Pope on the environment: ‘Insatiable consumption’ threatening the Earth
Back in March, the Vatican issued a new set of 7 sins for Catholics to adhere to. Included among them was environmental pollution. Well, the Pope wasn’t blowing smoke:
“Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world’s mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption,”
Source: AP press
2 Responses to “Pope on the environment: ‘Insatiable consumption’ threatening the Earth”
And why is our consumption ‘insatiable’? Could it possibly be because there are today hundreds of times more people living than the ecosystem can sustain?
Civilization and Technology are not much help, because both are helpless when prohibited from consuming the environment.
It is not the actions of any particular human being that is the ‘problem’. Instead, it is the number of human beings that is the ‘problem’.
Life becomes impossible when it consumes its environment more rapidly than the environment is restored by some means.
Human beings, even ‘civilized’ human beings, are not exempt from this oxymoron.
I just got back from Sydney where World Youth Day (aka. Catholic Woodstock) was occurring (though i didn’t go there for it, it was a nice time to go). What struck me when I read this was that every pilgram was given a package filled with a bunch of stuff (like backpacks, rain coats etc). that plus all the stalls that sprouted up selling tshirts and souvenirs made this seem just a bit off.