Environment
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Francis & Climate Change - I
Who Am I to Judge Your Carbon Footprint?
Pope Francis is in the news for speaking out on the alleged dangers of man-made Climate Change.
Unfortunately, Francis is outside his field in making comments on this topic, and seems to have accepted uncritically the unproven pop-science of the moment.
Francis himself is not a climatologist, and no one would expect a Pope to be so. Francis, however, is also not a theologian (no Doctorate, that is), but was a teacher of literature in Argentina, who went on to become Novice Master, Jesuit Provincial and then Rector of the Jesuit Collegio Maximo, prior to his elevation to the episcopacy.
Thoroughly formed according to the new spirit of Vatican II, his work as a Diocesan Bishop centered primarily not on doctrinal issues, but on pastoral activity with special focus on the “preferential option for the poor.” If Benedict XVI was a Lumen gentium Pope, Francis is primarily a Gaudium et spes Pontiff.
Thus, we read with consternation Pope Francis’ somewhat off-the-cuff remarks at his press conference in-flight between Sri Lanka and the Philippines on January 15.
Speaking about alleged Climate Change, Francis said he didn’t know if human activity “is the only cause” of this, but added that it is “man who has slapped nature in the face.” He went on to say that humans have “exploited nature too much,” and mentioned his upcoming encyclical on ecology. (1)
Last month, on December 11, 2014, Francis said in his Message to the UN Convention on Climate Change, “The effective struggle against global warming will only be possible with a responsible collective answer that goes beyond particular interests and is free of political and economic pressures.” (2)
In both of the above statements, Francis appears to accept the prevailing narrative that global warming indeed is taking place, and that man and governments must act to retard or eradicate it.
Such benign – and apparently naïve – statements of Francis make no mention of the neo-pagan agenda of today’s environmentalists, a destructive agenda which calls for even greater alarm bells than any alleged ecological threat.
Granted, no one wants unregulated pollution of the earth, sea or sky, but today’s “Climate-Change - global warming” hysteria has all the appearance of a false crisis with a dark agenda. (3) It is a means of pushing for massive population control and a pretext for more government control into the details of our lives; it is where the “grant money” is for scientific research.
The news media seldom tells us the truth regarding the non-threat of so-called man-made global warming. Much of the science itself is fraudulent or at least questionable. We will look briefly at these points.
Population control
The November 1, 2014, edition of The Atlantic ran the headline, “The Climate-Change Solution No One Will Talk About.”
Here we read, “The equation seems fairly simple: The more the world’s population rises, the greater the strain on dwindling resources and the greater the impact on the environment. The solution? Well, that’s a little trickier to talk about.
Public-health discussions will regularly include mentions of voluntary family planning as a way to reduce unwanted pregnancies and births. But, said Jason Bremner of the Population Reference Bureau, those policies can also pay dividends for the environment.”
The Atlantic is mistaken to suggest “no one will talk about” population control as an alleged solution to Climate Change. Such proposals have been in the public discourse for quite some time.
In fact, modern environmentalists constantly trumpet their goal of drastically reducing the world’s population. This objective has been a constitutive element of environmentalism from the beginning.
In 1997, Michael Gorbachev held what was called the “State of the World Forum” in San Francisco. It was an event billed as a building block to a New World Order, and gathered nearly 500 senior states-people, political leaders, so-called spiritual leaders, scientists, intellectuals, business executives, artists and youth from 50 nations.
At the closing plenary session of the forum, Sam Keen said, “There was very strong agreement that religious institutions have primarily to take responsibility for the population explosion. We must speak far more clearly (about sexuality), about contraception, about abortion, about the values that control our population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90 % and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.” (4)
Environmentalism’s relentless crusade to reduce the population
A 2007 book by Alan Weisman titled A World Without Us calls on Americans to stop having children for the sake of the environment. He proposes a birth rate of one child per couple, at least for a few generations, which would eventually drop the population by five billion over the next century.
His goal is to cut out of existence the billions of people who will allegedly contribute to global warming. Those remaining, he said, will share in “the growing joy of watching the world daily become more beautiful.” Even more disturbing than Weisman’s inhuman scheme is the fact that his book became a mainstream best seller. (5)
The call for a reduction of the world’s population – through sterilization, contraception, abortion, (all of which are mortal sins and contrary to Natural Law) – continues to the present. Here are some recent examples:
• The Lancet, August 14, 2009: “Future population growth in developing nations could accentuate climate change. A reduction in growth would help mitigate climate change while speeding up poverty-reduction and development.” (6)
• London Times, April, 2009: An advisor to ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown professed a belief that the UK’s population must be cut roughly in half because “Humans are carbon-producing machines.” (7)
• Hindustan Times, June 5, 2009: Reporting on World Environmental Day: “Other steps (to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) are population control by one and all irrespective of religious considerations for greater public interests (Governments should make it compulsory).” (8)
• The Pasedena Star News, April 21, 2009: This report noted that Senator Gaylord Nelson, who spearheaded the first Earth Day, set up Earth Day as an “anti-pollution, anti litter, population-control campaign. (9) We see that from the beginning Earth Day was steeped in population control, and places human beings on the same level as pollution and litter.
• Desert News, July 5, 2009: “Not too long ago the British Medical Journal urged Britons that ‘the biggest contribution U.K. couples can make to combating climate change would be to have only two children or at least one less than they first intended’.” (10)
• United News of India, September 5, 2008: “India today stressed the need for intensifying strategies to check population explosion, which is the single biggest factor contributing to global warming …” (11)
• The Australian Professor Barry Walters, writing in the Medical Journal of Australia (Dec. 10, 2007) seriously proposed that parents should pay a $5,000 tax for the birth of each child, and an annual carbon tax of $800 per child.
Walters claims that every couple that has more than two children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child’s lifetime. He also said that Australia’s government should discontinue the $4,200 baby bonus that is given to parents, and should consider population controls like those in India and China. Garry Egger, a high-profile doctor in Australia, endorsed Prof. Walters proposals. (12)
At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2014, Al Gore and Microsoft’s Bill Gates called for contraception and “fertility management” as crucial elements to combat Climate Change. (13)
In the midst of these hysterical predictions, no one seems to mention Al Gore’s 2008 warning to a German conference that “the entire North Pole cap will disappear in five years” (14) - that’s 2013!
Yet in 2013, the Daily Mail published satellite photos showing that ice caps by 2013 had increased, not decreased. (15) This is one of many examples of reckless predictions and questionable science that are rife within today’s Climate Change mania.
Continued
John Vennari is editor of Catholic Family News
where this article was first published on January 16, 2015
Unfortunately, Francis is outside his field in making comments on this topic, and seems to have accepted uncritically the unproven pop-science of the moment.
Francis himself is not a climatologist, and no one would expect a Pope to be so. Francis, however, is also not a theologian (no Doctorate, that is), but was a teacher of literature in Argentina, who went on to become Novice Master, Jesuit Provincial and then Rector of the Jesuit Collegio Maximo, prior to his elevation to the episcopacy.
On the flight from Manila to Rome, Francis said Catholics need not ‘breed like rabbits.’ A sly push for population control
Thus, we read with consternation Pope Francis’ somewhat off-the-cuff remarks at his press conference in-flight between Sri Lanka and the Philippines on January 15.
Speaking about alleged Climate Change, Francis said he didn’t know if human activity “is the only cause” of this, but added that it is “man who has slapped nature in the face.” He went on to say that humans have “exploited nature too much,” and mentioned his upcoming encyclical on ecology. (1)
Last month, on December 11, 2014, Francis said in his Message to the UN Convention on Climate Change, “The effective struggle against global warming will only be possible with a responsible collective answer that goes beyond particular interests and is free of political and economic pressures.” (2)
In both of the above statements, Francis appears to accept the prevailing narrative that global warming indeed is taking place, and that man and governments must act to retard or eradicate it.
Such benign – and apparently naïve – statements of Francis make no mention of the neo-pagan agenda of today’s environmentalists, a destructive agenda which calls for even greater alarm bells than any alleged ecological threat.
Granted, no one wants unregulated pollution of the earth, sea or sky, but today’s “Climate-Change - global warming” hysteria has all the appearance of a false crisis with a dark agenda. (3) It is a means of pushing for massive population control and a pretext for more government control into the details of our lives; it is where the “grant money” is for scientific research.
The news media seldom tells us the truth regarding the non-threat of so-called man-made global warming. Much of the science itself is fraudulent or at least questionable. We will look briefly at these points.
Population control
The November 1, 2014, edition of The Atlantic ran the headline, “The Climate-Change Solution No One Will Talk About.”
The UN pushes women in India to promote population control on World Population Day
Public-health discussions will regularly include mentions of voluntary family planning as a way to reduce unwanted pregnancies and births. But, said Jason Bremner of the Population Reference Bureau, those policies can also pay dividends for the environment.”
The Atlantic is mistaken to suggest “no one will talk about” population control as an alleged solution to Climate Change. Such proposals have been in the public discourse for quite some time.
In fact, modern environmentalists constantly trumpet their goal of drastically reducing the world’s population. This objective has been a constitutive element of environmentalism from the beginning.
In 1997, Michael Gorbachev held what was called the “State of the World Forum” in San Francisco. It was an event billed as a building block to a New World Order, and gathered nearly 500 senior states-people, political leaders, so-called spiritual leaders, scientists, intellectuals, business executives, artists and youth from 50 nations.
At the closing plenary session of the forum, Sam Keen said, “There was very strong agreement that religious institutions have primarily to take responsibility for the population explosion. We must speak far more clearly (about sexuality), about contraception, about abortion, about the values that control our population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90 % and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.” (4)
Environmentalism’s relentless crusade to reduce the population
A 2007 book by Alan Weisman titled A World Without Us calls on Americans to stop having children for the sake of the environment. He proposes a birth rate of one child per couple, at least for a few generations, which would eventually drop the population by five billion over the next century.
Alan Weisman joyfully imagines a New York without man and his bad ‘carbon footprints’
The call for a reduction of the world’s population – through sterilization, contraception, abortion, (all of which are mortal sins and contrary to Natural Law) – continues to the present. Here are some recent examples:
• The Lancet, August 14, 2009: “Future population growth in developing nations could accentuate climate change. A reduction in growth would help mitigate climate change while speeding up poverty-reduction and development.” (6)
• London Times, April, 2009: An advisor to ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown professed a belief that the UK’s population must be cut roughly in half because “Humans are carbon-producing machines.” (7)
• Hindustan Times, June 5, 2009: Reporting on World Environmental Day: “Other steps (to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) are population control by one and all irrespective of religious considerations for greater public interests (Governments should make it compulsory).” (8)
• The Pasedena Star News, April 21, 2009: This report noted that Senator Gaylord Nelson, who spearheaded the first Earth Day, set up Earth Day as an “anti-pollution, anti litter, population-control campaign. (9) We see that from the beginning Earth Day was steeped in population control, and places human beings on the same level as pollution and litter.
A campaign in Singapore promoting the ‘perfect family’
• United News of India, September 5, 2008: “India today stressed the need for intensifying strategies to check population explosion, which is the single biggest factor contributing to global warming …” (11)
• The Australian Professor Barry Walters, writing in the Medical Journal of Australia (Dec. 10, 2007) seriously proposed that parents should pay a $5,000 tax for the birth of each child, and an annual carbon tax of $800 per child.
Walters claims that every couple that has more than two children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child’s lifetime. He also said that Australia’s government should discontinue the $4,200 baby bonus that is given to parents, and should consider population controls like those in India and China. Garry Egger, a high-profile doctor in Australia, endorsed Prof. Walters proposals. (12)
At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2014, Al Gore and Microsoft’s Bill Gates called for contraception and “fertility management” as crucial elements to combat Climate Change. (13)
In the midst of these hysterical predictions, no one seems to mention Al Gore’s 2008 warning to a German conference that “the entire North Pole cap will disappear in five years” (14) - that’s 2013!
Yet in 2013, the Daily Mail published satellite photos showing that ice caps by 2013 had increased, not decreased. (15) This is one of many examples of reckless predictions and questionable science that are rife within today’s Climate Change mania.
Continued
- “Pope Francis Says there are Limits to Freedom of Expression,” Radio Vatican, January 15, 2015. It should be mentioned that Francis does have an MA in Chemistry, but this is a different field from Climatology or Meteorology
- “Pope’s Message to UN Convention on Climate Change,” Zenit, December 11, 2014
- Steve Milloy, author of the eye-opening book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life opens with a brief synopsis of what the “Green Movement” is really all about: “Green ideologues are bursting with an impatient zeal to begin dictating, through force of law, your mobility, diet, home energy use, the size of your house, how far you can travel, and even … how many children you can have … this is how the greens themselves describe their intentions … Living green is really about some else micro-regulating you ¬– downsizing your dreams and plugging each one of us into a brand new social order for which we never bargained. It’s about you living under the green thumb and having the boundaries of your life drawn by others.” Quoted from Steve Milloy, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them, Washington: Regnery, 2009, p. 3.
- “Environmental Genocide,” William F. Jasper, The New American, July 2, 2001.
- “Global Swarming: Is it Time for Americans to Start Cutting Our Baby Emissions?” Daniel Engber, Slate.com, Sept. 10, 2007.
- “Climate Change and Population Growth,” Jose Miguel Guzman, The Lancet, August 14, 2009. [Emphasis added]
- “Climate Change Could be used as a Means to Power”, Opinion, Syracuse Post-Standard, April 19, 2009.
- “Combating Global Warming”, Hindustan Times, June 5, 2009. [Emphasis added]
- “For Earth Day, the Issues Change but the Spirit Remains”, Pasadena Star-News, April 21, 2009
- “Climate change and population control: Be careful what you wish for”, Desert News, Joseph A. Cannon, July 5, 2009
- “Population Control Key Factor in Checking Global Warming: Experts”, United News of India, Sept. 5, 2008
- “Baby Tax Needed to Save Planet, Claims Expert”, Jen Kelly, The Advertiser, December 10, 2007.
- “Contraception Key in Climate Change Fight: Gore and Gates,” CNBC, January 24. 2014.
- See “Al Gore: ‘North Pole Will Disappear in 5 Years’, James Holt, Gateway Pundit, December 13, 2008; and the follow up: “FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY… Al Gore Predicted the North Pole Will Be Ice Free in 5 Years,” James Holt, Gateway Pundit, December 13, 2008
- “And now it’s global COOLING! Return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 29% in a year,” Daily Mail, September 7, 2013 (Updated October 11, 2014). See also “Sorry Irthers: The Arctic Ice Cap Has Returned!,” Gateway Pundit, Sept. 8, 2013.
where this article was first published on January 16, 2015
Posted January 21, 2015
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