo lo creado; Más allá
del sol).
El capítulo final va al núcleo de la conversión ecológica a la que nos invita la
Encíclica. La raíz de la crisis cultural es profunda y no es fácil rediseñar hábitos y
comportamientos. La educación y la formación siguen siendo desafíos básicos: “todo cambio
requiere motivación y un camino educativo”. Deben involucrarse los ambientes educativos, el
primero “la escuela, la familia, los medios de comunicación, la catequesis”.
El punto de partida es “apostar por otro estilo de vida”, que abra la posibilidad de
“ejercer una sana presión sobre quienes detentan el poder político, económico y social”. Es lo
que sucede cuando las opciones de los consumidores logran “modificar el comportamiento de
las empresas, forzándolas a considerar el impacto ambiental y los modelos de producción”.
No se puede minusvalorar la importancia de cursos de educación ambiental capaces de
cambiar los gestos y hábitos cotidianos, desde la reducción en el consumo de agua a la
separación de residuos o el “apagar las luces innecesarias”. “Una ecología integral también
está hecha de simples gestos cotidianos donde rompemos la lógica de la violencia, del
aprovechamiento, del egoísmo”. Todo ello será más sencillo si parte de una mirada
contemplativa que viene de la fe. “Para el creyente, el mundo no se contempla desde afuera
sino desde adentro, reconociendo los lazos con los que el Padre nos ha unido a todos los seres.
Además, haciendo crecer las capacidades peculiares que Dios le ha dado, la conversión
ecológica lleva al creyente a desarrollar su creatividad y su entusiasmo”.
Vuelve la línea propuesta en la Evangelii Gaudium: “La sobriedad, que se vive con
libertad y conciencia, es liberadora”, así como “La felicidad requiere saber limitar algunas
necesidades que nos atontan, quedando así disponibles para las múltiples posibilidades que
ofrece la vida”. De este modo se hace posible “sentir que nos necesitamos unos a otros, que
tenemos una responsabilidad por los demás y por el mundo, que vale la pena ser buenos y
honestos”.
Los santos nos acompañan en este camino. San Francisco, mencionado muchas veces,
es el “ejemplo por excelencia del cuidado por lo que es débil y de una ecología integral,
vivida con alegría”. Pero la Encíclica recuerda también a San Benito, Santa Teresa de Lisieux
y al beato Charles de Foucauld.
Después de la Laudato si’, el examen de conciencia –instrumento que la Iglesia ha
aconsejado para orientar la propia vida a la luz de la relación con el Señor- deberá incluir una
34
nueva dimensión, considerando no sólo cómo se vive la comunión con Dios, con los otros y
con uno mismo, sino también con todas las creaturas y la naturaleza”.
Para leer la encíclia Laudatio si’ completa copiar y pegar la siguiente dirección.
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/es/events/event.dir.html/content/vaticanevents/es/
2015/6/18/laudatosi.html
35
http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/06/150617_eeuu_papa_enciclica_cambio_clim
atico_laudato_si_conservadores_jg
La encíclica del papa Francisco sobre el medio ambiente que
desata la ira de los conservadores en EE.UU.
Redacción BBC Mundo / 18 junio 2015
“Espero que el cura de mi parroquia no me castigue por decir esto, pero no tomo mis
políticas económicas de mis obispos, cardenales o de mi Papa”.
Con estas palabras, el candidato republicano a la Casa Blanca Jeb Bush –católico y
hermano del expresidente estadounidense George W. Bush– se refirió hace unos días a la
encíclica sobre el medio ambiente y el cambio climático escrita por el papa Francisco y que
fue dada a conocer este jueves por el Vaticano.
Lea: Cinco puntos clave de la encíclica del papa Francisco sobre el cambio climático
En el esperado documento, del que un semanario italiano filtró algunos extractos a
principios de esta semana, el pontífice hace un llamado a proteger a nuestro planeta de la
degradación medioambiental y carga contra el actual sistema económico que explota los
recursos naturales sin consideraciones éticas o morales.
Bush, quien también aseguró que no cree que la religión deba mezclarse con
cuestiones “que tengan un efecto en el ámbito político”, se unió así al coro de políticos,
empresarios y medios conservadores que en los últimos días han atacado al papa Francisco
por opinar sobre un tema que creen no le compete.
Lea: Los conservadores de EE.UU., en guerra contra "el papa marxista"
La encíclica papal, publicada bajo el título Laudato Si (Alabado Seas), es la primera que Jorge
Bergoglio ha escrito enteramente (Lumen fidei había sido redactada casi íntegramente por
Benedicto XVI) y está dirigida no solo a los católicos, sino a todos aquellos que puedan
contribuir a detener la degradación de “la casa común que Dios nos ha confiado”.
Bush no cree que la religión deba mezclarse con cuestiones
“que tengan un efecto en el ámbito político”
36
En ella el Papa trata asuntos como la conexión entre el cambio climático y la
contaminación, la pérdida de la biodiversidad, la mala gestión de los recursos, la desigualdad
entre las regiones ricas y pobres del planeta o la tibia respuesta de los líderes políticos y
económicos ante el desafío de la actual crisis medioambiental.
Esta encíclica, la primera de un pontífice dedicada enteramente al medio ambiente, ha
dado nuevos argumentos a aquellos en EE.UU. que creen que el Papa es “demasiado liberal”
o incluso de tendencias “comunistas”, por su posición aperturista en cuestiones sociales y por
sus críticas al “capitalismo salvaje” y a la “dictadura de la economía”.
Al fin y al cabo, los conservadores en EE.UU. son conocidos por negar la conexión
entre el cambio climático y las actividades humanas, y por oponerse a la adopción de medidas
que limiten, por ejemplo, la emisión de gases con efecto invernadero.
“Dejar la ciencia a los científicos”
Es por eso que el documento de Bergoglio no ha sido bien recibido incluso por muchos
cristianos estadounidenses, que en el pasado se alinearon con los postulados del papa Juan
Pablo II o de Benedicto XVI, pero que no comulgan en importantes asuntos con el actual
pontífice.
Hace unas semanas fue Rick Santorum, candidato republicano de cara a las
presidenciales de 2016 y católico devoto, quien dijo en una entrevista de radio que “la iglesia
se ha equivocado en cuestiones científicas varias veces” y que debería “dejar la ciencia a los
científicos” y centrarse en cuestiones de “teología y moral”.
Esta encíclica es la primera de un pontífice dedicada enteramente al medio ambiente
En el pasado Santorum, quien es padre de familia numerosa, llegó a asegurar que “a
veces es difícil escuchar” al papa Francisco por algunas de sus declaraciones, como en las que
dijo que “ser un buen católico no implica tener hijos como conejos”.
37
Mientras, el republicano Jim Inhofe, presidente del comité medioambiental del Senado
de EE.UU., quien hace unos meses ocupó numerosos titulares de prensa por presentar una
bola de nieve como prueba de que el cambio climático es “un fraude”, le dijo al Papa “que se
preocupe de sus propios asuntos”.
Algunos periodistas del conservador canal Fox News también opinaron sobre la
cuestión.
Por ejemplo, el controvertido satirista Greg Gutfeld dijo que con sus posicionamientos
Francisco “es peligroso” porque “busca el respeto de sus adversarios”, dando a entender que
el catolicismo es incompatible con los movimientos ambientalistas.
“No quiere ser un Papa abuelo. Quiere ser un Papa moderno. Le faltan unas rastas y un
perro con un pañuelo para unirse al movimiento Occupy Wall Street (Ocupa Wall Street)”,
dijo Gutfeld.
Por su parte, Michael McKenna, un asesor republicano citado por el diario New York
Times, que se describe a sí mismo como un “conservador católico”, dijo que el Papa está
“vendiendo una línea de socialismo de estilo latinoamericano” y que Bergoglio “no está en
sintonía con la iglesia católica de EE.UU”.
McKenna también aseguró que Jeb Bush y Marco Rubio –este último el senador
cubanoestadounidense que también aspira a la presidencia de EE.UU. y que en el pasado ha
negado la conexión entre las actividades humanas y el cambio climático– “están más en línea
con la iglesia católica estadounidense” que el actual Papa.
Católicos divididos
Rush Limbaugh ha llegado a tachar de “marxista” al Papa por sus ideas sobre el capitalismo
Pero las palabras de Santorum o McKenna sobre Bergoglio no parecen reflejar la
opinión de muchos católicos en EE.UU.
Según los datos de una reciente encuesta del centro de estudios Pew, un 86% de ellos
tiene una visión positiva del Papa y un 71% cree que el planeta se está calentando.
38
Pese a ello, la encuesta del Pew refleja una división partidista entre los católicos
estadounidenses sobre el asunto del cambio climático.
Así, la mitad de los católicos republicanos creen que hay pruebas inequívocas de que
la temperatura de la Tierra está aumentando, comparado con un 80% de los católicos
demócratas.
De entre los primeros, sólo una cuarta parte cree que el hombre tiene algo que ver con
el cambio climático y que este supone un riesgo serio, una cifra que entre los demócratas se
sitúa alrededor del 60%.
Pero parece que los que se oponen a que el Papa se pronuncie sobre cuestiones
medioambientales no sólo se encuentran entre los conservadores de EE.UU. sino también
dentro del propio Vaticano.
La filtración a principios de esta semana a la prensa de extractos de la encíclica papal
fue interpretada por algunos como una estrategia de los sectores más conservadores de la
iglesia para disminuir el impacto mediático del mensaje del pontífice.
Los analistas creen que con la encíclica publicada este jueves el Papa espera influir en
el debate de la próxima Conferencia de Naciones Unidas sobre Cambio Climático, que se
celebrará en el mes de diciembre en París.
En este encuentro se debería llegar a un acuerdo vinculante que sustituya el Protocolo
de Kioto, fijando nuevos límites a la emisión de gases con efecto invernadero.
Un 86% de los católicos en EE.UU. tiene una visión positiva del Papa
39
Además, la publicación de Laudato Si se produce apenas tres meses antes de que el
Papa realice su primer viaje oficial a EE.UU., durante el cual se dirigirá a la Asamblea
General de Naciones Unidas y a una sesión conjunta de las dos cámaras del Congreso
estadounidense.
Habrá que esperar para ver la reacción que tendrán ante esta visita aquellos
conservadores que en los últimos meses no han dudado en criticar la “agenda liberal” del
Papa, al que figuras como el locutor conservador Rush Limbaugh han llegado a tachar de
“marxista” por sus ideas sobre el capitalismo.
40
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/18/wonkbook-popefranciss-views-on-climate-change-put-catholic-gop-candidates-in-a-bind/
The Washington Post
Pope Francis’s views on climate change put Catholic
GOP candidates in a bind
By Max Ehrenfreund June 18
Pope Francis's views on climate change shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, notes Jeet Heer at
The New Republic, who cites “longstanding traditions in Catholic social thought criticizing
unfettered capitalism”. Those traditions raise difficult questions for conservative Catholic
politicians, including Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor.
“I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope”, Bush said
this week. “I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things
that end up getting in the political realm”.
The problem with that answer is that politics has always been and always will be about
who we are as people. Our views on political questions such as the economy, the
environment, abortion or civil rights depend on our beliefs about our duties to others, about
the right way to live our lives. These are fundamentally moral issues. Bush’s remarks make it
sound as though he thinks of politics as some big game of Risk, in which the players' choices
do not reflect on them as people.
To be sure, we can debate which responses to climate change are cost-effective, or
whether federal welfare programs help or hurt the poor. These are debates over the means, but
on moral questions like these, religious leaders have every authority to insist on the ends.
1.
Top story: Pope issues encyclical on global warming
Francis’s widely anticipated letter calls on rich nations to deal with climate change. “The
pope’s 180-page encyclical on the environment is not only a moral call for action on phasing
out the use of fossil fuels, as was expected. It is also a document infused with an activist anger
and concern for the poor, casting blame at the indifference of the powerful. ... In a press
conference on Thursday in Vatican City to mark the release of Francis’s encyclical, Cardinal
Peter Turkson, who wrote a draft and is the pope’s point-man on social justice issues, said it
was imperative for ‘practical proposals not to be developed in an ideological, superficial or
reductionist way’”. Stephanie Kirchgaessner in the Guardian.
Vatican announces pope’s message on
climate(22:40)
41
Vatican leaders released Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical June 18 in Vatican
City. (The Vatican English)
[Video]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/18/wonkbook-popefranciss-views-on-climate-change-put-catholic-gop-candidates-in-a-bind/
The document is cautious on questions of science. Francis “may have bent over backward
to offer a cautious interpretation of the scientific facts. For example, a substantial body of
published science says that human emissions have caused all the global warming that has
occurred over the past century. Yet in his letter, Francis does not go quite that far, citing
volcanoes, the sun and other factors that can influence the climate before he concludes that
‘most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases’
released mainly by human activity. Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State
University, pointed out that the bulk of the evidence suggests that solar changes and
volcanoes have slightly counteracted the warming effect of greenhouse gases”. Justin Gillis in
The New York Times .
The pope is making the environment an issue of social justice. “The Catholic Church’s
historic emphasis on social justice makes this focus in the encyclical no more surprising than
its position on climate change. But nevertheless, the social inequalities that are so often tied to
environmental crises are among the document’s most important points. ... Experts have long
argued that deforestation, biodiversity loss, water shortages and poor water quality, loss of
traditional lands and any number of climate change effects have disproportionate impacts on
developing countries and the world’s poorest people. These inequalities, and the moral
imperative to correct them, is likely to be a major focus in the encyclical and could be an area
that extends the document’s reach beyond the Catholic community in an even bigger way than
its discussion of climate science. One reason for the issue’s resonance is that Pope Francis,
himself, is from Argentina, where many of the above environmental problems are of deep
concern”. Chelsea Harvey in The Washington Post .
American Catholics are split on the issue, like the rest of the country. “American
Catholics are about as divided on the matter of climate change as the rest of the general
public, the Pew Research Center found in a survey ahead a major statement on the
environment by Pope Francis. Seventy-one percent of U.S. Catholics believe the Earth is
warming, Pew found in a survey released on Tuesday, but fewer than half think it’s caused by
human activity or think it's a very serious problem. All three figures are similar to the general
public’s views on the issue. Catholics' opinions on global warming break down along party
lines. Eighty-five percent of Catholic Democrats believe in global warming and 64 percent
call it a ‘very serious problem’, according to Pew. Only 51 percent of Catholic Republicans
believe the Earth is getting warmer, and it’s viewed as a serious problem by 24 percent of
them”. Devin Henry in The Hill .
Bush and Santorum rejected the pope’s message. “In his first official day on the
presidential campaign trail, Bush, who is Catholic, told a town hall event in New Hampshire
that Pope Francis should steer clear of global affairs. ... At least five of the Republican
presidential contenders are Catholic. Two so far – Bush and Rick Santorum, the former
42
Pennsylvania senator and devout Catholic – have come out against the pope on climate
change. ... Santorum told a Philadelphia radio station earlier this month: ‘The church has
gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think we probably are better off leaving science
to the scientists and focusing on what we’re good at, which is theology and morality’. Three
other Catholic Republican hopefuls: Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio, have yet to
speak out on the encyclical." Suzanne Goldenberg and Sabrina Siddiqui in the Guardian .
O’Malley is publishing a clean-energy agenda. “The former Maryland governor, who is a
practicing Catholic, plans to issue a white paper Thursday morning that declares that the
United States has a ‘moral obligation’ to address climate change and outlines steps he would
take to accelerate a move toward clean energy – including several that build upon Obama
administration policies and some that depart from them. ... O’Malley argues that a full
embrace of clean energy presents the biggest job creation opportunity the country as seen in a
century. Among other initiatives, O’Malley will call for expanding an Obama administration
effort to regulate emissions from power plants to include other sources of greenhouse gases,
such as cement and fertilizer plans and existing oil and gas wells”. John Wagner in The
Washington Post.
43
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2015/jun/18/willpope-franciss-encyclical-become-his-miracle-that-saved-the-planet §*****§
The Guardian
Thursday 18 June 2015, 15:26
Damian CARRINGTON
Will Pope Francis’s encyclical become his ‘miracle’ that saved the planet?
The clearest and loudest moral case yet for action now, firmly rooted in justice for the poor,
world’s could galvanise the world to act on climate change
Pope Francis’s encyclical, subtitled Care for our Common Home, has created a global news
event. The question now is whether it will become a historic news event, by galvanising real
action to avert catastrophic climate change.
There’s a chance it will, for two reasons. First, the moral force the pope brings to bear
may kindle that most fragile necessity: political will. Second, his declaration of the
atmosphere as a common good, owned by all for all, may help settle the enduring argument
about which nations have the responsibility to act. The rich owe the poor, he says.
Climate change, the mass extinction of species and the poisoning of the oceans have
been unfolding like slow-motion disasters for decades and universally damage the lives of the
poor for the benefit of the rich. The science is now beyond any reasonable dispute and the
economic benefit of acting is clear.
Pope’s climate change encyclical tells rich nations: pay your debt to the poor
Pontiff’s 180-page intervention in climate change debate casts blame for
‘ecological crisis’ on the indifference of the powerful
Yet for many people these planetary crises have not felt, deep down, like moral issues.
They are too distant in time and space, affecting people we don’t know and creatures we have
never heard of. As coal, oil and gas continue to be burned, and emissions rise, the risk of
floods, famines, heatwaves and refugees that will affect us all rises. And yet so little has been
achieved to curb the use of fossil fuels.
44
The pope provides the clearest and loudest moral case yet for action now, firmly
rooted in justice for the world’s poor.
“We have to realise that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach;
it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry
of the earth and the cry of the poor,” he writes. “Leaving an inhabitable planet to future
generations is, first and foremost, up to us. The issue is one which dramatically affects us, for
it has to do with the ultimate meaning of our earthly sojourn.”
The pope's encyclical on climate change – as it happened
On Thursday the Vatican published Pope Francis’s long-awaited encyclical on the environment,
which warns of ‘serious consequences’ if the world does not act on climate change
This moral leadership is important, says climate economist Lord Nick Stern, because
of “the failure of many heads of state and government around the world to show political
leadership”. But it also matters in the very worldly pursuit of getting a strong, workable
climate change agreement at a crunch UN summit in Paris in December.
“You should never underestimate the soft power of moral arguments,” says Professor
Ottmar Edenhofer, chief economist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, a
Catholic and who met Pope Francis in July 2014 to brief him on climate change. “It does not
provide you with an immediate bargaining chip in the negotiations, but in the end when global
agreements are not perceived as fair and just, they are very hard to implement.”
Edenhofer points to a single, short sentence in the encyclical as profound: “The
climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all.”
From this simple statement follows radical consequences, Edenhoder says. It means
that the last carbon emissions we can afford to leak into the atmosphere before disaster strikes
must be distributed equitably among all the people of the world - and the rich nations have
already had their fair share. As the pope puts it, “a true ecological debt exists, particularly
between the global north and south”.
The woman charged with delivering the global climate deal, the UN’s Christiana
Figueres is in no doubt of the encyclical’s importance: “It will have a major impact. It will
speak to the moral imperative of addressing climate change in a timely fashion in order to
protect the most vulnerable.”
45
Everything you need to know about the Paris climate summit and UN talks
As UN climate negotiations resume in Bonn, we look at why the crunch Paris climate
conference from 30 November to 11 December is so important
That is the positive case. There are numerous argument as to why the pope’s carefully
timed intervention may in the end prove to be little more than a passing distraction. Of the
biggest polluters – China, US, India, Russia, Japan – only the US has significant Catholic
population and that is riven by partisan division. On the other hand, some south American
nations have been obstructive in the global climate negotiations and may be swayed by the
pope.
Some may think the pope’s moral authority is overstated, given the Catholic church’s
differences with much of the modern world on contraception and homosexuality and the
corrosive child abuse cover-ups. Yet Pope Francis is more often seen in a positive light than a
negative one.
Only time will reveal the true impact of the encyclical on the greatest long-term
challenge facing civilisation. But if the moral argument it presents moves the problem from
one that “should” be tackled sometime to one that “must” be tackled now, it will have
performed a remarkable act.
Perhaps one might even call it a miracle.
●●●●●
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/18/popes-climate-change-encyclical-callson-rich-nations-to-pay-social-debt
The Guardian
Thursday 18 June 2015 14:28 BST
Stephanie KIRCHGAESSNER in Vatican City
Pope’s climate change encyclical tells rich nations:
pay your debt to the poor
Pontiff’s 180-page intervention in climate change debate casts
blame for ‘ecological crisis’ on the indifference of the powerful
46
Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change unveiled at Vatican
Video
Pope Francis has called on the world’s rich nations to begin paying their “grave social debt”
to the poor and take concrete steps on climate change, saying failure to do so presents an
undeniable risk to a “common home” that is beginning to resemble a “pile of filth”.
The pope’s 180-page encyclical on the environment, released on Thursday, is at its core a
moral call for action on phasing out the use of fossil fuels.
But it is also a document infused with an activist anger and concern for the poor, casting
blame on the indifference of the powerful in the face of certain evidence that humanity is at
risk following 200 years of misuse of resources.
Up to now, he says, the world has accepted a “cheerful recklessness” in its approach to the
issue, lacking the will to change habits for the good of the Earth.
“Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social,
economic, political and for the distribution of goods,” the papal statement says. “It represents
one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”
The release of the statement was timed with the pope’s upcoming trip to the US, where he
will speak before the United Nations and a joint session of the Congress.
“This is his signature teaching,” said Austen Ivereigh, who has written a biography of the
pope. “Francis has made it not just safe to be Catholic and green; he’s made it obligatory.”
Ivereign added: “It captures his deep disquiet about the direction of the modern world, the
way technology and the myth of progress are leading us to commodify human beings and
exploit nature. This comes right out of his soul.”
The encyclical, which can now be considered the church’s official position on the
environment, includes practical guidance. Pope Francis rejects “simple solutions” to climate
change such as cap and trade systems, which he says give rise to harmful speculation. He also
dismisses any suggestion that population increases harm to the environment and should
therefore be controlled, and resists making any judgment on genetically modified foods.
The essay was released following months of intense speculation about how far the pontiff
would delve into a scientific realm that, depsite the overwhelming agreement of scientists, is
still considered controversial in some countries such as the US, where views on climate
change are divided along political lines.
Cardinal Peter Turkson, the pope’s top official on social and justice issues, flatly rejected
arguments by some conservative politicians in the US that the pope ought to stay out of
science.
“Saying that a pope shouldn’t deal with science sounds strange since science is a public
domain. It is a subject matter that anyone can get in to,” Turkson said at a press conference on
Thursday.
Analysis Pope's encyclical on the environment: key questions answered
47
The pontiff’s upcoming document is being hailed as a major intervention in the climate change
debate – but what exactly is an encyclical?
Read more
In an apparent reference to comments by Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush,
who said he did not take economic advice from the pope, Turkson said that politicians had the
right to disregard Francis’s statement, but said it was wrong to do so based on the fact that the
pope was not a scientist.
“For some time now it has been the attempt of the whole world to kind of try to deemphasise the artificial split between religion and public life … as if religion plays no role,”
he said. Then, quoting an earlier pope, he said the best position was to “encourage dialogue
between faith and reason”.
“Reason does have blind spots, but at the same time, reason can also challenge religion
to become practical,” he said.
Francis, who was elected in 2013 and has put social justice and reform of the church at
the heart of his papacy, said on Thursday that his text should not be read as a green manifesto,
but instead as a social teaching.
“The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them, yet this is
not the case where ecological debt is concerned,” Francis wrote. “In different ways,
developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue
to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future.
“The developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their
consumption of non-renewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies
and programmes of sustainable development.” The question now is whether the pope’s
sweeping statement will shake-up climate talks.
Turkson said on Thursday that the pope considered it imperative that “practical
proposals not be developed in an ideological, superficial or reductionist way”.
“For this, dialogue is essential,” he said.
“Pope Francis: The Earth, our home, is beginning to look like an immense pile
of filth”
Pope Francis
An extract from Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change, the environment and inequality
Read more
The release of the statement was timed with the pope’s upcoming trip to the US, where
he will speak before the UN and seek to nudge climate change negotiators ahead of their
December meeting in Paris. He will also speak before a joint session of the US Congress.
While much of the encyclical is a spiritual reflection on the biblical story of creation
and humanity’s God-given role in caring for the Earth, both the statement and the presentation
48
preceding it were infused with science, representing a rare locking of arms between the
church and scientific community.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a top climate scientist and scientific adviser to the
Vatican, said the impact of global warming would be “abrupt, surprising, and irreversible”,
and that it would shut down parts of the earth much in the same way that the body dies of a
fever.
“The vital organ’s of the world’s body will collapse,” he said in opening remarks
before a press conference.
The encyclical – a statement of papal teaching – describes an “ecological crisis” and
includes a section devoted to the latest scientific findings. It argues that climate change is not
just a “global problem with serious implications”, but has an impact felt disproportionately by
the world’s poorest people.
Francis writes: “Those who possess more resources and economic or political power
seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms”. The
failure to respond, he says, points to the loss of a “sense of responsibility for our fellow men
and women upon which all civil society is founded”.
The question now is whether the encyclical will shake-up the climate debate, as
Francis clearly hopes it will.
“I really think it is a game-changer,” says Ivereigh, the papal biographer. “In asking
Catholics to reshape the market by changing their consumer habits, it could release a whole
new form of people power.”
The Argentinian pontiff heaps praise on efforts made by scientists to find solutions to
man-made problems, and lashes out at those who intervene in the service of “finance and
consumerism”.
“It is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, even more limited and grey,”
he says.
The pope did not speak at the press conference on Thursday, but earlier in the week he
said he hoped his message would be received with an “open spirit”.
The pope has previously expressed disappointment over the lack of an effective global
plan to tackle climate change. But he faces an uphill battle to convert those who doubt human
influence.
Even among Catholics in the US, views on global warming are sharply divided along
political lines. A recent survey by Pew Research showed that Catholic Republicans view the
nearly universally accepted scientific facts with deep scepticism.
49
Overall, the survey found that 71% of US Catholics believe the earth is warming, and
about half (47%) believe humans are the cause and that it is a serious problem.
But while eight in 10 Catholic Democrats say that there is solid evidence that global
warming is real, only about half of Catholic Republicans agree. Far fewer – just one quarter of
Catholic Republicans – believe that global warming is caused by humans.
US climate change deniers lambast the pope over his environment encyclical
Video
Jeb Bush joins Republican backlash against pope on climate change
‘I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope’ says candidate as coal
industry lobbyist says pontiff should promote fossil fuels to help poor
Read more
The UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres, said the church’s newly unveiled teaching
on the environment underscored the “moral imperative for urgent action”.
“This clarion call should guide the world towards a strong and durable universal
climate agreement in Paris at the end of this year,” she said in a statement. “Coupled with the
economic imperative, the moral imperative leaves no doubt that we must act on climate
change now.”
Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank president, agreed: “Today’s release … should serve as
a stark reminder to all of us on the intrinsic link between climate change and poverty.”
He said the impact of climate change was most devastating for the “unacceptably high
number of people living in extreme poverty”. Extreme weather events had taken the lives of
more than 2.5 million people and resulted in $4tn in damages, he said.
“We must now seize this narrow window of opportunity and embark on ambitious
actions and policies to help protect people and the environment,” he added.
Francis has been sending his encyclical to church officials around the world over the
last few days, Federico Lombardi, the Holy See’s head of communications, said.
50
The pontiff included a personal handwritten note in his communication, ending with a
plea for help: “United in the lord, and please do not forget to pray for me.”
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2d
Analysis Pope's encyclical on the environment: key questions answered
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Pope calls for ‘open spirit’ towards climate change encyclical
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The pope's climate change encyclical – first the leak, now the movie trailer
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Explosive intervention by Pope Francis set to transform climate change debate
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The Guardian
Thursday 14 May 2015 14:18 BST
Neil Thorns
Director of advocacy at the Catholic aid agency Cafod
How will the world react to Pope Francis's encyclical on climate change?
Whatever the Pope says in his highly-anticipated climate message it will present challenges – not
just for climate sceptics, but for all Catholics, on how we should act to protect our environment
and the world’s poorest people
“Do you think people will listen to Pope Francis on this?” a journalist asked me recently. The
easiest answer is, who isn’t listening to Pope Francis at the moment?
The subject in question is climate change, as the Holy Father gears up to release a
much-anticipated Papal encyclical – a letter to Catholics everywhere – that will consider care
52
for creation, sustainable development and the impact that climate change is having on the
world’s poorest people.
The expectations for this document are huge. I attended a meeting this month at the
Vatican to prepare for its release, chaired by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which
brought together scientists, faith leaders, businesses, NGOs such as Cafod and politicians.
(There was a certain irony in an institution set up to ensure there would not be another Galileo
‘mistake’ holding this conference on climate change while the modern day naysayers to the
science tried to cause a distraction outside.)
The mixture was a good one; the scientists know the facts but can’t say what should be
done, and faith leaders are not scientists but can bear testament to the effect climate change is
having on the poor communities they serve.
Regardless of their faith, every single person who attended the meeting, alongside the
general public, is looking to the Pope to drive momentum and create an atmosphere where
world leaders will act on climate change, looking beyond national borders and our immediate
generation.
As United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon – his presence further testament to
the influence the encyclical is already wielding – told delegates: “We are the first generation
that can end poverty, but the last that can take steps to avoid the worst impact of climate
change.”
If Ban is right and climate change is the defining issue of our time, then the Church
must reflect and speak on the signs of the times, just as it did during the industrial revolution
when it called for workers’ rights and freedom of association, or when it spoke on the need
for peace in the post-world war two era.
And yet, whatever the Pope says on the subject is likely to present a challenge to us
all.
An encyclical is not a scientific document, rather one that explores a particular issue in
the light of Catholic social teaching. Yet the Pontifical Academy of Science has thoroughly
investigated the research, producing its own documents on topics such as glacier retreat, and it
is clear that we must take on board what the science is telling us.
In September, the Pope will travel to the US, where he’ll address the United Nations,
as world leaders gather to agree a new set of goals that will define development work for the
next 15 years. He’ll also travel to Washington, where he’ll become the first Pope ever to
address the US Congress.
Estimates suggest around a third of Congress are Catholic – yet many have been vocal
in their climate scepticism. How will they cope when presented with the unassailable truth
that their faith calls them to care about creation, and the impact that environmental
degradation is having on the world’s poorest people?
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The question of economics is often used to try and deflect the climate debate – with
suggestions that challenging the status quo will impede the economic progress of developing
countries - but the Vatican discussions this month left us in no doubt that the pursuit of purely
economic growth by richer countries is leading to exploitation of natural resources and
contributing to a growing chasm between the world’s richest and poorest. How will
politicians in one of the world’s richest countries react if they are asked to step away from a
ruthless pursuit of GDP?
What of the US news stations that report on the impacts of climate change with a
healthy degree of cynicism – how will they choose to cover the Holy Father’s words? It seems
unfathomable that they will openly criticise the stance he takes, and yet his words and actions
will undoubtedly present a challenge to their standard editorial line.
And what of ordinary people? The Catholic community everywhere will be called
upon to reflect not just on whether our lifestyles are promoting care for creation, but whether
our social, political and economic choices truly promote the interests of the poorest among us.
Pope Francis is not the first pontiff to tackle environmental issues, and nor will he be
the last. And while countless sceptics may try and use their own scientific interpretations to
detract from his message, the fact remains that the Church’s role has always been to consider
issues such as these from the viewpoint of humanity, to provide a moral compass that
motivates people everywhere to do the right thing and think about how their choices are
impacting on the poorest and most vulnerable.
Those protesting outside the Vatican climate meeting proclaimed that they weren’t
obliged to listen to the Pope on this issue. Perhaps not, but as the Chancellor of the Vatican’s
scientific academy points out – any Catholic choosing to ignore the encyclical’s message will
need to have a very good reason for doing so.
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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2015/jun/19/fossil-fuel-memes-oilspills-are-a-beach
The Guardian
Sponsored by:
About this content
Daniel Ahrens and Travis Irvine
Friday 19 June 2015 14.00 BST
Fossil fuel memes: oil spills are a beach
Life on the beach isn’t always a vacation. Here are some postcards that
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nobody would want to send, courtesy of fossil fuels
A warning sign at Manhattan Beach, California, as a tar-like
substance is washed ashore in May
Photograph: Zhao Hanrong/Xinhua Press/Corbis
A lobster covered in oil is seen along the coast of Refugio State Beach in Goleta, California
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Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

A boy bathes in sewage-strewn mud on the banks of the river Ganges in Calcutta, India.
According to the WWF, more than 80% of marine pollution is caused by land-based
activities such as oil spills, fertilizers and toxic chemical runoff and the release of
untreated sewage
Photograph: Piyal Adhikary/EPA

A young boy with a bucket of oil on the Teluk Penyu coast in Indonesia in May, when 14,000
liters of crude oil spilled into the water after a Pertamina Oil company pipeline leak
Photograph: Getty Images/Barcroft Media
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●●●●●
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2015/jun/19/global-warminglie-liberals-tell-distract-us
The Guardian
Sponsored by:
About this content
Bonnie McFarlane
Friday 19 June 2015 12:00 BST
Global warming is totally a lie liberals tell to distract us from their commie agendas
If the fact that we’ve just experienced the coldest spring on record isn’t enough to sway you, I’ve
got other anecdotal evidence that should be plenty convincing
Liar. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
Everybody is talking about global warming. Clearly, it’s got a great publicist. My guess is it’s
the same one that Amy Schumer uses. However, unlike Schumer – whom I have on good
authority is real – Global Warming is a big fat lie.
Now, before you spit out your fair trade coffee and start yelling about carbon
emissions, let me assure you that this is not a conclusion that came easily to me. I thought
about it a lot. Just this morning I was in the shower for a good two hours debating the pros
and cons of dating someone with a giant global footprint. Once the water went cold and I
dried myself off with a hair dryer, I knew I had my answer.
This so-called “environmental Armageddon” is a fictitious construction cooked up by
the left so we’ll spend all our time (or at least a half hour a week) changing out our light bulbs
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and flattening cardboard and completely overlooking their pinko/commie/socialist agendas.
I’m on to you, liberals! You’re trying to be heroes to humanity. You want everyone to pat you
on the back and say, “Oh, look who saved the planet!”
Well, I have news for you. The planet doesn’t need saving. After all, it’s been around
for almost 2,000 years. It was fine before you got here, and it’ll be fine after the apocalypse
destroys most of humankind for the sins of homosexuality and shellfish consumption. God
hates Shrimp Scampi, but He doesn’t seem to have a problem with littering. (Leviticus 10:10)
I wish people would stop incessantly asking, “Don’t we care what kind of planet we’re
going to leave our children?” First of all, I’m pretty sure any child psychologist would agree
that leaving a whole planet to a kid is an appalling idea. I wouldn’t dream of spoiling my
daughter with an entire planet. You don’t have to give your kids the world; just spend some
time with them once in a while. That’s what they really want. That, and a Mercedes SUV for
their sweet 16.
I wish scientists would stop blaming us humans for causing global warming. This is
patently false, since global warming is not real! If the fact that we’ve just experienced the
coldest spring on record isn’t enough to sway you, I’ve got other anecdotal evidence that
should be plenty convincing. For example: my sister went to Greenland and never saw any
polar bears stranded on tiny ice floes. In fact, my sister didn’t see any live polar bears at all,
so there.
But the most telling sign that global warming is not an actual threat is this: the
Republican presidential candidates aren’t trying to scare us with the prospect that we’re all
doomed to die from toxic air and scorching temperatures. And Republican presidential
candidates love scaring the public. It’s their passion. If they could put a gun to each of our
heads individually and say, “Vote for me or else you die”, I think they would.
That’s why, despite the numerous scientific claims and all those hockey-stick graphs
showing the sharp rise in temperatures, I don’t think there’s any truth to this whole global
warming thing. At the very least, the declarations are exaggerated and we have nothing to
worry about for at least a decade.
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http://www.eastforum.it/
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EAST FORUM 2015
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow
of the process, must join it and flow with it. Frank HERBERT
Geography has made us neighbors.
History has made us friends.
Economics has made us partners,
and necessity has made us allies. John KENNEDY
Political freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers
want no lying. Mikhail BAKUNIN
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. Mark TWAIN
It is not the strongest species that survives. Nor the most intelligent, but the one more
responsive to change. Charles DARWIN
The Agreement shall be ambitious, comprehensive, balanced, and fully consistent with
World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and obligations. Directives for the negotiation
on the TTIP
Global (Dis)Order: can international trade agreements revive growth?
Since the Bretton Woods Conference (1944) and the definition of the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT), international trade has been the engine of growth and
globalization.
While the system outlined in the Bretton Woods Agreements and by the World Trade
Organization (WTO) is experiencing difficulties, the hope to revive international trade mostly
relies on new bilateral and multilateral international trade agreements. Today, they are
increasingly becoming the major instruments to promote the liberalisation of trade.
At present, the economic partnership between the EU and the United States of
America is still the strongest bilateral partnership in the world, especially in terms of
investments and trade flows.
The global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 resulted in an accelerated change of the
economic and geopolitical balance, resulting in a greater strategic importance of the emerging
economies of the Pacific region, to which the United States have been paying increased
attention. And while the US economy is indeed out of the crisis, Europe is still struggling to
put together a credible and robust exit strategy.
The Role of the United States
The US have 20 bilateral free trade agreements in force. The two most important international
trade agreements under negotiation are:
59
♦
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – This treaty applies to the Asia-Pacific region,
thanks to an agreement with eleven other countries, including Australia, Canada,
Chile, Japan, and Mexico. From the point of view of the US, the goal of this
agreement – which has been under negotiation for nearly a decade – is to promote
economic growth, development, and innovation, as well as to strengthen the alliances
and the political weight of the United States in the region. The fact that China is not
yet among the 11 countries included in the negotiations is a clear demonstration of
that.
♦
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which aims at
consolidating the trade relations between the EU and US. The TTIP is expected to
achieve a real convergence of policies in the trade and investments sectors.
The Role of the European Union
The EU continues to maintain a leading role at international level as regards international
trade of goods and services. However, the changing global scenario raises concerns about a
possibly smaller relevance of its global role.
At the end of 2013, Europe had concluded negotiations about ten Free Trade
Agreements (FTAs), still not entered into force, and has still standing negotiations with 50
countries such as Japan, Canada and China.
From the point of view of the EU, the TTIP aims, inter alia, to ensure the European
Union assumes a significant role in international trade.
TTIP: What Is It?
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is an innovative bilateral treaty. It not
only aims at increasing growth, competitiveness, and investments, but also at building a more
coherent and harmonised regulatory system between the EU and the US, as well as a common
approach to global trade regulations in order to influence third countries as well.
The TTIP negotiations started in July 2013 and are not concluded yet. At the heart of
the agreement being negotiated are three main areas/pillars, namely:
♦
Access to markets
♦
Regulatory convergence
♦
Trade rules
As underlined recently by the European Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström,
there is no established deadline for the negotiations to end, but the common goal would be to
finalise within the term of the Obama administration, i.e. before January 2017.
Given the complexity of the negotiations and the magnitude of the interests at stake,
two possible scenarios are on the negotiating table for the Treaty to be signed. These are:
♦
Reach a less ambitious agreement. Also known as “long harvest for a little
corn”, this agreement provides for the reduction of tariffs along with some
progress in regulatory harmonisation, while keeping the door open to future
developments.
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♦
Continue the negotiations with the following US Administration. This
option would give way to a more ambitious Treaty.
According to some commentators, the latter case would bear the risk that the new US
administration is less motivated to finalise the agreement than the current one, especially if
the deal for the TPP is secured in the meantime.
The Global and European Economic and Geopolitical Impact of TTIP
Studies on TTIP suggest the Treaty will have an overall positive impact after it enters into
force. Regulatory cooperation would bear the major positive effects. More specifically, it
would affect the strong reduction of costs of international trade due to the elimination and/or
drastic reduction of tariffs and other barriers.
Despite the effects of the entry into force of this international trade agreement cannot
be measured before it is signed, some assessments of the expected impacts can be made
anyway.
Expected Impact on European and US Economies. A projection study of the Center for
Economic Policy Research (CEPR) commissioned by the European Commission in 2013
estimated the expansion of the European economy by 2027 would account for €120 billion in
case an ambitious agreement on the TTIP entered into force, which corresponds to 0.5% of
the GDP. It would represent a permanent increase of wealth that the European economy could
produce every year.
Expected Impact on Consumers and Producers. This impact is expected to be of mixed
nature. While lower rates would bring to lower prices, on the one hand, the removal of
subsidies for manufacturers could lead to production cuts in order to maintain the prices high,
on the other. About 15,000 new jobs would be created in the European labour market per
extra billion invested in bilateral trade.
Expected Impact on Trade Flows. European exports to the US are expected to increase by
28% as a result of enhanced trade volume and efficiency. The total value of imports will
increase by 5% in the EU and the USA, accounting for €226 billion and €200 billion,
respectively.
Spillover Effects. The positive effect for the trading partners of the EU and the US in the
world would account for €99 billion. This is due to the economic growth in the US and the
EU, which would translate in a higher volume of purchases by consumers and in increased
trade of products from other countries. Moreover, each common regulatory approach between
the EU and the US will reduce the costs for the exporters to and from these markets.
Impact on the Individual Members of the EU. This aspect should be adjusted to the
specific nature of the several national economies and to the degree of protection from
international trade that currently exists. In particular, since the 28 EU member states represent
a single market already, the creation of a free trade area with the US would lead European
companies to lose some of their advantages over US competitors in the European market. If,
for example, the import tariffs on textiles were removed, the Romanian textile industry
producers would face tougher competition in the German market as it confronts US
companies.
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The Impact on SMEs. The SMEs have limited resources and experience to address issues
such as different standards and registration requirements in different jurisdictions. Therefore,
they could benefit from the reduction of non-tariff barriers and bureaucracy. At the same time,
SMEs suffer from trade barriers more than large firms because their fixed costs, such as
product approval, are distributed over lower sales volumes. In addition, the highest rates are
found in sectors that are significant to SMEs, such as food, textiles, and the ceramics industry.
TTIP: The Most Controversial International Trade Agreement in History
The criticism of the public opinion against the entry into force of the TTIP is mainly based on
the lack of transparency in the negotiations for this international trade agreement. Many
protesters see the TTIP as an expression of ‘hyper globalization’ that can harm the rights of
consumers and workers, as well as the standards of quality and safety. Many critics predict
increased multinational corporation power and capacity to influence governments and
lawmakers for their own benefit.
The European governments are not indifferent to such criticism and many people
expect an opposition to the signing of the TTIP Treaty, including within the European
Parliament itself, mainly by the Greek government led by Syriza.
The TTIP is definitely one of the most controversial treaties that the EU has ever
negotiated.
The Topics at East Forum 2015
What the global order will be after international trade agreements such as the TPP and TTIP
entry into force? Will they be able to contribute to boost economic growth or will they only
protect the economic interests of few stakeholders? What real opportunities will the European
companies have?
These topics will be debated at East Forum 2015. Global (Dis)Order: Can
International Trade Agreements Revive Growth? During the debate, representatives of
national and European organizations and institutions, scholars, opinion makers, and
internationally renowned experts will exchange their views.
Related Links:

UniCredit

East Online

European Council on Foreign Relations

European Parliament

European Commission

US Senate

US Congress

European Centre For International Political Economy

The Brookings Institution

Federal Association of Industries (Germany)

Delors Institute

Atlantic Community
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
American Chambers of Commerce in Italy

Corporate Europe

EurActive.com

EU Observer

BusinessEurope.org

Cecilia Malmström European Commission

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP)

AREL Agenzia di ricerche e legislazione

Centre for Economic Policy Research
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move
with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it. Frank
HERBERT
Geography has made us neighbors.
History has made us friends.
Economics has made us partners,
and necessity has made us allies. John KENNEDY
Political freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and
the workers want no lying. Mikhail BAKUNIN
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. Mark TWAIN
It is not the strongest species that survives. Nor the most intelligent, but the
one more responsive to change. Charles DARWIN
The Agreement shall be ambitious, comprehensive, balanced, and fully
consistent with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and obligations.
Directives for the negotiation on the TTIP)
●●●●●
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2015/jun/08/tia-mariaperus-biggest-environmental-conflict-right-now
The Guardian
Monday 8 June 2015 16:56 BST
David Hill
What is Peru’s biggest environmental conflict right now?
José de Echave, from Lima-based NGO CooperAccion, talks about the proposed Tia
Maria copper mine
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Police fighting local inhabitants in Cocachacra, southern Peru,
protesting the proposed Tia Maria mine.
Photograph: Miguel Mejía Castro/La República
US company Newmont’s proposed Conga gold mine, perhaps, or the 40-odd year old oil
concession that has devastated parts of Peru’s Amazon and is now up for renewal? The
Chadin 2 dam on the River Maranon, scheduled to be built by Brazilian firm Odebrecht, or
the expansion of the Camisea gas project? New legislation? Gold-mining in the Madre de
Dios department? A trans-continental railway possibly financed by China?
None of the above. The answer, no about about it, is a proposed copper mine called
Tia Maria in the Arequipa department in Peru’s south. Tia Maria has been one of the
country’s main news stories over the last couple of months, with local people protesting, a
“State of Emergency” declared, 1000s of police and soldiers sent to the region, constitutional
rights suspended, open fighting, more than 200 people injured, arbitrary arrests, journalists
intimidated, accusations of “terrorism” flying around, reported sabotage, and to date,
following previous protests in 2011, a total of seven deaths. The struggle has galvanised many
in Peru, with solidarity protests being held around the country and more than 1,000 people
marching in Lima, which led to further fighting, injuries and arrests.
The company behind Tia Maria is Southern Copper, part of the Grupo Mexico, whose
president, German Larrea Mota-Velasco, is ranked by Forbes as the world’s 77th richest
person. How can things at Tia Maria - which president Ollanta Humala has said can’t be
suspended, although Southern subsequently announced a “pause” - have turned out so badly?
Here I interview José de Echave, from Lima-based NGO CooperAccion, about what has been
going on.
64
DH: What do you think of the decision to send in the army?
JDE: It’s the clearest sign the government doesn’t know how to deal with social conflict. Tia
Maria is telling the country and the people running it that there are things which aren’t
working: policies, institutions, laws etc. Militarising a conflict involving a civilian population
doesn’t resolve anything.
DH: Why do you think the government chose to militarise it? Where does that decision come
from - Humala or others in his administration, or the army, or even the company?
JDE: I think the first key fact to bear in mind is that this is a weak government - a
government that bends easily to pressure from the powers-that-be such as the main economic
groups, like the mining companies, and a concentrated press, which have been demanding a
firm hand in response to the conflict. At the same time, the government hasn’t been able to
handle it via peaceful means, precisely because it’s weak and because of such pressure.
Police fighting with local inhabitants in Cocachacra, southern Peru, protesting Tia Maria
DH: Another response has been to call some of the people opposed to the mine “terrorists.” The
Minister of Justice has referred to “terrorist violence.” One Southern spokesperson has used similar
language.
JDE: Several years ago the sectors who questioned or opposed a mining project were called
“anti-mining.” Now the term “anti-mining terrorist” has began to be used. The sensation
created by Tia Maria is that, as a country, we continue failing to learn, not only from the hard
years of violence [during the civil war in the 1980s and 1990s] but after a long list of similar
conflicts over the last two decades. The aim is to caricature the conflict and delegitimise it.
DH: But why are people called “terrorists”? Is it a PR strategy or, more concretely, in order to
criminalise protest?
JDE: It’s part of a strategy to delegitimise anyone who thinks differently. And, of course, it’s
about repression and exercising a firm hand. Accusing someone of being a terrorist is no
small thing - especially in a country that has lived through terrorism [in the 1980s and 1990s].
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DH: Have you, or one of your colleagues at CooperAccion, been called a “terrorist”?
JDE: I don’t know if they have called us that specifically, but, yes, we see an intent to present
all this as a kind of plot against investment, against development, against the country.
Police fighting local inhabitants in Cocachacra, Southern Peru,
Protesting the proposed Tia Maria mine
Photograph: Miguel Mejía Castro/La República
DH: As you know, Peruvian law permits companies to sign contracts with the police and
army to protect their operations, and some companies have done that. According to NGO
Grufides, a company in which Southern was the major stakeholder, Coimolache, signed one
such contract in 2010, although Southern has just told me, regarding Tia Maria specifically,
“we have no type of agreement with the police or army.” I’m also thinking about how armed
police appear at the meetings that companies - oil and gas firms, as well as miners - and
subcontractors hold while writing their Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs). Do you
see an increase in the militarisation of the extractive industries sector in Peru in general?
JDE: The majority of the big mining companies in Peru, like Yanacocha, Xstrata and
Antamina, have an agreement with the police. These type of agreements pervert its role as a
state entity protecting citizens, and make it appear more like private police at the service of
big companies. More than 2,000 police were at the public meeting for the EIA for Tia Maria.
There were more police than participants, and they impeded leaders opposed to the mine from
freely entering.
DH: What’s the most concerning thing about the government’s response?
JDE: It has been lamentable. Tia Maria has been one of the most foreseeable conflicts on a
long list of mining conflicts in Peru in recent years. The government has attempted to
establish roundtables for dialogue, but one of the main problems is that such attempts have
been made on the basis of fait accomplis. The fact that the EIA has already been approved
[2014] and almost all the permits obtained is a clear message that, for the government, the
project will go ahead and there’s no turning back. Under these conditions it will be difficult
66
for any attempts at dialogue to prosper. Leaders and local authorities have also adopted an
implacable position: the project won’t go ahead and they want the government to reverse.
DH: How would you describe local people’s feelings towards the mine?
JDE: The [Tambo] valley is fertile and productive and the local population work in
agriculture. They see that the arrival of a mining firm threatens their valley and the main
economic activity, and that it could set in motion a process converting what is an agricultural
region into a mining region. It’s clear the majority of the population is against it. Some years
ago there was a public consultation, and in October last year mayors opposed to the project
were elected in the province [Islay] and three districts [Cocachacra, Dean Valdivia and Punta
de Bombon].
Peru’s government has responded to the Tia Maria protests by sending in the army.
Photograph: Miguel Mejía Castro/La República
DH: Can you be a bit more specific about local people’s concerns? In what way is the mine a
threat?
JDE: Like all the valleys along Peru’s coast, water is not abundant. People fear the mine will
impact the amount of available water. While the new EIA states desalinised sea-water will be
used, the concern is the impact on underground water reserves, which constitute 50% of the
flow of the main river in the region.
DH: What does the government now need to do to resolve the issue?
JDE: It must put the project on ice indefinitely. There’s no other alternative. That is,
lamentably, a decision that it must take together with the company in order not to expose itself
to an international lawsuit. What’s undeniable is the company as well as the government
know perfectly well the project is not socially viable.
DH: And to avoid something similar in the future?
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JDE: It should evaluate more closely the level of acceptance or opposition to a project, and it
shouldn’t be rushed or think that the logic of fait accompli should prevail. Tia Maria was
rushed through. They approved the studies and issued the permits, and social factors were
neglected. In addition, mining policies must change, but I don’t think this government - which
is now on its way out - will do anything about it.
DH: Many people reading this will be from other countries. Is there something specific you
think readers should know about Tia Maria or other mining conflicts in Peru? How are we all
involved? What can we do?
JDE: According to the United Nations, 40% of countries’ internal conflicts are related to
natural resource exploitation. This is a global problem we’re facing. We’re all involved: some
countries provide the companies and investments, others receive the investments. The United
Kingdom and companies registered there are one of the biggest investors in Peruvian mining,
and European countries are one of the main destinations for our minerals. We must
understand that the exploitation of minerals in countries like Peru has serious human rights
impacts, mainly among rural populations, campesinos and indigenous peoples. That’s why
there are these conflicts. Although investors’ rights are protected via various legally-binding
or mandatory mechanisms - e.g. free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties human rights are overlooked or supposedly “protected” by voluntary commitments. The
asymmetry is clear.
●●●●●
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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/jun/04/newresearch-suggests-global-warming-is-accelerating
The Guardian
Thursday 4 June 2015 19:10 BST
John Abraham
New research suggests global warming is accelerating
Karl et al. (2015) finds no ‘hiatus’ in global surface warming despite natural cooling effects
The sun rises in Pleasant Plains, Illinois on July 4, 3012 during a record breaking heat wave.
Photograph: Seth Perlman/AP
As humans emit more greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the Earth
continues to warm. When I use the term “warm”, I mean there is an increase in thermal
energy (heat) contained in the oceans and atmosphere of this planet.
We can measure warming by measuring temperatures; however, obtaining an accurate
reading of the Earth’s temperature is complicated. Temperatures change with seasons, with
locations, and there are natural long term variations that move heat around. So, we don’t
expect temperatures just to continue increasing at all locations and at all times. We do expect
the long term trend to be upwards, however, and that is what we’ve observed.
But if you follow the conversation about global warming, and particularly if you listen
to cable news or online bloggers, you might have heard that there has been a hiatus or a halt to
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global warming. I’ve written before on this site that there is no halt, there never has been one.
However there has been a vigorous debate about whether the increase in lower atmosphere
temperatures has slowed down.
A new paper, “Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface
warming hiatus” just published today in Science deals with this issue. In particular, the lead
researcher Dr. Thomas Karl and his colleagues investigate the quality of the near-surface
temperature records and ask whether they really show a slowdown.
The scientists make a number of improvements upon existing information. First, they
focus on ocean surface temperature measurements from floating buoys and from ship-board
sensors. We know that temperatures measured by ship sensors are often warmer than
temperatures measured by buoys, in part because of the heat generated by the ship engine. A
more thorough accounting of this effect has been implemented in the Extended Reconstructed
Sea Surface Temperature data set version 4. This accounting is utilized in the paper.
Second, there has been a historical change in how ships measure surface temperatures.
Decades ago, temperatures were mainly measured by insulated buckets. Around the time of
World War 2, there was a change from insulated buckets to temperature sensors contained
within ship hulls. The ship hull sensors recorded warmer water temperatures compared to the
bucket method. A more thorough handling of the changes from buckets to ship hull sensors
was also included in the new paper.
Finally, the new study used more recent estimates of the land temperatures. The new
estimates combine multiple temperature databases into a single integrated whole.
The end result is that the temperature trends over the past 17 or so years has continued
to increase with no halt. In fact, it has increased at approximately the same rate as it had for
the prior five decades. But the authors went further by trying to cherry-pick the start and end
dates. For instance, they stacked the cards against themselves by purposefully picking a very
hot year to start the analysis and a cool year to terminate the study (1998 and 2012,
respectively). Even this cherry-picked duration showed a warming trend. Furthermore, the
warming trend was significant.
I asked lead author Dr. Karl for his comments on the significance of the paper and he
told me,
Considering all the short-term factors identified by the scientific community that acted
to slow the rate of global warming over the past two decades (volcanoes, ocean heat
uptake, solar decreases, predominance of La Niñas, etc.) it is likely the temperature
increase would have accelerated in comparison to the late 20th Century increases.
Once these factors play out, and they may have already, global temperatures could
rise more rapidly than what we have seen so far.
So what does this all mean? Well we knew the globe was warming. The best evidence
has always been by measuring the enormous amount of heat going into the oceans. But what
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this new paper shows is that the warming in the recent years has not stopped and has not even
slowed down.
With 2015 so far running hotter than any year on record, and with May temperatures
expected to be in the 0.79–0.84 C anomaly range, it becomes increasingly likely that we will
set another all-time record this year. With hope, this will end the discussion of the so-called
“pause” or “hiatus,” which never existed in the first place.
●●●●●
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/may/27/memoto-jeb-bush-denying-human-caused-global-warming-is-ignorant
The Guardian
Wednesday 27 May 2015 14:00 BST
Dana Nuccitelli
Memo to Jeb Bush: denying human-caused global warming is ignorant
The frontrunner for the Republican presidential ticket exhibited Stage 2 climate denial last week
US President George W. Bush (R) reaches out to greet his brother, Governor Jeb Bush, as he
arrives at Miami International Airport 30 July, 2006
Photograph: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images
In a campaign event last week, Republican presidential frontrunner Jeb Bush exhibited Stage
2 climate denial, saying (video available here),
71
1. Look, first of all, the climate is changing. I don’t think the science is clear what
percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. It’s convoluted. And for the
people to say the science is decided on, this is just really arrogant, to be honest with
you. It’s this intellectual arrogance that now you can’t even have a conversation about
it.
The Politics
Unfortunately, denial of human-caused global warming may be a prerequisite for any viable
Republican presidential candidate. Conservative and Tea Party Republicans are the one group
of American voters among whom Stage 2 climate denial is the majority position, but they’re
also the group that most reliably votes in GOP primary elections.
In American politics, a candidate first has to win a primary election before reaching
the national ballot. For Republicans, that means appealing to conservatives. It’s not clear that
a Republican presidential candidate can accept climate science and run a viable primary
campaign.
The Science
Nevertheless, the scientific evidence supporting human-caused global warming is just as
strong as the evidence linking smoking and lung cancer. Last year, the IPCC stated with 95%
confidence that humans are the main cause of the global warming that’s occurred since 1950.
Their best estimate is that we’re responsible for about 100% of the warming during the past
six decades.
Gavin Schmidt, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, put
together this graph showing what’s known as the probability density function of the human
contribution to global warming since 1950, based on the IPCC report.
72
The probability density function for the fraction of warming attributable to human
activity (derived from Fig. 10.5 in IPCC AR5). The bulk of the probability is far to the right
of the “50%” line, and the peak is around 110%. Created by Gavin Schmidt.
As the figure shows, natural factors have most likely caused a slight cooling since
1950, meaning that human factors are most likely responsible for all the warming we’ve seen
and then some (110%). The odds that natural factors are responsible for the majority of global
warming over the past six decades is virtually zero.
This assessment is based on multiple lines of evidence. There are climate model
simulations, which can’t account for the observed warming without a dominant influence
from the increased greenhouse effect. There are “fingerprints” of human-caused global
warming, which are effects we expect to see in the patterns of climate change if those changes
are due to the increased greenhouse effect. I explain some of these in one of my Denial101x
lectures.
Denial101x lecture 3.4.3 by Dana Nuccitelli
Video
Basic physics is perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence behind human-caused
global warming. Long-term global warming and cooling events are caused by changes in the
Earth’s energy balance. If there’s more incoming than outgoing energy, the planet warms, and
vice-versa. Natural variability, like ocean cycles, only causes short-term temperature changes.
Since 1950, the Earth has had a large and growing energy imbalance due almost
entirely to the human-caused increased greenhouse effect. There’s actually been a slight
decrease in incoming energy from the sun during that time, an hence a slight solar cooling
effect.
Overall, the energy imbalance (a.k.a. radiative forcing) from the increased greenhouse
effect has caused more warming than we’ve observed, having been offset by some cooling
from other human pollutants (aerosols) blocking sunlight, as shown in this figure from the
IPCC report.
Assessed likely ranges (whiskers) and their mid-points (bars) for warming trends over the 1951–2010
period from well-mixed greenhouse gases (GHG), other anthropogenic forcings (OA; including the
cooling effect of aerosols and the effect of land use change), combined anthropogenic forcings (ANT),
natural forcings (NAT), and natural internal climate variability. The observed surface temperature
change is shown in black, with the 5 to 95% uncertainty range due to observational uncertainty.
Source: IPCC AR5 Figure 10.5.
73
And of course because of these many lines of overwhelming evidence, there’s a 97%
consensus among climate scientists and in their peer-reviewed climate research on humancaused global warming. There are a few outlier climate scientists who disagree, like Judith
Curry, who incorrectly claimed “Jeb gets it exactly right,” but these contrarians are a slim
minority.
As the evidence clearly shows, Jeb got it exactly wrong. It’s not arrogant to accept the
overwhelming preponderance of scientific evidence, basic physics, or a 97% expert
consensus; rather, it’s ignorant to deny it.
The Policies
At the same campaign event, Bush ironically claimed,
I think, as conservatives, we should embrace innovation, embrace technology,
embrace science; it’s the source of a lot more solutions than any government-imposed
idea.
Yes, the conservative presidential frontrunner suggested that conservatives should
embrace science just a few moments after he rejected the science on global warming.
Nevertheless, a candidate’s favored policies are more important than his acceptance or
rejection of science. Unfortunately, while Bush suggested that conservatives embrace
technology, he only specifically supported natural gas,
We’ve had a decrease [in carbon emissions], a pretty significant decrease and it will
continue on, not because of Barack Obama, but because of the energy revolution,
because of free-enterprise, because of private property rights because of American
innovation has created a combination of two existing technologies: hydraulic fracking
and horizontal drilling has created an explosion of lower carbon energy that is being
used to replace higher carbon energy.
Research has shown that at best, natural gas can only act as a (short) bridge fuel during
the transition to low-carbon energy sources if we want to avoid dangerous global warming,
and in fact it might not even be a suitable bridge. In any case, “we should embrace innovation,
embrace technology” is not a concrete policy platform.
Bush clearly opposes the legally-mandated government regulations of carbon pollution
enacted by the Obama administration. However, it’s the Democratic Party that’s supported
free-market carbon pricing policy alternatives, even offering small-government revenueneutral compromise legislation. While the Republican Party and the fossil fuel industry have
tried to repeal the government regulations, they haven’t accepted that compromise offer or
proposed any alternative policies of their own.
Bush also tried to pass the buck, claiming that other countries are responsible for
solving the problem,
74
we need to encourage the (nations) states that have had an increase in carbon
emissions, We’re not one of them!
It’s true that the USA has seen a modest decline in its carbon pollution in recent years.
However, claiming that other countries are now responsible for solving the problem is like a
400 lb. man who loses 10 lbs. claiming that 250 lb. men are now responsible for solving
America’s epidemic of obesity. It’s especially irresponsible given that Jeb Bush hails from
Florida, which has at least $145 bn in property value lying less than 1 meter above the hightide line, with sea level likely to rise by about 1 meter by the end of the century if we continue
with the status quo.
Although it’s moving in the right direction, thanks in large part to the Obama
Administration’s efforts to tackle the problem, the USA is still one of the world’s largest
carbon polluters in terms of both total and per capita emissions. That won’t change until the
Republican Party stops denying science and starts taking the problem seriously.
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http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/06/18/conservative-media-vs-the-pope-the-worstreacti/204037
DENISE ROBBINS
June 18, 2015 11:39 AM EDT
Conservative Media vs. The Pope: The Worst Reactions
To Pope Francis' Climate Change Encyclical
Pope Francis' encyclical on climate change reveals his belief that there is a moral
obligation to act swiftly on climate change, which disproportionately harms the
world's poor. But conservative media are relentlessly attacking the pope over the
encyclical, calling it "insipid" and "blasphemous," and fearmongering that the
Catholic leader is a "Marxist" pushing for "a new world order," among other
things.
Encyclical Affirms Scientific Consensus And Calls For Action On Climate
Change. Pope Francis has issued an encyclical on climate change that cites the scientific
consensus that human activities are driving global warming and calls for reduced fossil fuel
use in order to help the world's poor. Based on a version of the encyclical that was leaked
earlier in the week and closely matched the final version, Reuters reported that the encyclical
shows that the pope “backs scientists who say global warming is mostly man-made and that
developed countries have a particular responsibility to stem a trend that will hurt the poor the
most”:
The world could see the destruction of entire ecosystems this century without urgent action
on climate change, Pope Francis says in a draft of his keenly awaited encyclical on the
environment.
In the Italian version of the 192-page document, posted on Monday by the weekly magazine
l'Espresso, the pope again backs scientists who say global warming is mostly man-made and that
developed countries have a particular responsibility to stem a trend that will hurt the poor the most.
[...]
By making environmental protection a moral imperative, Francis' intervention could spur the world's
1.2 billion Catholics to lobby policymakers on ecology issues.
[...]
The pope calls for a reduction in carbon emissions, an increase in policies that favor
renewable energy and warns of the long-term effects of continuing to use fossil fuels as the
main source of global energy.
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The New York Times reported on June 18 that the leaked version of the encyclical “almost
exactly matched the final document.” As USA Today has noted, an encyclical, one of the
highest forms of communication by the pope, is a letter to bishops intended to clarify,
amplify, condemn, or promote an aspect of Catholic doctrine. The official document was
released on June 18. [Reuters, 6/16/15; The New York Times, 6/18/15; USA Today, 6/17/15].
Right-Wing Media Relentlessly Attacking The Encyclical And The Pope Himself
Rush Limbaugh: Encyclical “Seems To Confirm” That Pope Francis Is A "Marxist.” On
the June 16 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh said that the encyclical “seems to
confirm” that Pope Francis is a “Marxist,” and suggested that the scientific studies cited in the
encyclical are “bought and paid for.” He also called the encyclical “The Pope’s Leaked
Marxist Climate Rant” on his website. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show,
6/16/15]
Limbaugh: Pope Supports Leaving “Everybody ... Living Equally In Misery.” On his
June 17 show, Limbaugh continued to criticize the pope, claiming that he is aligning himself
with those on the left who want to leave “everybody ... living equally in misery,” and that the
encyclical suggests that rich countries “need to keep giving” money to the poor “until our rich
are no longer rich.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 6/17/15]
Michael Savage: Pope Sounds Like He Is “Directing Mankind To Worship The
Antichrist” And Is A “Danger To The World.” Conservative radio host Michael Savage
declared on the June 16 edition of his show: “The pope is a danger to the world.” He
continued by calling the Pope a “great deceiver,” “stealth Marxist,” and “eco-wolf in pope’s
clothing,” and comparing him to the false prophet in the book of Revelation “directing
mankind to worship the Antichrist.” Savage concluded that “we are living in global tyranny
right now”:
The Pope is a Marxist. I stand by those words. He is a wolf in pope’s clothing, he is an eco-wolf in
pope’s clothing. He is a stealth Marxist in religious garb.
[...]
He sounds like the false prophet in revelation ... directing mankind to worship the Antichrist.
[...]
We are living in global tyranny right now. We are living in global tyranny where the Big Lie is told
over and over again. [The Savage Nation, 6/16/15, via RightWingWatch]
WSJ Columnist Peggy Noonan Warned The Vatican Might Be Making A “Mistake” By
Trying To Prevent Another Galileo Incident. In her column for The Wall Street Journal,
Peggy Noonan posited that the Vatican is acting on climate change because it “fears being
tagged as antiscience and antifact, “but that the church might be making a “mistake” by acting
on unsettled science:
Also the European elite is all in on climate change and the Vatican is in Europe. The Church fears
being tagged as antiscience and antifact.
But is the science of climate change settled? And can a church that made a mistake with Galileo 400
years ago make another mistake by trying desperately not to repeat the earlier one? [The Wall Street
Journal, 6/12/15]
77
Fox News’ Greg Gutfleld Calls Pope “Marxist,” Says He “Could Be On Occupy Wall
Street.” On the June 16 edition of Fox News’ The Five, co-host Greg Gutfeld brought up the
pope’s supposed “Marxist background” and said: “The most dangerous person on the planet is
someone who is seeking strange new respect from their adversaries, and that is what the pope
is doing ... He wants to be a modern pope. All he needs is dreadlocks and a dog with a
bandana and he could be on Occupy Wall Street”:
Video
Fox Business' Lou Dobbs: Pope Is "Talking About A New World Order." On the June 16
edition of Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight, host Lou Dobbs said that the climate change
issue is "ideological," "absolutely political" and "not the stuff of which I would expect the
pope to involved in." Dobbs went on to claim the pope is "talking about a new world order,
he's talking about a new global organization." [Fox Business, Lou Dobbs Tonight, 6/16/15]
Fox Contributor Andrew Napolitano: Pope Wants To "Shame People Into Distributing
Wealth" Based on "Alleged" Global Warming. Judge Andrew Napolitano, a frequent
contributor for Fox News, criticized the pope in a June 16 interview on the St. Louis-based
radio station FM News Talk 97.1. Napolitano claimed that the pope wants to use the "bully
pulpit of the papacy" to "shame people into distributing wealth in such a manner so as to help
the poor, and one of the ways he's trying to do that is by encouraging governments to get
involved in restricting behavior that allegedly causes something allegedly called global
warming." [97.1 FM News Talk, 6/16/15]
Dobbs And Napolitano Speculated That Pope Wants A "Super Government" To Ensure
"His Views Are Institutionalized." On the June 17 edition of his show, Dobbs invited
Napolitano to fearmonger over the pope's encyclical. Dobbs said the "most troubling aspect"
of what the pope is doing is "talk[ing] about a new global authority to assure that his views
are institutionalized." Napolitano agreed, adding his own speculation that Pope Francis could
be "talking about some super government":
DOBBS: [T]o talk about a new global authority to assure that his views are institutionalized, and
those –this is the most troubling aspect of what he's said.
NAPOLITANO: If he means moral authority then he’s entitled to that. But if he means coercive
authority, then I don’t know what he’s talking about. Is he talking about the UN? Is he talking about
some super government? Now he’s really, really off the beaten path. [Fox Business, Lou Dobbs
Tonight, [6/17/15]
Breitbart Editor: Encyclical Includes Language You Would Expect From A “16-YearOld Trotting Out ... Formulaic Bilge And Accepted Faux-Wisdom.” Breitbart editor
James Delingpole criticized the encyclical for including “hackneyed language and extremely
dubious science you might expect from a 16-year-old trotting out the formulaic bilge and
accepted faux-wisdom required these days to pass a fairly typical exam paper in Geography or
Environmental Sciences.” He went on to claim that the encyclical is wrong “scientifically,”
“morally,” “theologically,” and “economically.” [Breitbart, 6/16/15]
Fox Business’ Stuart Varney Warned That Pope Is In “Alliance” With Obama To
“Reshape The World” By “Redistributing The Wealth.” On the June 15 edition of Fox
Business’ Varney & Co., host Stuart Varney warned that Pope Francis and President Obama
78
are forming “a policy alliance” and are “a powerful force, a very powerful force, pushing
left.” He then asked: “Will Francis and Barack reshape the world by taxing the rich, taxing
fossil fuels, and redistributing the wealth? That's exactly what they are trying to do.”
Video
Climate Denier And Blogger Steve Milloy: Encyclical Is “Adolescent, Insipid” And Pope
Is A “People-Hater.” Steve Milloy, who is paid by fossil fuel industry interests and runs the
climate science denial blog JunkScience.com, posted a series of tweets attacking the pope’s
climate encyclical. Milloy called it “adolescent” and “insipid,” compared the pope”s actions
to those of the KGB, and called Pope Francis a “people-hater.” [Media Matters, 11/28/12;
Twitter, 6/15/15; 6/15/15; 6/15/15]
Breakthrough Institute President: Encyclical Employs A “Shame-Based Narrative.”
Michael Shellenberger, the president of the Breakthrough Institute and author of multiple New
York Times op-eds, tweeted that the encyclical employs a “shame-based narrative” and
declared, “It is blasphemous to call our ancestors, who were trying to improve lives for their
children & themselves greedy thieves.”
Powerline: “The Pope Has No Idea What He’s Talking About.” John Hinderaker wrote in
the conservative blog Powerline that “the Pope has no idea what he's talking about,” and
declared that the pope’s “motive is, apparently, hostility toward free enterprise and the
prosperity that it creates.” [Powerline, 6/16/15]
Breitbart Promoted Climate Denier’s Claim That “Marxists, Global Warming
Extremists Control Vatican.” Breitbart promoted the claims of Christopher Monckton, a
supposed “expert” for the industry-funded Heartland Institute, in an article headlined,
“Climate Expert: Marxists, Global Warming Extremists Control Vatican.” In it, Monckton
claimed the pontifical academies of sciences and social sciences are under the “control” of
Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, an “out and out marxist who decided that climate change
was useful to marxism.” [Breitbart, 6/13/15]
Patriot Post: Pope Francis Acting As “Water Boy For The UN” To Craft A “Global
Economic Control” Treaty. A column for the conservative news site Patriot Post said:
“Many Catholics in the U.S. take strong exception to the pope acting as a water boy for the
UN.” It further claimed the pope’s encyclical “may assist with the UN’s global climate treaty
negotiations at the upcoming Paris summit – a treaty which would be more accurately called a
‘global economic control’ treaty.” [Patriot Post, 6/16/15]
Previously:
Oil Industry Allies Paint Pope As Bad Catholic For Acting On Climate Change
How Fox News Covered Pope Francis' Action On Climate Change
Posted in
Climate Change, Energy, Environment & Science, Religion
Network/Outlet
Breitbart.com, Fox Business, Fox News Channel, JunkScience, Powerline
79
Person
Andrew Napolitano, Greg Gutfeld, Lou Dobbs, Peggy Noonan, Rush Limbaugh, Steve Milloy,
Stuart Varney
Show/Publication
Lou Dobbs Tonight, The Five, The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Wall Street Journal, Varney &
Co.
80
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/why-jeb-bush-and-other-republicans-are-wrongto-chide-pope-francis-for-taking-a-climate-stand/?ref=liveblog&_r=0
The New York Times
By Andrew C. Revkin
June 17, 2015 2:36 pm
Why Jeb Bush and Other Republicans Are Wrong
to Chide Pope Francis for Taking a Climate Stand
Jeb Bush declared his presidential candidacy before a cheering crowd at Miami Dade College’s
Kendall Campus on Monday.
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
It’s been remarkable to see the lengthening line of Republican politicians, particularly
presidential hopefuls, chiding Pope Francis for pressing the case for action to stem global
warming given how much conservatives have stressed values-based arguments on important
issues in the past.
As the papal encyclical on the environment, equity and climate is released on
Thursday, this debate will only intensify.
They’re implying that settling on a global warming policy (or the lack of it) is
somehow special, somehow a matter of science and economics and politics that stands apart
from one’s world view or ethics or religious beliefs. Read on to learn why they’re wrong. And
it’s not because Francis, in his secular life, had training (if not a degree) in chemistry.
The latest Republican to weigh in was former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who said this at
a campaign event earlier this week (as quoted in The Times):
I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home,
but I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope….
And I’d like to see what he says as it relates to climate change and how that
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connects to these broader, deeper issues before I pass judgment. But I think
religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things
that end up getting in the political realm.
You already doubtless know about Senator James M. Inhofe’s stick to religion
comment and Rick Santorum’s “leaving science to the scientists” remark.
Here’s why they’re wrong.
The science pointing to a rising human influence on the climate system is simply
delineating the boundaries of the problem – and they are still very fuzzy boundaries on many
important points (the extent of warming and pace of sea level rise, just for starters).
The choices individuals or communities or governments make in response are
implicitly shaped by values, and — in democracies, at least — through discourse. It won’t
always be pretty. Feelings and values will inevitably distort perceptions of science, as Dan
Kahan at Yale has convincingly shown. But we just have to work with that reality on this and
a host of other science-based issues, from genetics in farming to vaccines.
The value of a diverse discussion was never clearer than at the special Vatican meeting
just over a year ago at which scientists, church figures, economists, a labor-rights campaigner
and others (including me) gathered to ponder this theme: “Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable
Nature, Our Responsibility.”
There in my capacity as a Pace University senior fellow, I was invited to giving a
closing reflection, in which I described where science contributes, and where science ends, in
the process of setting personal and societal goals on such issues:
The physical and biological sciences, along with revolutionary advances in
technology — from satellites to supercomputers — have provided a clarifying
picture of human-driven environmental changes.
Psychological and sociological studies have revealed deeply ingrained human
traits, many shaped by our evolutionary history as a “here and now” species,
that prevent us from acting rationally in the face of threats with long time
scales, dispersed impacts and inherent complexity.
Possible paths have been delineated in recent decades using ever more
sophisticated models. But that is where science’s task ends. It is up to
individuals and societies to choose which paths to pursue.
Scientific knowledge reveals options. Values determine choices.
That is why the Roman Catholic Church — with its global reach, the ethical
framework in its social justice teachings and, as with all great religions, the
ability to reach hearts as well as minds — can play a valuable role in this
consequential century.
This is particularly true for planet-scale problems like human-driven climate
change, in which national governments tend to put national interests ahead of
planet-scale interests.
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Decisions at the scale of cities, towns, school boards, corporate boards — even
households — will, in a cumulative way, be enormously influential and are
more apt to be directly shaped by the world views and priorities of individuals.
I also noted how one of the most lauded scientists at the meeting, Walter Munk of the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said a shift in values was critical to human success:
It says much that even some of the most accomplished scientists at this meeting
articulated that progress on climate, energy, equity, education and conservation
of living resources will be driven by values and faith more than data and
predictive models.
In a discussion over dinner, Walter Munk, at 96 one of great oceanographers of
modern times, spoke not of gigatons of carbon or megawatts of electricity:
“This requires a miracle of love and unselfishness,” he said.
Just to hammer home the point a bit more — and there is some repetition here – this is
how I explained in 2007 why even a folk singer had a place at the table in considering choices
on climate change:
I went to talk to a folk singer about global warming over the weekend. There
are some who would say that that’s silly, even irresponsible, given the weighty
scientific and economic issues that lie at the interface between energy policy
and the atmosphere.
But actually, a folk singer — in this case Pete Seeger — has just as legitimate a
place at the table as a first grader, a retiree, a coal-industry lobbyist, a climate
scientist or one of the diplomats negotiating in Bali over how to revive an
ailing climate treaty.
That’s because the debate over next steps is as much about values as data. The
consequences of various decisions over greenhouse gases are framed by
science. But choices made by countries, communities and individuals are being
shaped by a mix of history, geographic circumstance, money and – especially –
values.
There’s one other way to make this point, from the perspective of scientists who, while
focused professionally on data, can also sometimes be passionate advocates for particular
policies related to their findings.
In talks on science communication in a polarized climate, I’ve often suggested that the
best way for scientists to be fully human and intellectually honest is to speak in two
sentences:
I study sea ice and find X. I am a parent and feel Y.
As regular readers will recall, Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, gave a great American Geophysical Union talk digging in on this
challenge. Schmidt listed the attributes and practices of a responsible advocate:
♦
What are your values? Represent them fairly.
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♦
Make connections between your policy choices and your values
explicit. Then people can see what that chain of logic is and they can
decide to go along with you or decide this is the point at which we part.
That makes for a much better conversation.
♦
[Acknowledge] differences between one’s personal conclusions [and
the scientific consensus].
♦
Acknowledge that people with different values would have different
policy choices even if the science was exactly the same and everybody
accepted the science basis.
♦
Be aware of how our values might affect our priors.
I’ll close by circling back to Pope Francis. When the encyclical officially emerges
Thursday morning, it will be an invaluable addition to global discourse on climate change,
energy access, poverty, inequity and various models of development.
There’ll be plenty I’ll disagree with — including his criticism of contraception (access
matters enormously in vulnerable poor places) and his rejection of advanced technologies as a
path to a softer environmental footprint. (It’s behind a paywall, but try to read Martin
Sandbu’s Financial Times column in which he explains why “Pope Francis is right on climate
and wrong on technology.”)
But there’ll be plenty to embrace. And the best part is that, while he’ll express a very
strong point of view, he’ll also evidently accept the rich range of views on good paths in
Earth’s turbulent age of humans. This passage, as translated from the leaked Italian version
for Dot Earth a couple of days ago, says much:
[L]et us admit that different visions and ways of thinking about this situation
and about its possible solutions have developed. From one extreme, some
maintain at all costs the myth of progress and say that the ecological problems
will be solved simply by new technical applications, not by ethical
considerations or fundamental changes. From the other extreme, others believe
that the human species, no matter what it does, can only be a threat and
compromise the global ecosystem, so that humanity should reduce its presence
on the planet and prevent any kind of interaction with it. Between these
extremes, reflection should identify possible future scenarios, because there is
not only one possible solution. This would leave room for a variety of
contributions, which could enter into a dialogue aimed at a full answer.
I’m sorry, Jeb Bush et al., but that dialogue definitely has to include this pope.
Related coverage | Read “There was a time when Jeb Bush was far more willing to involve
the pope in politics,” by Philip Bump.
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About By Andrew C. Revkin
By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be
seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate
and the web of life. In Dot Earth, which moved from the news side of The Times to the
Opinion section in 2010, Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with
the planet’s limits. A Times reporter for 14 years, Revkin is the Senior Fellow for
Environmental Understanding at Pace University’s Pace Academy for Applied Environmental
Studies.
Conceived in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Dot Earth
tracks relevant developments from suburbia to Siberia. Click for a narrated slide show on the
roots of Revkin’s journalistic journey.
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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/18/3671118/pope-climate-encyclical-scientists-react/
by Emily Atkin
Posted on June 18, 2015 at 2:11 pm
UPDATE JUN 18, 2015 3:09 PM
This post has been updated to include a mention of Pope Francis' science background.
Climate
What Did Actual Scientists Think Of The Pope’s Climate Encyclical?
The Vatican’s new encyclical is being hailed as one of the most important statements on
climate change ever produced by the Catholic Church. But it’s also being decried as
misplaced, by some who say Pope Francis — a man of faith — has no business discussing
matters of science.
“The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science,” said Catholic GOP
presidential candidate Rick Santorum earlier this month. “We probably are better off leaving
science to the scientists, and focusing on what we’re really good at, which is theology and
morality.”
Pope Francis’ encyclical – titled “Laudato Si,” or “Praised Be” – does primarily focus
on the moral reasons for acting on human-caused climate change. Those reasons, however,
are based on the science of climate change, which the document discusses in surprising detail.
So, the obvious question is: has the church “gotten it wrong” on science again?
ThinkProgress asked three climate scientists to weigh in on three specific passages in
the encyclical that get wonky about the science of climate change, and got varied answers.
However, all three said Francis (who himself has a technician’s degree in chemistry) was
correct that humans are causing potentially catastrophic climate change via greenhouse gas
emissions.
“Based on what I have seen of the science in the encyclical, most climate experts
would find little to disagree with,” said Anthony Broccoli, a professor of environmental
sciences at Rutgers University.
In passages 23, 24, and 25 of the encyclical, Francis discusses the science of climate
change at length. “A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing
a disturbing warming of the climatic system,” it reads. “[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. Concentrated in the atmosphere, these gases do not allow the warmth
of the sun’s rays reflected by the earth to be dispersed in space.”
Those statements were accurate, except for one small thing, according to Deborah
Huntzinger, an assistant professor of climate sciences at Northern Arizona University.
Huntzinger said the only technical “error” she noticed in the passages was the pope’s
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explanation that greenhouse gases cause global warming by “prevent[ing] the heat of the solar
rays reflected from the Earth to be dispersed in space.”
Technically, Huntzinger said, the way greenhouse gases warm the planet is a bit more
complicated. Yes, she said, incoming solar radiation is reflected by the atmosphere, but the
rest is absorbed by Earth’s surface. And as the Earth absorbs that solar radiation, it also
warms. That warmed surface then emits and radiates more thermal energy, and the
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere absorb it.
“So technically, greenhouse gases are not preventing solar rays reflected from the
Earth to be dispersed in space, they are absorbing and re-emitting longwave radiation emitted
from Earth’s surface,” she said. “The result is that the surface of the Earth and lower
atmosphere are warmer than they would be if no GHGs were present.”
CREDIT: Oxford University
So it may be safe to say the pope’s explanation of the greenhouse effect was not as
robust as some scientists may have liked. In all though, Huntzinger said, “the pope captures
the science quite well.”
Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State
University, agreed that the encyclical had strong scientific language. A portion of passage 24
reads as follows:
Warming has effects on the carbon cycle. It creates a vicious circle which
aggravates the situation even more, affecting the availability of essential
resources like drinking water, energy and agricultural production in warmer
regions, and leading to the extinction of part of the planet’s biodiversity. The
melting in the polar ice caps and in high altitude plains can lead to the
dangerous release of methane gas, while the decomposition of frozen organic
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material can further increase the emission of carbon dioxide. Things are made
worse by the loss of tropical forests which would otherwise help to mitigate
climate change. Carbon dioxide pollution increases the acidification of the
oceans and compromises the marine food chain.
“Everything he’s stated [above] accurately reflects what the science has to say,” Mann
said in an email.
However, Mann noted his own problem with the scientific language. “If anything,
Pope Francis is overly conservative [with respect to] the science in the encyclical,” he said.
“All of the increase in the carbon dioxide is due to fossil fuel burning and other human
activities,” he said.
In all, though, all the climate scientists ThinkProgress consulted with said Pope
Francis had done well at evaluating the state of climate science today, even though he’s not a
scientist. However, according to Rutgers’ Anthony Broccoli, that shouldn’t be a surprise.
“Pope Francis doesn’t have to be a scientist to arrive at these conclusions,” he said.
“All he would have to do is consult the extensive reports on climate change that have been
written by the world’s climate scientists in a process organized by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. These reports have been written to inform policymakers and
stakeholders about the state of the science and they are a reliable source of information.”
●●●●●
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/19/3671144/the-pope-freaks-out-climate-deniers/
by Samantha Page
Posted on June 19, 2015 at 8:00 am
Climate
The Most Outrageous Responses To The Pope’s Encyclical On Climate Change
The papal encyclical on climate change – highly anticipated and applauded by people who
accept and care about the fact that human-caused climate change is threatening our existence
– came out Thursday morning. Not everyone was pleased.
In the lead-up to the release of the document (which was leaked earlier this week),
climate deniers and conspiracy theorists have railed against Pope Francis, theologian and
former chemist, for wading into the “political” issue of taking care of the environment.
The Usual Suspects
The Heartland Institute got out ahead of the curve, publishing a piece titled Is The Global Left
Counting on Pope to Split the Catholic Church Over Global Warming? back in May. Take a
moment to ponder this:
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Has the Left finally come out with a method that will destroy the power of the
Church to cause further damage to an already weakened Church, having been
busy for years preparing for this moment? Not to be forgotten is the unholy
alliance of international communism with the jihadi Islamists.
According to the article, the Pope’s stance on global warming is part of a left-wing
communist conspiracy to… do something. You can read the whole thing here.
Steve Milloy, co-founder of the conservative Free Enterprise Action Fund, offered up
a plethora of shocked tweets, calling the pope a communist and saying climate change is not
real.
In another tweet, Milloy asked, “Dear Red Pope: Which plants and animals have not
adapted to whatever climate change may have occurred? Example?”
Let us take this one for you, Pope Francis. How about the koala and lemur? Or the
wolverine? Or falcons and butterflies? Or maybe this list of 1,400 other animals threatened by
climate change?
The Politicians
Most climate-denying politicians — even Catholics like GOP presidential candidate Marco
Rubio — are treading lightly around the encyclical, but are mostly saying that climate change
is a political, not moral, issue. Catholic presidential candidate Jeb Bush, though, waded right
in, telling reporters earlier this week that the pope should butt out of policy conversations.
“I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home,” Bush
said, “but I don’t get my economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope.”
Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources
concurred. “No, I’m sorry, it’s a political issue,” he told the AP. “Most people have their
minds made up on this issue, so any more rhetoric about the issue doesn’t really add a heck of
a lot more to it.”
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), chairman of the Senate Environment Committee,
maintained the perspective that climate change is a belief, not a scientific fact, and said he
disagreed with “the pope’s philosophy on global warming.”
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), side-stepped the content of the pope’s
position, saying, “I respect his right to speak out on these important issues.”
Candidate Rick Santorum stepped into the fray last week, saying he was more
qualified to talk about climate change than the pope — despite the pope’s background in
science.
“The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science,” Santorum told radio host
Dom Giordano. “We probably are better off leaving science to the scientists, and focusing on
what we’re really good at, which is theology and morality.”
The International Coal Contingent
The long arm of the coal industry shaped reactions across the world. In Poland, a largely
Catholic nation that is also dependent on the coal industry for jobs and power, one newspaper
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called the encyclical anti-Polish. “The new encyclical is already being interpreted as an ‘anticoal’ document,” conservative newspaper Rzeczpospolita wrote “In the Vatican one can also
hear voices that this encyclical is ‘anti-Polish’.”
Polish Parliamentarian Andrzej Jaworski told Yahoo! News that “the Polish energy
sector not only should, but must be based on coal. We can’t turn our backs on coal
production, building coal mines, or building coal power plants.”
Gerard Henderson, an Australian climate denier, told the Australian Broadcast
Company that the encyclical was written because the pope has writers. “There’s a kind of
encyclical writing group, they gotta write something, so this is what they’re writing,”
Henderson said.
Coming from another coal-dependent nation, Henderson took issue with the
encyclical’s content as well. “If you’re an Australian, it’s not good news,” he said. “I mean,
the Pope seems to think we should get rid of coal, we should downplay gas… he thinks that
our standard of living should decline.”
The Far Out
“If he really cares about the poor, the last thing he should be doing is endorsing this
nonsense,” Breitbart’s James Delingpole told British news show Daily Politics. As
ThinkProgress has previously reported, the world’s poorest people are disproportionately at
risk to the effects of climate change.
During a Fox News discussion of the encyclical, talking head Greg Gutfield pointed
out that the pope “came out against the Charlie Hebdo attacks! He criticized the cartoonists!”
It was unclear how that was related to the encyclical, but the whole rant is worth watching.
Video
Over at the Daily Caller, the encyclical was framed as a rejection of abortion. The
outlet interviewed anti-abortion advocate John-Henry Weston, who pointed out that the pope
said that environmentalism did not justify abortion. Weston also focused on two of the pope’s
environmental advisers.
“Jeffrey Sachs is an explicitly abortion-promoting population control fanatic. And how
can the Vatican work with this man when they believe abortion to be murder?” Westen said.
“But Schellnhuber, the German is even worse. He’s on record as suggesting the earth has a
carrying capacity of under 1 billion people. What he proposes to do with the other six billion
is anyone’s guess.”
Indeed.
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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/19/3671146/pope-francis-encyclicalpresidential-responses/
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Climate
by Katie Valentine
Posted on June 19, 2015 at 9:18 am
Here’s How All The Catholic Presidential Candidates Are Reacting
To The Pope’s Climate Encyclical
Pope Francis released his official encyclical on the environment Thursday, a document that
comprehensively spells out the Church’s stances on climate change, the treatment of the natural
world and its creatures, and other environmental issues.
The encyclical puts Republicans in an awkward position. Candidates who might agree with the
pope on social issues like abortion are now being forced to reckon with a Church that
advocates tackling climate change. Though as ThinkProgress has noted, liberals may also
experience a similar conundrum — both those running for office and in the public arena. Since
being Catholic doesn’t require one to agree with everything the pope says, many might agree
with some things and not with others: liberals may support his messages on climate change, for
instance, but reject the Church’s historic treatment of gay marriage and contraception.
Among Catholic presidential candidates, few have come out explicitly in support of the pope’s
move. Similar to how Catholic members of Congress reacted when Pope Francis said climate
change can be attributed mostly to humans, several have either remained silent on the
encyclical or criticized the idea that Pope Francis, as a religious leader, should be addressing
climate change.
Here’s what all the Catholic candidates for president in 2016 have said so far about the pope’s
big statement on climate change.
Martin O’Malley
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/CHERYL SENTER
O’Malley was the only Catholic candidate contacted by ThinkProgress to explicitly support
the tenets put forward in the pope’s encyclical.
“Governor O’Malley believes addressing climate change is a moral obligation and he
has a track record in Maryland of finding solutions,” Haley Morris, a spokesperson for the
campaign, said in an email.
The former governor of Maryland also rolled out a major environmental push on
Thursday, coinciding with the pope’s announcement. In a USA Today op-ed announcing the
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plan, O’Malley said that if elected president, he would make “the transition to a clean energy
future” his number one priority. For O’Malley, that priority would include creating a Clean
Energy Jobs Corps that would retrofit buildings, create more green spaces, and replant and
restore forests. He also said he’d reject the Keystone XL pipeline and projects like it, and
would prohibit drilling in Antarctica, Alaska, and the U.S. coast.
“I believe, within 35 years, our country can, and should, be 100% powered by clean
energy, supported by millions of new jobs. To reach this goal we must accelerate that
transition starting now,” O’Malley wrote.
To get to 100 percent clean energy by 2050, O’Malley plans to set a national
Renewable Electricity Standard, a country-wide version of regulation that’s been enacted in
28 states so far and that requires utilities to increase the amount of renewable energy in their
power supplies.
“The fact is, there is no either/or choice between our prosperity and protecting our
planet — we can create a future where there are more jobs, and a future with a livable
climate,” O’Malley wrote. “And there is no future for humankind without a livable climate.”
Like the pope, O’Malley has talked about the moral obligations of tackling climate
change before. In 2013, during an address to the Maryland Climate Change Summit,
O’Malley referred to the “fierce urgency” of dealing with climate change.
“We are here today because we understand deep in our hearts that we do have a moral
obligation to our children and to our grandchildren to give to them a planet that is not on the
trajectory that we currently find ourselves in,” he said. “A planet that is becoming
increasingly more damaged, more polluted, more unhealthy.”
Jeb Bush
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/CHARLIE NEIBERGALL
Bush’s campaign didn’t respond to ThinkProgress’ requests for comment, but Bush already
hinted at his feelings on the encyclical earlier this week. At a town hall event in New
Hampshire Tuesday, Bush said that religion “ought to be about making us better as people
and less about things that end up getting into the political realm.”
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“I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home,” Bush said,
“but I don’t get my economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope.”
Bush added that he’d “like to see what [the pope] says as it relates to climate change and how
that connects to these broader, deeper issues before I pass judgment.”
Bush’s views on climate change and religion have, at times, been contradictory. In May, the
presidential candidate and brother of George W. Bush said that the science surrounding
climate change was “convoluted.”
“For the people to say the science is decided on this is really arrogant, to be honest with you,”
he said. “It’s this intellectual arrogance that now you can’t have a conversation about it,
even.”
Pope Francis’ top adviser responded to Bush’s comments Thursday, saying that the idea that
the pope shouldn’t talk about science “sounds a little bit strange.”
“The Pope is not a scientist,” Cardinal Peter Turkson said. “That does not mean he cannot
consult scientists.”
Bush’s comments came a little over a week after Bush hinted in a commencement speech at
Liberty University that his faith and environmental views were intertwined, marking a sharp
change in the candidate’s rhetoric on the issue.
“America’s environmental debates, likewise, can be too coldly economical, too sterile of life,”
Bush said. “Christians see in nature and all God’s creatures designs grander than any of man’s
own devising, the endless glorious work of the Lord of Life. Men and women of your
generation are striving to be protectors of Creation, instead of just users. Good shepherds,
instead of just hirelings. And that moral vision can make all the difference.”
That sounds a little similar to Pope Francis’ words in the encyclical: “The entire material
universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains:
everything is, as it were, a caress of God.”
Rick Santorum
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/KEITH SRAKOCIC
Earlier this month, devout Catholic Rick Santorum told a radio show host that Pope Francis
should leave matters of science to scientists.
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“The Church has gotten it wrong a few times on science,” Santorum told radio host
Dom Giordano. “We probably are better off leaving science to the scientists, and focusing on
what we’re really good at, which is theology and morality.”
“When we get involved with controversial and scientific theories, I think the Church is
not as forceful and not as credible,” Santorum continued. “I’ve said this to the Catholic
bishops many times — when they get involved in agriculture policy, or things like that, that
are really outside of the scope of what the Church’s main message is, that we’re better off
sticking to the things that are really the core teachings of the Church as opposed to getting
involved in every other kind of issue that happens to be popular at the time.”
Santorum’s argument is shaky, because before joining the seminary, Pope Francis
studied chemistry and worked as a chemist. What’s more, the scientific passages in the
encyclical are based on peer-reviewed work, and multiple scientists have confirmed its
accuracy.
But Santorum didn’t stop at those comments: a few days later, he told Fox News
Sunday that while “the pope can talk about whatever he wants to talk about,” he’s skeptical of
the idea that the pope should use his moral authority to talk about climate change.
“I’m saying, what should the pope use his moral authority for?” Santorum asked. “I
think there are more pressing problems confronting the earth than climate change.”
Marco Rubio
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/ANDREW HARNIK
Rubio, so far, has been silent on the pope’s encyclical, and his office didn’t respond to
requests for comment. But he’s made his feelings about climate change known in the past: he
said last year that he doesn’t “believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to
our climate the way these scientists are portraying. And I do not believe that the laws that they
propose we pass will do anything about it. Except it will destroy our economy.”
Rubio’s also made comments on the pope before, noting that he was “not a political
figure.”
“Well, look, the pope is a — the pope is a shepherd of a faith. And his desire is peace
and prosperity. He wants everyone to be better off,” Rubio said in May.
Rubio is, a spokesperson said in 2010, a “practicing and devout Roman Catholic” who
“regularly attends Catholic Mass” and “was baptized, confirmed and married in the Roman
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Catholic Church.” He’s disagreed with the pope before, specifically on the pope’s role in
normalizing U.S. relations with Cuba.
George Pataki
CREDIT: AP
Republican candidate George Pataki, a Catholic who, as Religion News Service has pointed
out, has clashed with the Church on certain issues before, called out his fellow Republican
challengers for their responses to the encyclical in a tweet Thursday.
Pataki, former governor of New York, has one of the strongest records on climate
change of all the GOP contenders. He’s been a supporter of clean technology in the past and
in 2007 became co-chair of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Independent Task Force on
Climate Change.
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http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jun/18/pope-francis-encyclical-cry-ofearth/
The New York Review of Books
Bill McKibben
The New York Review of Books
June 18, 2015, 7:19 p.m.
Pope Francis: The Cry of the Earth
The old conceit that the president has a “bully pulpit” needs updating; it’s clear that the pulpit
at St. Peter’s Basilica is now the bulliest of all. Pope Francis may lack legions, but he has 6.3
million followers on Twitter, and for a week now the world has been following leaks of his
new encyclical on climate change and the environment.
Laudato Si’, finally released Thursday morning in Rome, is a remarkable 183-page
document, incredibly rich—it’s not dense, but it is studded with aphorisms and insights. It
will take time to fully digest it, but a few things are immediately evident.
First, simply by writing it, the pope—the single most prominent person on the planet,
and of all celebrities and leaders the most skilled at using gesture to communicate—has
managed to get across the crucial point: our environmental peril, and in particular, climate
change, is the most pressing issue of our time. We face, he says, “desolation,” and we must
turn as fast as we can away from coal, oil, and gas. Most thinking people knew this already,
but since dealing with global warming would mean standing up to the most powerful forces in
the status quo, most world leaders have never fully engaged the question. (President Obama,
for instance, the earth’s most powerful politician, made it to the closing days of his 2012
reelection campaign without mentioning climate change—until Hurricane Sandy finally made
it impossible not to.) It’s been a side issue, but no more: Francis has made it clear that nothing
can be more important.
More, he’s brought the full weight of the spiritual order to bear on the global threat
posed by climate change, and in so doing joined its power with the scientific order. Stephen
Jay Gould had the idea that these two spheres were “non-overlapping magisteria,” but in this
case he appears to have been wrong. Pope Francis draws heavily on science—sections of the
encyclical are very nearly wonky, with accurate and sensible discussions of everything from
genetic modification to aquifer depletion—but he goes beyond science as well. Science by
itself has proven empirically impotent to force action on this greatest of crises; now, at last,
someone with authority is explaining precisely why it matters that we’re overheating the
planet.
It matters in the first place, says Francis, because of its effect on the poorest among us,
which is to say on most of the population of the earth. The encyclical is saturated with
concern for the most vulnerable—those who, often in underdeveloped countries, are breathing
carcinogenic air, or are being forced from their land by spreading deserts and rampant
agribusiness. This comes as no surprise, for concern—rhetorical and practical—for those at
the bottom of the heap has been the hallmark of his papacy from the start. “A true ecological
approach,” he writes, “always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of
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justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the
poor.”
Less expected, perhaps—at least for those who haven’t understood why Francis chose
his papal name—is how seriously he takes that cry of the earth. Though he’s no treeworshipping pagan (it’s clear throughout the encyclical that the world belongs to God),
there’s a celebration of nature and the natural world that undergirds the document. He rails at
the destruction of the Amazon and the Congo, of aquifers and glaciers. Speaking of coral
reefs, he writes: “who turned the wonderworld of the seas into underwater cemeteries bereft
of color and life?”
But the heart of the encyclical is less an account of environmental or social destruction
than a remarkable attack on the way our world runs: on the “rapidification” of modern life, on
the way that economic growth and technology trump all other concerns, on a culture that can
waste billions of people. These are neither liberal nor conservative themes, and they are not
new for popes: what is new is that the ecological crisis makes them inescapable. Continual
economic and technological development may have long been isolating, deadening, spiritually
unfulfilling—but it has swept all before it anyway, despite theological protest, because it has
delivered the goods. But now, the rapidly rising temperature (and new data also released
Thursday showed we’ve just lived through the hottest May since record-keeping began) gives
the criticism bite. Our way of life literally doesn’t work. It’s breaking the planet. Given the
severity of the situation, Francis writes, “we can finally leave behind the modern myth of
unlimited material progress. A fragile world, entrusted by God to human care, challenges us
to devise intelligent ways of directing, developing, and limiting our power.”
Neither liberal nor conservative—but definitely radical. Francis calls for nothing less
than the demotion of individualism and a renewed concern for what we hold in common as
humans (the encyclical is explicitly directed to all of us, Catholic or not, since the
environmental crisis is more universal than any challenge before it). “The rejection of every
form of self-centeredness and self-absorption [is] essential if we truly wish to care for our
brothers and sisters and for the natural environment,” he writes. Get your nose out of your
iPhone (“When media and the digital world become omnipresent, their influence can stop
people from learning how to live wisely, to think deeply and to love generously”) and join in
the fight for a livable world.
Because a fight it is. The pope may have combined the orders of science and
spirituality, but he knows they must battle a third magisteria: money, which so far has usually
won. He’s caustic about the failures of international conclaves and national politicians, rightly
isolating the cause as the ongoing triumph of those for whom accumulation is the only god.
“Whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified
market,” he has written, adding knowingly today that, “consequently the most one can expect
[from our leaders] is superficial rhetoric, sporadic acts of philanthropy, and perfunctory
expressions of concern.” Indeed, an hour or two after the release of his encyclical, the House
voted to give the president “fast-track” authority to negotiate a free trade agreement with
Pacific Rim nations, over the protests of advocates for both environmentalists and workers
that it would only worsen the problems the encyclical describes.
It will take a while to see what power the pope’s letter ultimately possesses. Usually,
as Francis writes, “any genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is
viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions or an obstacle to be circumvented,” which
certainly describes how many American politicians reacted to the encyclical. But one would
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perhaps be unwise to bet against Pope Francis, who has a wily sense of how to pressure,
expose, and prod. At any rate, the battle is joined, more fully than ever before.
My own sense, after spending the day reading this remarkable document, was of great
relief. I’ve been working on climate change for a quarter century, and for much of that time it
felt like enduring one of those nightmarish dreams where no one can hear your warnings. In
recent years a broad-based movement has arisen to take up the challenge, but this marks the
first time that a person of great authority in our global culture has fully recognized the scale
and depth of our crisis, and the consequent necessary rethinking of what it means to be
human.
●●●●●
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jun/18/pope-climate-critics-holy-ignorance/
The New York Review of Books
Garry Wills
June 18, 2015, 9:29 a.m.
Holy Ignorance
Jim Young/Reuters/Corbis
Republican candidate Rick Santorum, a critic of Pope Francis’s climate encyclical,
in Marshalltown, Iowa, May 17, 2015
When a Republican politician, asked about climate change, says, “I’m not a scientist,” most of
us hear just a cowardly way of dodging the question; but the politician’s supporters hear a
brave defiance of an alien force. When we hear only “science,” they hear “godless science,”
the kind that wants to rob them of their belief in creation and force evolution into their minds.
That science is marching in a battalion of forces—the media, the academy, the government—
that has them besieged. “I’m not a scientist” does not mean, “I have not heard enough about
the science, and need to hear more,” but “I know the evil intent or effect of science, and I will
not let it affect me.” They summon a courage not to know.
Now Pope Francis, with his encyclical on climate change, has introduced a concern for
the poor into the environmental discussion. But conservative Catholics (including five actual
or potential candidates for president) forgive him, since he knows nothing about science—if
he did, he would realize its anti-biblical animus. He does not know, as the conservatives do,
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that the masked godless thing must be met by a holy resistance. This is what the French
anthropologist Olivier Roy calls “holy ignorance.” It is not a failure of intelligence, but a
proud refusal to know things tainted by the arrogance of inevitability. He writes: “There is a
close link between secularization and religious revivalism, which is not a reaction against
secularization, but the product of it. Secularism engenders religion.” The defenders of the lost
cause feel persecuted, and the more support there is for their opponents, the grander they are
in their lonely war.
Roy’s apparent paradox is supported by the Fundamentalism Project, a six-year study
completed in the 1990s by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, with ample funding
from the MacArthur Foundation. That report also concluded that fundamentalism is the
unwanted child of secularism: “The defining and distinctive structural cause of fundamentalist
movements is secularization.” This kind of principled ignorance will not be lessened, but
exacerbated, by calling into court more and more scientists to refute it, since the witnesses
enter the court already labeled as “godless,” to be resisted as belonging to the forces trying to
destroy the real America. The court itself is not valid. On the contrary, the few scientists who
deny man-made climate change are on the side of holiness, so one of them can outweigh
hundreds of the godless.
Roy notes how the holy float free even from what seems to be their own base. About
the Bible, he writes: “Evangelical Protestants follow it ‘to the letter,’ but a letter freed not
only from the original language, but from language itself, in order to see no more than a
simple message… It does not question the veracity of the letter of the scriptures, but nor is it
interested in the actual language of the text, nor, incidentally, in any specific language.” An
earlier dismantling of the Bible was called the Higher Criticism. This new approach might be
called the Higher Holiness, claiming that the Bible is right, no matter what it actually says.
This resembles the way American fundamentalists wave the Constitution as a talisman
without reading it deeply or at all. They condemn in the same talismanic way the sharia law
they have not read. Roy also says that some fundamentalists have detached themselves from
the actual culture they are in, appealing to some fictional state they are trying to bring back—
they want to “take the country back.”
So, if Catholic conservatives like Rick Santorum deny climate change in the name of
holiness, can Pope Francis persuade them with his own appeal to holy values in creation? I
doubt it. People who float above the Bible with their own message will find it easy to resist an
encyclical. Other popes have denounced war, nuclear weapons, and the death penalty without
budging the stony Catholic Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Catholics like Michael
Novak have taught Catholic businessmen that the free market is holy, and criticizing it is
blasphemy. Besides, fundamentalists are quick to sniff out incipient godlessness even in their
own ranks. They will think Pope Francis nice but naive, and suspect the Devil fooled him.
●●●●●
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/apr/30/whos-afraid-pope-francis/
The New York Review of Books
Garry Wills
April 30, 2015, 6:11 p.m.
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Who’s Afraid of Pope Francis?
An authentic pope should be a scary one. Jesus scared the dickens out of people (it cost him
his life). Is Pope Francis truly scary? One might think so from the reaction of some guardians
of orthodoxy, men like New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, who thinks he must threaten
the pope with schism to protect the sanctity of marriage, since “this pope may be preserved
from error only if the church itself resists him.” But ecclesiastical nitpickers have no armies of
similar thinkers to summon. This is not even medium scary.
Now, however, something is looming that has billionaires shaking in their boots, and
when Catholic billionaires shake, Catholic bishops get sympathetic shudders. These are the
men who build their churches, hospitals, schools, and libraries. Catholic lore has made
winning over such Money Men the mark of the true church leader—the Bing Crosby priest
crooning dollars out of a cranky donor in Going My Way, or the J. F. Powers priest putting up
with a wealthy boor to get a golf course for his retreat house.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan was recently reminded of these facts of churchly life by
Kenneth Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot. The cardinal is working to restore St.
Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, at a cost of $175 million. Langone asked why he and his
fellow benefactors should raise such money when the pope is denouncing “the idolatry of
money.” He said the pope’s criticism will make his fellow donors “incapable of feeling
compassion for the poor.”
But this, too, was a minor threat. Langone was simply threatening to withhold money.
Now, as the pope prepares a major encyclical on climate change, to be released this summer,
the billionaires are spending a great deal of their money in a direct assault on him. They are
calling in their chits, their kept scientists, their rigged conferences, their sycophantic
beneficiaries, their bought publicists to discredit words of the pope that have not even been
issued: “He would do his flock and the world a disservice by putting his moral authority
behind the United Nations’ unscientific agenda on the climate,” they say. They do not know
exactly what the pope is going to say in his forthcoming encyclical on preserving God’s
creation, but they know what he will not say. He will not deny that the poor suffer from
actions that despoil the earth. Everything he has said and done so far shows that Francis
always stands for the poor.
Those who profit from what harms the earth have to keep the poor out of sight. They
have trouble enough fighting off the scientific, economic, and political arguments against
bastioned privilege. Bringing basic morality to the fore could be fatal to them. That is why
they are mounting such a public pre-emptive strike against the encyclical before it even
appears. They must not only discredit the pope’s words (whatever they turn out to be), they
must block them, ridicule them, destroy them. The measure of their fear is demonstrated by an
article in First Things, the Catholic journal that defended the donations to bishops of the
pederast religious founder Marcial Maciel. The First Things writer Maureen Mullarkey calls
the pope “an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist,” and continues: “Francis sullies his office
by using demagogic formulations to bully the populace into reflexive climate action with no
more substantive guide than theologized propaganda.”
The editor of First Things later apologized for the uncivil tone of this piece—but he
ran the piece, which is the real act of incivility. These people are really, really scared. When
they calm down enough to make some kind of argument, they fall back on their mantra of
recent years, claiming nobody really knows anything for sure about the state of the earth. “I’m
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not a scientist,” they say. Such professed ignorance would make honest people try to learn
from the scientists what they do not know. Instead, the implication is that “If I don’t know,
nobody can know; it is arrogant to pretend anyone else can know what I don’t know.”
They are now adapting this argument to fit the pope. He is not a scientist, we are
assured, so he cannot say anything on scientific matters. Actually, this pope knows more
about scientific method than people realize. He spent three years as a young man doing
experiments in a chemistry laboratory under a very strict supervisor, Esther Balestrino de
Careaga.
But this is beside the point. The real issue here is not science vs. ignorance, or the UN
vs. xenophobia, or my 97 percent of experts against your 3 percent. It is a case of the
immensely rich few against the many deprived poor. The few are getting much of their wealth
from interlocking interests that despoil the earth. The fact that the poor get poorer in this
process is easily dismissed, denied, or derided. The poor have no voice. Till now. If the pope
were not a plausible voice for the poor, his opponents would not be running so scared. Their
fear is a testimony to him.
●●●●●
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/mar/29/pope-francis-against-rome/
The New York Review of Books
Garry Wills
March 29, 2015, 11:30 a.m.
The Pope Is a Christian!
Claudio Peri/ANSA/Corbis
A homeless man after a haircut provided by the Vatican, Vatican City, February 16, 2015
At a recent I talk I gave about Pope Francis, a man asked me, “Why do more nonCatholics like the pope than Catholics do?” He was wrong, of course. A Pew poll two months
ago found that 90 percent of Catholics like what the pope is doing—and the number is even
higher (95 percent) among the most observant, Mass attending Catholics. The percentage of
non-Catholics who view the pope favorably does not get above the 70s.
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Yet the question was understandable. There is a perception of great resistance to the
pope in his own church. This is largely the product of noise. Extremists get more press
coverage than blander types, and some Catholic bloggers have suggested that the pope is not
truly Catholic. They are right to be in a panic. They are not used to having a pope who is a
Christian. They call Francis a radical because he deplores the sequestration of great wealth for
a rich few and deprivation of the many poor. But Francis is a moderate. Jesus was the radical:
“How hard it will be for the wealthy man to enter the kingdom of God…. It is easier for a
camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
(Mark 10:23, 26). In the Gospel of Luke (16:19-31), when the rich man (Dives) calls for
succor from hell, Abraham, holding the poor man (Lazarus) in his bosom, answers: “All the
good things fell to you while you were alive, and all the bad to Lazarus; now he has his
consolation here, and it is you who are in agony.”
Some right-wing Catholics would haul Dives up and enshrine him in the 1 percent of
rich men who trickle wealth down on the rest of us. They are also descendants of those
Pharisees who tried to keep people away from Jesus because “This fellow welcomes sinners
and eats with them” (Luke 15:1-2). The modern Pharisees try to refuse the Eucharist to
politicians who do not meet their doctrinal tests. Pope Francis’s response to this patrolling of
the communion line is in his major statement so far, The Joy of the Gospel (No. 47):
The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the
perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.
Which position would Jesus agree with? We find the answer in the Gospel of Mark
(1:17), where Jesus says:
It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick; I did not come to invite virtuous
people, but sinners.
Pope Francis describes the church as a ministry to wounded people:
I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured
person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars. You have to
heal the wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds.
Some “traditional” Catholics also see the church as a battlefield; but they go out after
battle to shoot the wounded. They are typified by hierarchs like Cardinal Raymond Burke,
who says Catholics who remarry outside the church are like murderers, living defiantly in
public sin. Or like Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who issued a guide for teachers in the
Catholic schools of San Francisco, requiring them to oppose—in the classroom and in their
private lives—abortion, contraception, artificial insemination, same sex marriage, adultery,
fornication, masturbation, and pornography. He also installed a water system in the overhang
at Saint Mary’s Cathedral to soak homeless people who were trying to sleep there. Every hour
or half hour, for 75 seconds, the pipes would gush down on those below and flush them away
like human refuse.
Contrast that with the reaction of Pope Francis when he found that homeless people
were sleeping at the entrance to the Vatican piazza. He sent bedrolls out to them, set up
showers for them to use in the morning, and sent four hundred more bed rolls to be distributed
to the homeless around Rome. The difference between flushing people away and comforting
them recalls one of the pope’s favorite parables, that of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).
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A man wounded almost to death lies by the road. A Temple priest and a member of the
priestly (Levite) tribe pass him by so as not to be polluted by a corpse. But a Samaritan
(whom Jews thought of as an outcast) rescued the man and paid for his healing. The pope also
loves the story of the prodigal son, who wastes his patrimony but is welcomed back by his
father, though the prodigal’s elder brother resents this treatment of a sinner.
Perhaps it is wrong to think of a “Catholic right” and a “Catholic left.” It may be more
fitting to think of the former as the defenders of Dives, or the Pharisees who do not want
people to eat with Jesus, or the flushers of the homeless, or the priestly Levites, or the
prodigal’s elder brother—while their opposites are the lovers of Lazarus, or the sinners who
eat with Jesus, or the bedroll people, or the “outcast” Samaritan, or the prodigal’s father.
These are the two forms of Christianity now on offer. Let Catholics make their choice.
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http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/apr/02/war-poverty-was-it-lost/
The New York Review of Books
Christopher Jencks
April 2, 2015 issue
Legacies of the War on Poverty
edited by Martha J. Bailey and Sheldon Danziger
Russell Sage, 309 pp., $39.95 (paper)
The War on Poverty: Was It Lost?
Cecil Stoughton/LBJ Presidential Library
Lyndon Johnson campaigning in Illinois in 1964, the year he declared ‘war on poverty’
This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on
poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in
that effort. It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy
will suffice, but we shall not rest until that war is won.
– Lyndon Johnson, State of the Union Address, January 8, 1964
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Some years ago, the federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty
won.
– Ronald Reagan, State of the Union Address, January 25, 1988
Lyndon Johnson became president in November 1963. In January 1964 he committed
the United States to a war on poverty. In August he sought and gained authority to expand the
war in Vietnam. Of course, the War on Poverty was only a figure of speech—a political and
economic promise, not a war from which young men would return in body bags. Nonetheless,
most Americans look back on the two wars as kindred failures. Both have had an exemplary
part in the disillusionment with government that has been reshaping American politics since
the 1970s. Asked about their impression of the War on Poverty, Americans are now twice as
likely to say “unfavorable” as “favorable.” In one poll, given four alternative ways of
describing how much the War on Poverty reduced poverty, 20 percent chose “a major
difference,” 41 percent chose “a minor difference,” 13 percent chose “no difference,” and 23
percent chose “made things worse.”1
Legacies of the War on Poverty is a set of nine studies, edited by Martha Bailey and
Sheldon Danziger, that assess the successes and failures of the diverse strategies that Johnson
and his successors adopted to reduce poverty. The chapters are packed with evidence, make
judicious judgments, and suggest a higher ratio of success to failure than opinion polls do.
Before discussing specific anti- poverty strategies, however, I must note one major gap
in Legacies. The War on Poverty was more than just a bundle of programs; it was Johnson’s
bid for a place in history. He announced an “unconditional” commitment to do whatever was
necessary to raise the incomes of the poor. He also realized that no one really knew how to
eliminate poverty without resorting to politically unacceptable methods, like just sending
checks to everyone who was poor. When he said that “no single weapon or strategy will
suffice,” he was warning Congress and the country that success would require trial and error.
When he added that “we shall not rest until that war is won,” he was promising that even if
some of his early initiatives failed he would not cut and run but would instead try something
new.
Johnson also knew that he would have to leave the White House before success was
achieved, although he did not know that he would be gone in only five years. In addition, he
knew that a State of the Union Address could not bind his successors to continuing his efforts.
Winning a war on poverty therefore depended on his ability to persuade Congress and his
fellow citizens that eliminating poverty was a moral imperative. If he could do that, future
presidents and legislators would pursue the War on Poverty as a matter of political selfinterest. Otherwise, poverty would persist.
Johnson was driven from office in 1968, not by the failure of his War on Poverty but
by the failure of his war in Vietnam. The next two presidents, Richard Nixon and Gerald
Ford, were Republicans who had never worried much about the poor. Yet despite that fact, the
War on Poverty continued after Johnson went back to his ranch. Democrats retained control
of Congress for another twelve years, and many of them remained committed to reducing
poverty.
As a result, some of today’s most important antipoverty programs, such as food
stamps, Supplemental Security Income (a guaranteed minimum income for the elderly and
disabled), and Section 8 rent subsidies for poor tenants in private housing, were either
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launched or dramatically expanded between 1969 and 1980. Had Johnson not put poverty
reduction at the heart of the Democrats’ political agenda in 1964, it is hard to imagine that
congressional Democrats would have made antipoverty programs a political priority even
after Republicans regained control of the White House. This is the big story about the War on
Poverty, which provides the setting within which the war’s specific programs need to be
assessed.
Given that the War on Poverty was a commitment to eliminating it, the most obvious
measure of the war’s success or failure is how the poverty rate has changed since 1964. Bailey
and Danziger argue that just looking at changes in the poverty rate is a “simplistic” approach
to assessing the War on Poverty, and in one sense they are right. If you want to know how
well programs like Head Start or food stamps worked, or how many full-time jobs they
created, the reduction in poverty over the past half-century is not a sensible measure.
But Bailey and Danziger’s argument is more fundamental. They object to using trends
in poverty as a measure of the war’s success because the prevalence of poverty depends not
just on the success or failure of policies aimed at reducing it but also on other independent
economic and demographic forces, like the decline in unskilled men’s real wages and the
rising number of single-parent families. They are right about this. But Johnson’s promise to
eliminate poverty was not contingent on favorable or even neutral economic and demographic
trends. His promise was “unconditional,” because he wanted his country to make a moral
commitment to end the suffering that poverty causes.
Bailey and Danziger also give a second reason for not using the poverty rate to
measure the War on Poverty’s success, which is that the official poverty rate is probably
misleading. That too is true. But any assessment of the war’s political legacy requires a
detailed discussion of just how misleading the official poverty rate really is, why its flaws
have been allowed to persist for decades, and how their persistence undermined political
support for efforts to reduce poverty.
The Census Bureau publishes a table every September showing its estimate of the
“official” poverty rate for the previous calendar year, along with the rate in every prior year
back to 1959. Figure 1 (see below) shows these estimates. They indicate that 19 percent of
Americans were poor in 1964. Five years later, in 1969, the official rate had fallen by roughly
a third, to 12.1 percent. Had the poverty rate continued to fall by a third every five years, it
would have been 5 percent in 1979 and 2 percent in 1989. Had that happened, Johnson’s
claim to a place in history would have gotten a big boost.
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According to Figure 1, however, there was no clear trend in poverty after 1969, either
up or down. The official rate rose in the wake of recessions, reaching 15 percent in 1983,
1993, and 2010–2012, and it fell during recoveries, dropping to 11 or 12 percent in 1973,
1979, 2000, and 2006. If you believe Figure 1, therefore, the War on Poverty got off to a
promising start between 1964 and 1969 but then turned into a stalemate.
Before accepting that conclusion, however, you need to ask where the numbers in
Figure 1 come from and whether you should believe them. The Census Bureau derives the
numbers from a large household survey called the Annual Social and Economic Supplement
(ASEC), which tries to interview the “householder” in a representative sample of residences.
The “householder” must be one of the people who owns or rents the residence. If a married
couple owns or rents the residence, either partner can be the householder. The Census Bureau
also asks who else lives in the household, and whether they are related to the householder by
birth, marriage, or adoption. Everyone related to the householder is considered part of the
same “family.” Those who live alone or with nonrelatives are considered “unrelated
individuals.”
The survey also includes detailed questions about how much money each household
member received during the previous calendar year from different sources, such as selfemployment, wages, or unemployment benefits. “Family income” is the total pre-tax money
income of everyone in the householder’s family. To decide who is poor, the Census Bureau
compares each family’s total income to a poverty threshold that depends on the size of the
family and the ages of its members. If a family’s total income is below its poverty threshold,
the bureau counts all its members as poor. Taken together, these thresholds are known as the
poverty line.
The Census Bureau raises the poverty line every year by the same percentage as the
increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U). The CPI-U does not
try to measure changes in what people need, or why they think they need it. Nor does it
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measure changes in what Americans mean when they talk about poverty. The CPI-U just
measures changes in prices. But if we want to know how close America has come to
eliminating the kind of poverty that existed in 1964, the official measure is supposed to
provide an answer. However, the world has also changed in other ways that the official
poverty count either ignores or mismeasures. As a result, Figure 1 does not actually tell us
much about changes in the kind of poverty that Lyndon Johnson promised to eliminate. Four
changes are especially important when we try to measure changes in the poverty rate since
1964.
Cohabiting couples. Imagine two twenty-five-year-olds who are romantically
involved, live together, and each earned $12,000 in 2013. If they were unmarried, the Census
Bureau would have classified them as unrelated individuals, with poverty thresholds of
$12,119 each. Since their incomes were only $12,000, the bureau would have counted them
both as poor. They would each have needed at least $12,199, bringing their total household
income to at least $24,238, for the bureau to stop counting either of them as poor.
Had they been married, however, the bureau would have taken a more upbeat view of
their economic situation, classifying them as a family of two with a poverty threshold of
$15,600. As a result of this change they would both have been above their poverty threshold
instead of below it. According to the Census Bureau’s most recent data, 11 percent of all
opposite-sex couples who lived together in 2012 were unmarried.2 We don’t have such a
figure for 1964, but it was probably only 1 or 2 percent. The assumption that cohabiting
couples need more income than married couples has therefore raised the official poverty rate.
This increase in the poverty rate would make sense only if the absence of a marriage license
increased a couple’s expenses by 55 percent (from $15,600 to $24,238). The Census Bureau
has never tried to defend that assumption, presumably because it is a byproduct of rules set by
the Office of Management and Budget, which the Census must follow whether it likes them or
not.
Noncash benefits. Noncash benefits now provide many low-income families with
some or all of their food, housing, and medical care. Such programs were either tiny or
nonexistent in 1964, and their growth has significantly reduced low-income families’ need for
cash. However, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) does not allow the Census
Bureau to incorporate the value of these benefits into the recipients’ poverty thresholds. The
President’s Council of Economic Advisers estimates that even if we ignore Medicare and
Medicaid, food and housing benefits lowered the poverty rate by 3.0 percentage points in
2012.3
Medical care is by far the most expensive of today’s noncash benefits, and Medicaid
and veterans’ benefits now pay for most of the big medical bills that poor families incur.
However, incorporating these programs’ value into poverty calculations is more difficult than
incorporating food and housing subsidies. Most of what Medicaid spends on the poor is for
“big ticket” items, like nursing homes, heart surgery, and cancer treatments, that poor families
have never been able to pay for out of their own income.
Before Medicaid was created, the poor sometimes got such care from state and
municipal programs or from doctors and private hospitals that offered “uncompensated” care.
Medicaid coverage has undoubtedly made such care available to many poor families that
previously went without it, saving some lives and improving many others. But it has not had
the same effect as food stamps or rent subsidies on poor families’ nonmedical standard of
living. When a poor family gets food stamps or a rent subsidy, it spends less of its cash on
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food and shelter and has more to spend on the phone bill, fixing the family car, or taking a
child to McDonald’s for her birthday. Medicaid frees up far less money for such uses than
food stamps or a rent subsidy, because poor families without Medicaid cannot afford to set
aside enough money for major medical emergencies. They know that if they need expensive
care they will somehow have to get it free or else do without.
Of course, Medicaid also pays some relatively small medical bills that poor families
without Medicaid pay out of their own pockets. The best estimates I have seen suggest that in
2010 Medicaid reduced the average poor family’s out-of-pocket medical spending by about
$500.4 That does not mean, however, that the introduction of Medicaid in 1965 reduced
recipients’ medical bills by the 1965 equivalent of $500, leaving them with more money for
everything else. The patchwork of subsidies and free care that existed before 1965 meant that
even then poor patients often paid less than the market price for the care they received. I have
not been able to find any evidence on how large those savings were. But if the introduction of
Medicaid improved poor families’ access to health care without reducing their out-of-pocket
medical spending, we should not think of it as having raised their overall standard of living in
the same way that the introduction of food stamps or rent subsidies has.
Refundable tax credits. As part of its effort to reform welfare by “making work pay,”
the Clinton administration persuaded Congress to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit
(EITC) between 1993 and 1996. By 2013 the EITC provided a refundable tax credit of $3,250
a year for workers with two or more children and earnings between $10,000 and $23,000.
Because the official poverty count is based on pre-tax rather than post-tax income, these tax
“refunds” are not counted as income, even though the working poor often view the checks as
the highpoint of their year—the one time when they can afford to live like other Americans.5
According to the Council of Economic Advisers, treating refundable tax credits like other
income would have reduced the poverty rate by another 3.0 percentage points in 2012.6
Price changes. Using the Consumer Price Index to adjust the poverty thresholds for
inflation pushed up the threshold for a married couple with two children from $3,142 to
$23,624 between 1964 and 2013. All the other thresholds rose by the same multiplier (about
7.5). Whether $23,624 bought the same standard of living in 2013 that $3,142 bought in 1964
is an almost unanswerable question. If no new goods or services had been introduced since
1964, if the quality of existing goods and services had not changed, if poor people still wanted
the same mix of goods and services as in 1964, and if the prices of all goods and services had
risen by a factor of 7.5, almost everyone would agree that multiplying the 1964 poverty
thresholds by 7.5 was the right way to correct for inflation. Reality, however, does not meet
any of these requirements. Many things that were for sale in 2013 did not exist in 1964, the
quality of goods and services available in both years changed at different rates, and prices of
identical goods and services also changed at different rates. As a result, even economists
cannot agree on how much the value of a dollar has changed.
That said, there is a fairly broad consensus among economists that the CPI-U has
overstated the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living over the past fifty years,
although they disagree about the size of the bias. The most widely used alternative to the CPIU is the chain-price index for Personal Consumption Expenditure (which I will call the “PCE
index”). The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis constructs this measure
to calculate changes in the total value of all the consumer goods and services produced in the
United States each year. The PCE index is therefore the largest single influence on
government estimates of economic growth. If the poverty thresholds had risen in tandem with
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the PCE index rather than the CPI-U since 1964, the 2013 poverty line would have been 20
percent lower than it was, and the 2013 poverty rate would have been about 3.7 percentage
points lower than it was.7
Figure 2 provides a first approximation of how correcting the 2013 poverty rate for
noncash food and housing benefits, refundable tax credits, and upward bias in the CPI-U
would change the 2013 poverty rate. With these corrections the official poverty rate falls from
14.5 to 4.8 percent, making the 2013 rate roughly a quarter of the 1964 rate (19.0 percent). If
we were to lower the poverty threshold for cohabiting couples to match that for married
couples the 2013 poverty rate would have fallen even more.
The estimates in Figure 2 are not exact. More important, their combined effect may be
smaller than the sum of their separate effects, making the drop in the “true” poverty rate
smaller than Figure 2 suggests. But even if the true poverty rate was 6 or 7 percent in 2013, it
would have fallen by about two thirds since 1964, putting it considerably closer to what
Lyndon Johnson had promised in 1964 than to what Ronald Reagan had claimed in 1988.8
Fixing these flaws in the official poverty rate helps reconcile trends in poverty with
trends in more direct measures of material well-being. Today’s poor live in less crowded
housing, are more likely to have a complete bathroom and air conditioner in their residence,
have bigger TV screens, are more likely to have a telephone, and more likely to have a cell
phone. Nonetheless, most of the poor are still beset by constant financial anxiety. In part, that
is because the poverty line was set so low in 1964. Linking the poverty line to the Consumer
Price Index let it rise a little every year, but not much. Using a more realistic price index
keeps the poverty line closer to its real 1964 level, ensuring that those we count as poor are
more like those we counted as poor fifty years ago, but in both periods those just above the
poverty line have suffered from many of the same problems.
Another reason the poor so often feel beleaguered, anxious, and depressed may be that
what is often called “relative poverty” has not changed. Over time, any society’s definition of
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poverty adjusts up or down depending on how much income those in the middle of the
distribution have. There is quite a bit of evidence that Americans need an income at least half
that of families near the middle of the distribution in order to buy the things they need to hold
up their heads in public. In such a world, the only way to reduce the number of people who
feel and act poor will be to reduce the number with incomes less than half the 50th percentile
(the median). If we adjust for noncash benefits, taxes, and changes in family size, incomes at
the 10th percentile were 39 to 40 percent of incomes at the 50th percentile in both 1967 and
2012.9 It follows that a bit over 10 percent of American families had incomes less than half
the median in both years. Using a relative measure not much had changed, even though the
absolute poverty rate that Lyndon Johnson promised to reduce has fallen dramatically.
Both liberals and conservatives tend to resist the idea that poverty has fallen
dramatically since 1964, although for different reasons. Conservatives’ resistance is easy to
understand. They have argued since the 1960s that the federal government’s antipoverty
programs were ineffective, counterproductive, or both. Since the 1970s they have cited the
stability of the post-1969 poverty rate to support those judgments. To them, the suggestion
that poverty has fallen sounds like a suggestion that the War on Poverty succeeded.
Liberals hear the claim that poverty has fallen quite differently, although they do not
like it any better than conservatives do. Anyone, liberal or conservative, who wants the
government to solve a problem soon discovers that it is easier to rally support for such an
agenda by saying that the problem in question is getting worse than by saying that although
the problem is diminishing, more still needs to be done. The equation of “bad” with “worse”
is so tight in American political discourse that when I tell my friends or my students that
“there is still a lot of poverty, but less than there used to be,” they have trouble remembering
both halves of the sentence. Some remember that there is still a lot of poverty. Others
remember that there is less than there used to be. Few remember both.
Although I have argued that the absolute poverty rate has declined dramatically since
President Johnson launched his War on Poverty in 1964, it does not follow that the programs
he launched between 1964 and 1968 caused the decline. I argued that food stamps, rent
subsidies, and refundable tax credits all had a role in the decline, but food stamps did not
become a national program until the end of the Nixon administration, the fraction of poor
families receiving rent subsidies grew quite slowly, and refundable tax credits remained tiny
until 1993. The growth of these programs was nonetheless inspired partly by Johnson’s earlier
success in convincing much of the Democratic Party that poverty reduction was a political
and moral challenge they could no longer ignore. The successes and failures of specific antipoverty programs will be the subject of a second article, which will appear in the next issue.
Letters
The Poor in College June 4, 2015
PopulationEconomicspercent indebted to Chris Wimer and Anny Fenton for these
calculations. ↩
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http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/feb/19/who-is-pope-francis/
The New York Review of Books
Eamon Duffy
February 19, 2015 Issue
Who is the Pope?
The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope
by Austen Ivereigh
Henry Holt, 445 pp., $30.00
A Big Heart Open to God: A Conversation with Pope Francis
by Antonio Spadaro, SJ
HarperOne, 150 pp., $17.99
Pope Francis: Untying the Knots
by Paul Vallely
Bloomsbury, 227 pp., $20.95 (paper)
Pope Francis; drawing by James Ferguson
On December 22, 2014, Pope Francis delivered the traditional papal Christmas speech to the
assembled ranks of the Roman Curia. This annual meeting with the staff of the church’s
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central administration offers popes the opportunity for a stock-taking “state of the union”
address. In 2005, his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI had used the occasion to deliver a
momentous analysis of the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” that he believed had
distorted understanding of the Second Vatican Council by presenting it as a revolutionary
event, and to which he attributed many of the ills of the modern church. The phrase
“hermeneutic of rupture” was eagerly seized on by those seeking a “reform of the reform,”
and became a weapon in the struggle to roll back some of the most distinctive developments
in the church following the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965, which had been presided
over first by John XXIII and then by Paul VI.
The scope of Pope Francis’s 2014 address, however, was far more local and specific.
Having briefly thanked his hearers for their hard work during the previous year, the pope
launched into an excruciating fifteen-point dissection of the spiritual ailments to which people
in their position might be prone. It was a dismaying catalog of “curial diseases”—the spiritual
“narcissism” that, as part of the “pathology of power,” encouraged some to behave like “lords
and masters” (in Italian, padroni); the “Martha complex” of excessive activity, which
squeezes out human sympathy and renders men incapable of “weeping with those who weep”;
the “spiritual Alzheimer’s” that besets those “who build walls and routines around
themselves” and forget the spirit of the Gospel.
The pope’s tally of curial sins also included cliquishness, acquisitiveness, careerism,
competitiveness, and indifference to others; the “existential schizophrenia” and “progressive
spiritual emptiness” of many who abandon pastoral service and “restrict themselves to
bureaucratic matters”; the “theatrical severity and sterile pessimism,” the “funereal face” that
often attend the exercise of power; and the “terrorism of gossip” by which the cowardly “are
ready to slander, defame and discredit others, even in newspapers and magazines.”
Though presented by Francis as a pastoral aid to a seasonal examination of conscience,
the speech was widely perceived, not least by many in his audience, as a scathing critique of
the current papal administration. Such excoriation of the Curia by a pope is unprecedented in
modern times, yet there was nothing in its substance that need have surprised. The conclave
that elected Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope in March 2013 was beset by a sense of scandal
and dysfunction at the heart of the church. The cardinals met in the wake of the startling
resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and under a rain of revelations about corruption and money
laundering in the Vatican bank, clerical sexual abuse, and the failure of the church authorities
to confront it—all given lurid coloring by the “Vatileaks scandal,” the leaking to the press by
Pope Benedict’s own butler of hundreds of confidential documents revealing corruption,
maladministration, and internecine feuding within the Curia itself.
In the run-up to the conclave, cardinal after cardinal demanded a pope who would
purge the church of these ills, starting with the reform of the Curia. Francis was elected
largely because he was perceived as someone who would deliver this. His pastoral emphasis
on the missionary proclamation of the mercy of God to fallible people in difficult situations
seemed to point away from sterile preoccupation with ritual and doctrinal niceties,
bureaucratic obstructionism, and the ignoble protection of the church’s institutional interests.
One of Francis’s first major acts was the establishment of a commission of eight
(subsequently nine) cardinals charged with the radical overhaul of the church’s central
structures, starting with the Vatican bank. His very choice of name signaled a turn away from
the doctrinal and institutional concerns of his immediate predecessors, and pointed instead to
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his passionate insistence on the church’s loving engagement with the poor who make up most
of the world’s population.
And yet in doctrinal matters Francis is no radical, no reformer. On the central issues
often taken as the litmus test of Catholic orthodoxy his views are entirely conventional. He is
strongly “pro-life” and an ardent supporter of traditional family values. As archbishop of
Buenos Aires he opposed the Argentinian government’s 2010 bill to legalize same-sex
marriages, while supporting civil unions for gay couples, a moderate pragmatism that was
rejected by the rest of the Argentinian bishops, who favored a more confrontational stance. In
his published “conversation” with the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, he has called for a new and
profound theology of women and a greater recognition of their crucial role in the church. But
his own folksy remarks about the place of women and “the feminine genius” in the church
have distressed even the most moderate feminists. He has made clear his belief that Pope John
Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (Priestly Ordination) has settled
“definitively” the question of women’s ordination—“that door is closed.”
This blanket endorsement of Papa Wojtyła’s attempt to close down discussion of the
issue indicates the limits both of Francis’s radicalism and, arguably, of his theological
sophistication. Critics of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis pointed out that popes do not have a hotline
to God. “Definitive” papal utterances are not oracles providing new information, but
adjudications at the end of a wider and longer process of doctrinal reflection, consultation,
and debate, often extending over centuries: there are procedures to be followed if such
adjudications are to command obedience. But the question of female ordination has never
been subjected to this kind of extended theological scrutiny, and a properly theological basis
for the prohibition remains therefore to be tested. So, it was asked, how did Papa Wojtyła
know that the ordination of women was impossible, and what was meant by describing his
preemptive strike on the question as “definitive”?
But these are not matters that greatly interest Francis, and his acceptance of
conventional theological positions has enabled some alarmed traditionalists to downplay any
suggestion that his election represents a significant break with previous papal regimes. George
Weigel, biographer, confidante, and eulogist of John Paul II, for example, insisted that
Bergoglio’s emphasis on evangelization, in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The
Joy of the Gospel), was a continuation of John Paul’s and Benedict’s stress on the need for a
“new evangelization,” and demonstrated “the seamless continuity between John Paul II,
Benedict XVI and Francis and the continuity between the John Paul–Benedict interpretation
of Vatican II and Francis.”
That judgment, however, carefully ignores the significance of Bergoglio’s consistent
adoption of a rhetoric, in word and act, manifestly at odds with the ethos of the previous two
pontificates. For admirers of the “dynamic orthodoxy” (a euphemism for the vigorous
exertion of central authority) that characterized the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict
XVI, Bergoglio’s frank acceptance of clerical fallibility and the perils of authoritarian
leadership are both startling and deeply unappetizing. Outraged conservative opponents like
Cardinal Raymond Burke, in a dramatic departure from the protocol that inhibits cardinals
from public criticism of living popes, have described the church under Francis as “a ship
without a rudder.”
It’s not hard to see why. In a series of interviews and speeches, Francis has deplored
clergy who “play Tarzan”—church leaders too confident of their own importance, moral
strength, or superior insight. The best religious leaders in his view are those who leave “room
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for doubt.” The bad leader is “excessively normative because of his self-assurance.” The
priest who “nullifies the decision-making” of his people is not a good priest, “he is a good
dictator.” Bergoglio has even said that the very fact that someone thinks he has all the answers
“is proof that God is not with him.” Those who look always “for disciplinarian
solutions,…long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a
past that no longer exists” have “a static and inward-directed view of things,” and have turned
faith into ideology. And so the experience of failure, of reaching one’s own limits, is the truest
and best school of leadership. He has declared himself drawn to “the theology of failure” and
a style of authority that has learned through failure to consult others, and to “travel in
patience.”
There is a strong element of autobiography in all this. In 1973, while still in his midthirties, Jorge Bergoglio became provincial superior of the Jesuits of Argentina. The
Argentinian hierarchy was deeply compromised by acquiescence in the savagely repressive
rule of a military junta, but many Jesuits had embraced the political and theological radicalism
of the 1970s. As Jesuit superior, Bergoglio avoided open confrontation with the regime,
struggling to reconcile the demands of justice and compassion for those suffering atrocity
with the need to preserve the order’s institutions and mission and to protect Jesuit lives.
His own deeply traditional piety was in any case unsympathetic to much of the social
and religious experimentalism of the time. Hero-worshiped by many for his personal charisma
and spiritual gifts, he was detested by others who saw him as a repressive influence, inhibiting
the work of the Spirit in a time of crisis, and he was later to be accused of having betrayed
politically radical Jesuits to the junta.
All Francis’s recent biographers agree that the latter accusation was false, but his role
as Jesuit provincial has divided even the best of them. Paul Vallely’s Pope Francis: Untying
the Knots was one of the earliest in the field. Admiring but keenly questioning, its judgments
have worn well. For Vallely, Bergoglio’s failures in wisdom and courage in the 1970s marked
a watershed in his life, in the wake of which he underwent a profound conversion to the
humility and insistence on the primacy of the needs of the poor that characterized his work as
archbishop of Buenos Aires and that now dominate his papacy.
Austen Ivereigh’s The Great Reformer benefits from the privileged insights of some of
those instrumental in securing Bergoglio’s election, and from Ivereigh’s own intimate
knowledge of his Latin American background. He argues, by contrast, that while Bergoglio
did make mistakes as provincial, in essence he ruled wisely and well in a wild time, and that
his spiritual and personal values have remained consistent throughout his life.
However that may be, Bergoglio himself has acknowledged that as provincial, “I had
to learn from my errors along the way, because, to tell you the truth, I made hundreds of
errors. Errors and sins.” Significantly, however, he attributes those sins not to religious or
political reaction, but to inexperience and failure to consult: “I have never been a rightwinger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.”
That perception is bedded deep in Bergoglio’s psyche, and has shaped his actions as
pope. Francis is the first pope to have been ordained after the Second Vatican Council: his
commitment to conciliar values is instinctive, strong, and different in kind from that of either
of his immediate predecessors. In Evangelii Gaudium, his most important papal utterance to
date, he pointedly spoke of the need to “discern the signs of the times,” a crucial phrase from
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the council’s document on the church and the modern world that Pope Benedict especially
disliked and repeatedly criticized.
But above all, Francis is the first pope to embrace wholeheartedly the Second Vatican
Council’s aspiration for a church in which authority is shared among the whole episcopate,
rather than monolithically focused in the papacy. At the end of the council in 1965, Pope Paul
VI had established a permanent Synod of Bishops as a forum for continued collaboration
between pope and bishops. Many saw the synod as the major expression of “collegiality” that
would devolve much of the decision-making of the Roman Curia to the bishops in synod and
through them to the local churches.
Such hopes proved illusory: the Roman authorities saw to it that the synod remained a
powerless talking shop with no independence or initiating power. Bergoglio shared the
general episcopal dissatisfaction with this situation, and as pope, in one of the most striking
passages of Evangelii Gaudium, he has called for “a conversion of the papacy” on such
matters. John Paul II, he reminded his readers, had invited suggestions for a renewal of the
papal office to make it more visibly an office of service, but “we have made little progress in
this regard.” The papacy and the central structures of the Church must heed the call to
“pastoral conversion,” because “excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful,
complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach.” In particular, Francis insisted,
there had been a failure to realize a truly collegial spirit within the church, and episcopal
conferences needed to be given “genuine doctrinal authority.”
He has proved as good as his word. Opening the Synod on the Family in October 2014
that, among much else, dealt with the fraught issues of sexuality, contraception, divorce, and
remarriage, Francis encouraged the bishops to express their views frankly. No one should be
silent or conceal his true opinions, “perhaps believing that the Pope might think something
else.” To do so would be a failure in “synodality, because it is necessary to say all that, in the
Lord, one feels the need to say: without polite deference, without hesitation.” These were not
empty platitudes: under John Paul II and Benedict XVI open questioning of official positions
was routinely branded as “dissent,” and bishops who deviated even mildly from the official
line were subject to reprimand or removal. For a pope to encourage fearless public
outspokenness among the bishops was a startling novelty.
The debates that ensued were the most openly contentious since the closure of the
Second Vatican Council in 1965. Press attention focused on an emergent liberal pastoral
agenda, which favored the admission of divorced and remarried Catholics to communion and
a more welcoming attitude toward people in same-sex relationships. This was fiercely
contested by those who saw such concessions as surrender to a godless culture. Pope Francis,
who had notoriously remarked to journalists that “if a person is gay and seeks God and has
goodwill, who am I to judge him?” and who declared in Evangelii Gaudium that the Eucharist
was not a reward for the perfect but medicine for the weak, was seen as favoring these calls
for liberalization. The failure of the synod to endorse moves in that direction was accordingly
trumpeted as a personal defeat.
But that is not how he sees it. In his closing speech to the synod he reminded the
bishops that discussion had not ended: they were launched on a true experience of synod, “a
journey together” in which even confrontation was a sign of the activity of the spirit. He
insisted that “I would be very worried and saddened…if all were in a state of agreement, or
silent in a false and quietist peace.” And he reminded all the parties in the debates of the perils
of entrenched positions.
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On the one hand there was the temptation to “hostile inflexibility,” of “wanting to
close oneself,…not allowing oneself to be surprised by God, by the God of surprises,”
clinging to “the certitude of what we know.” This was the special temptation of the zealous,
and the so-called “traditionalists.” On the other hand he warned against “a destructive
tendency to do-goodism” (buonismo in Italian) that “in the name of a deceptive mercy binds
the wounds without first curing them and treating them; that treats the symptoms and not the
causes and the roots.” This, he told them, was the special temptation of the “do-gooders,” and
of the so-called “progressives and liberals.” But they should continue to listen to each other
with tranquility, confident that the Spirit would guide what seemed to outside observers a
“disputatious Church” through choppy waters.
Though always meticulously respectful of his immediate predecessors, the differences
between Francis and them are wide, deep, and, as his handling of the synod makes clear,
momentous for the church. His distrust of religious leaders who “play Tarzan,” secure in their
own certitudes, does not sit well with admirers of John Paul II or his style of leadership.
Though he has commended the “prudence” of Benedict XVI’s rehabilitation of the old Latin
liturgy, he is suspicious of the reactionary ideological freight that the Latin liturgy often
carries with it, and he despises ceremonial pomp.
The exalted doctrine of priesthood that has been in favor during the last two
pontificates undoubtedly contributed to a resurgent clericalism (and interest in ecclesiastical
millinery) among many of those trained for the priesthood since the late 1970s. It has been
notably absent from Francis’s utterances: he has abolished honorific titles and dress for the
younger clergy working in the Curia, since for him priesthood is essentially about service to
the poor and vulnerable, rather than a symbolic status or the exercise of sacramental power.
Perhaps most momentously, Francis has pointed the church away from culture wars
with secular society that were such a feature of Benedict’s papacy, toward a less
confrontational approach to the social circumstances in which the faithful have to live, and a
more fruitful reengagement with the church’s mission to the poor and underprivileged, in
whom he sees both the natural and the most receptive hearers of the Gospel. Where Benedict
was inclined to blame the increasing marginalization of Christianity in Western society on a
collective apostasy rooted in the shallow materialism of secular modern society, Francis is
inclined to attribute the corresponding decline in Latin America to the church’s own
shortcomings:
Perhaps the Church appeared too weak, perhaps too distant from their
needs…perhaps too cold, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its
own rigid formulas, perhaps the world seems to have made the Church a relic of the
past, unfit for new questions; perhaps the Church could speak to people in their
infancy but not to those come of age.
There was a sense in Benedict’s pontificate that the best response to the crisis of
secularization might be a strong repudiation of secular culture and consolidation within a
smaller, purer, and more assertive church. By contrast, Francis believes that the church
is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographically,
but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of
ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery.
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The church must be “capable of rediscovering the maternal womb of mercy” in “a
world of ‘wounded’ persons in need of understanding, forgiveness, love.” It must never
retreat into itself, never opt for “rigidity and defensiveness.” It works with people as they are,
not as they ought to be, taking pastoral risks to meet human need, even if in the process “its
shoes get soiled by the mud of the streets.”
That open evangelical and pastoral vision was memorably encapsulated during
Francis’s first Holy Week as pope, in March 2013, when he celebrated the solemn liturgy of
Maundy Thursday not, as was usual, in the Lateran Basilica, but in an institution for young
offenders, where he washed and kissed the feet of twelve prisoners, one of them a Muslim
woman. Predictably, the gesture scandalized the liturgists and canon lawyers, who pointed out
that canon law forbade the ritual washing of any but male feet on Maundy Thursday, since the
ceremony (allegedly) commemorated Christ’s inauguration of an exclusively male priesthood.
Pope Benedict’s penchant for solemn liturgy had been widely pressed as the model of
correct practice. Crestfallen “precisians”—partisans of strict and precise observance of
rules—now insisted that the pope’s liturgical actions were uniquely privileged, above law,
and not a model for imitation. Unmoved, Francis broke the taboo again on Maundy Thursday
2014, when he washed the feet of men and women in a home for the elderly and infirm.
Francis is manifestly, among much else, seeking to place the papacy and the church it
heads on a different course from the one it has followed for the last thirty-five years. By word
and example he is modeling a style of leadership that is personal without being autocratic, that
encourages outspokenness and local responsibility, and that directs the eyes of the church
beyond institutional concerns to the needs of suffering humanity. In establishing his advisory
council of cardinals he has launched a far-reaching scrutiny of the church’s central
governance and of the Vatican’s finances, but he is concerned with far more than a renewal of
the church’s machinery. His passionate concern for the poor, which underlay the denunciation
in Evangelii Gaudium of an “economics of exclusion”—which outraged Catholic
neoconservatives—lies at the heart of what he believes the church is called to be. Beyond
institutional reform, he is calling for a new openness in which the church defines itself not by
what it excludes but by whom it reaches out to.
Whether he will succeed is a moot point. To achieve change a pope needs the loyalty
of those around him. A pope with a long time in office can ensure that those around him share
his vision. Rome appoints all the world’s Catholic bishops; the pope himself decides who will
be a cardinal. The long pontificate of John Paul II and the succession of his right-hand man,
Benedict XVI, have created a hierarchy who share much of their vision for the church.
Gerhard Müller, still head of the Vatican’s most influential department, the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith, is also the general editor of Benedict XVI’s collected writings,
though his admiration of liberation theology no doubt commends him to Pope Francis.
Francis himself is unlikely to have a long pontificate: he is an old man, with only one
functioning lung. Both in Rome and in the dioceses of the world he has been quietly putting in
place men who share his vision. But the announcement in January 2015 of his second
consistory for the creation of new cardinals was anything but quiet, because the pope’s
startling list of the twenty cardinals-designate, fifteen of them under eighty and therefore
eligible to vote in the next papal conclave, represented a positive fanfare for Francis’s
alternative vision of the Catholic Church. Once again, no North American was included.
Flouting convention, major sees in America and Europe whose incumbents would normally
expect to join the Sacred College “ex officio,” such as Chicago, Venice, and Turin, were
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bypassed in favor of bishops from tiny dioceses in Asia, Africa, and Oceania, most of which
had never had a cardinal before, like Myanmar, Tonga, and Cape Verde. It seems clear that
the new appointments are intended to empower the “church at the peripheries,” promoting
pastoral bishops who, in the pope’s own phrase, “smell of the sheep,” while simultaneously
frustrating the clerical careerism he loathes, by refusing the “automatic” promotions
associated with more prestigious sees.
Yet he has been slow to remove critics and opponents. Even the demotion last
November of Cardinal Raymond Burke as head of the Apostolic Signatura, the church’s
supreme court, was notably tardy, considering that Burke’s regular appearances in the capa
magna, the twenty-foot-long train of scarlet watered silk sported by cardinals until the late
1960s, signaled an understanding of the church utterly at odds with that of the pope.
Francis’s humility and spontaneity have won the plaudits of the world’s press, but his
style has not delighted everyone in the organization he heads. Two generations of clergy
conscious of the dignity of their priesthood and formed as culture warriors under Papas
Wojtyła and Ratzinger do not immediately warm to Francis’s loathing of clericalism and
disregard of liturgical convention. However traditional his personal doctrinal views are, some
see his unscripted utterances and spontaneous personal inclusiveness as potentially dangerous
erosions of the deposit of faith. His Christmas address to the Curia reminded some hearers of
the sermons during the annual Te Deum masses at which Bergoglio presided as archbishop of
Buenos Aires, and which he used to berate the policies and shortcomings of President Néstor
Kirchner and the other politicians who customarily attended, until the angry president decided
to absent himself.
As that comparison suggests, Francis’s direct methods are not always calculated to
win friends and influence people. Even the friendliest curial officials in his audience last
December may have felt battered by their boss, whatever the pope’s intentions. No pope,
however charismatic, can change the church alone: they need the help of their civil servants.
For as they say in Rome, popes come and go, but the Curia is immortal.
Letters
A Door For Catholic Women May 7, 2015
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