Posted on 06/26/2015 8:56:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Last week, Pope Francis released his controversial environmental Encyclical, Praised Be, to the public. It is not simply a matter of global warming endangering the planet, he writes. The Pope has a comprehensively dark vision of the world. He writes that
The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth…beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish…. Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years.
In other words, the Industrial Revolution is to blame for covering the planet in rubbish. But if it’s covered in trash, it’s a strange kind of trash that has caused global crop yields to increase by 160 percent since 1961 and deaths from droughts to be reduced by 99.8 percent since the 1920s.
It’s an odd kind of “mistreatment” of the planet over the life of the Industrial Revolution that’s resulted in the global life expectancy rising from 26 years in 1750 to 69 years in 2009. This is in spite of the fact that Earth’s population increased from 760 million to 6.8 billion and incomes (in real dollars) rose from $640 to $7,300 during the same period. The Pope made no mention of the fact that CO2 emissions rose by 2,800 times over this same span.
If the globe were truly turning into a great heap of exploited waste, you would expect natural resources to become more expensive as the cost of extracting rises and scarcity becomes the norm. But natural commodities are cheaper today than ever. The real price of almost all natural resources – from iron to salt to coal – is cheaper today in than 50 or 500 years ago. In Britain, artificial light is 20,000 times cheaper per man hour worked than it was in 1300.
On a global scale, with only a few exceptions like China, air and water is cleaner than ever. Since the late 1970s, pollutants in the air have plunged. In advanced countries, lead pollution declined by almost 100 percent, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide by more than 50 percent; ozone and nitrogen dioxide declined as well. A car today emits less pollution cruising at full speed than a parked car did in 1970. In the America of 1900, about 25% of all deaths were from contaminated drinking water. Today, hardly anyone here dies from this scourge. The Pope seems oblivious to the fact that the richer the nation is, the cleaner its environment.
Despite the masses wading around in the Pope’s seas of “filth,” and despite a world population of 7.3 billion, the poorer countries’ incomes have surged since 1975; since 1981, the number of Earth’s people in extreme poverty fell by an amazing 1 billion, even as the population increased by more than 1.5 billion.
But if there is one environmental issue that most exercises the Supreme Pontiff, it is global warming. “A very solid scientific consensus,” he writes, “indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events.”
Well, the warming over “recent decades” apparently does not include the last two decades, because over the past 18 years no net increase in global temperature has been recorded, despite the atmosphere’s CO2 content rising by 8 percent. Both the Arctic Ocean and Antarctica have this year posted record high ice packs.
The Pope’s letter seems quite concerned about the poor of Africa experiencing crop failures as a result of global CO2 emissions. But the opposite appears to be true: CO2 is plant food, and the rising CO2 levels are helping to water and green the continent.
According to a 2007 study in the science journal Geology, Africa is currently “experiencing an unusually prolonged period of stable, wet conditions in comparison to previous centuries of the past millennium. … The patterns and variability of 20th century rainfall in central Africa have been unusually conducive to human welfare in the context of the past 1400 years.”
If the trends of higher CO2 concentrations continue, and political strife abates, Africa, far from being a ruined land of desiccated drought, could well become the breadbasket of the world. All it needs from the West is fertilizer and genetically hardened crop strains that resist insect damage.
“Praised be” God; praised be also Mankind, which has so rapidly improved his lot and that of his Earthly home.
Morally? I'm not sure.
Spiritually it is one big hunk of sufferin’ succotash.
Physically it is doing fine.
You can say that again.
The planet is okay. The world is in dire need of bowing some heads and talking to the Lord.
The Lord has a way of letting things get worse and worse until finally His absence from people’s hearts is noticed and desire arises to see the situation corrected.
Indeed. Sometimes, people and nations have to “hit bottom” before they make that long climb out of the pit.
True. However, it is to some extent due to the rich nations "exporting" their pollution to poor nations.
All that manufacturing now done in China rather than America pollutes their air rather than ours.
I would like to add to this discussion, the Pope’s foolish criticism of the proliferation of AIR-CONDITIONERS and Air- Conditioning in general.
The FACT is that the availability of air-conditioning is valuable far beyond mere comfort. Hundreds of THOUSANDS of people of all ages are alive today due to the very presence of the ability to control the temperature of one’s immediate environment. Millions, especially the elderly have systems that cannot cope with extremes of temperature.
Whether extreme heat or extreme cold, people are liable to die merely due to the temperature. This includes the countless thousands who flee my cold New England to the safety of Florida each winter. Of course, as the temp rises in Florida the flight reverses.
A few years ago France, during a record heat wave, suffered power outages due to over-demand, at a time when much of the medical world was on vacation. Hundreds of French elderly died in the oven-like apartments of Paris. Worse, most of those people had NO air-conditioning under any circumstances.
For millions, air-conditioning is LIFE ITSELF.
Many show reverence for the”environment” while they should learn of the requirement of STAYING alive.
The pope person is a stupid, scatterbrained Commie.
Worst pope ever.
RE: Worst pope ever.
Have you ever read the history of the Papacy? Compared to the popes they had in the medieval period, this man looks benign.
He's trying to sink to the depths of Algore or Michael Moore (Is he still alive?!).
I didn't know that Catholics were allowed to use taqiyya.
Did Vatican II have a clause in it where they replaced the Bible with the koran?
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To the far left enviros, that is a negative. They believe there are too many people sickening Gaia and the population needs to be drastically reduced. The Pope’s wrong headed attitude toward civilization will sicken and get many killed so he is on their side.
My adopted home of Texas (lived here for 40 years and counting) is HABITABLE because of the miracle of air conditioning.
Keep in mind that Pope Francis is from Argentina, a certified third-world S*#T Hole, so his plane of reference is pretty warped.
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