Courtney McGrailThe Pope’s thoughts on the environment can build a groundswell of support for a global treaty on climate change, writes Fr Seán McDonagh SSC
Fr Seán McDonagh SSC
At 2 am on Sunday, December 14, 2014, after 36 hours of continuous negotiations, delegates from 191 countries signed off on an agreement committing every country in the world to reducing the fossil fuel emissions that cause global warming.
The headline on the Peruvian daily La República the following morning, Acuerdo ‘tibio’ para salvar el planetá (A lukewarm agreement to save the planet) captured what most people felt about the document which is now called the Lima Call for Climate Action. Manuel Pulgar Vidal, the Peruvian environment minister who brokered the deal, said that “as a text it’s not perfect, but it includes the positions of the parties”.
Non-government organisations were very critical of the text. According to Jagoda Munic, the chair of Friends of the Earth International, “the text is desperately lacking in ambition, leadership, justice and solidarity for the people worst hit by the climate crisis”.
Former President Mary Robinson said that the Lima agreement had managed to keep the multilateral United Nations (UN) process alive, but did not “give confidence that the world is ready to adopt an equitable and ambitious, legally binding climate agreement in Paris next year”.
Negotiations
Because the Lima Conference failed to address many thorny issues in relation to climate change, there is huge pressure on the French negotiating team to get the negotiations back on track if there is going to be an agreement in Paris in 2015.
The agreement in Paris in 2015 will need to ensure that the global temperature increase stays at below 2°C in comparison to pre-industrial levels. To do this, it will be necessary to phase-out all greenhouse gases as early as possible in the second part of this century. To reduce vulnerability of the poor, and build resilience of communities to climate change impacts, through collective actions which must apply to all countries based on common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Although a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy is beneficial, poor countries will need support in order to be able to make the shift.
The agreement must include a package of support which will involve finance, technology and capacity-building which is reviewed every five years. Naturally, any agreement should have robust accountability and transparency so that governments, civil society and industry will be able to trust that the transition to a low-carbon economy is actually happening.
One document which might help build a groundswell of support for such a treaty is the forthcoming encyclical on the environment by Pope Francis. By far the most important part of the encyclical is that it develops a credible and adequate theology of creation.
This is not as easy as it might appear, because it means taking seriously modern sciences in developing a theology of creation, something which Rome has not done to date. In the past, the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations have often articulated their theologies of creation exclusively in biblical terms.
In such a presentation, it appeared that the primary purpose of the natural world was to benefit humankind. This approach is no longer credible, because it ignores the extraordinary achievements of modern science.
One of the most important achievements of the past few centuries is the great flowering of rational enquiry which has given us a much better understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Science has facilitated this new knowledge through its fearless, unrestricted use of our God-given intelligence which enables us to delve deeper into the processes of nature in order to understand what is going on in the world which, of course, is God’s creation.
This new perspective on the universe which has emerged painstakingly from the scientific understanding of the natural world, challenges all human beings, and especially religious people, to move from an anthropocentric (exclusively for human-centred) vision of creation, to a much broader one.
It is worth stating that, during the past 200 years, we have come to understand the composition of the world and the wider universe in a way that dwarfs our earlier understanding. Such a theology needs to be grounded in scientific knowledge about the immense and complex journey of the universe during its 13.7 billion-year story. It tells how, over five billion years ago, the solar system with its various planets came into being and evolved. Planet Earth was positioned in such a strategic place in relation to the Sun that it, alone, of all the planets, could become the sole living planet in the solar system.
The first glimmer of life stirred in the seas 3.8 billion years ago. This magnificent story has been articulated more clearly and comprehensively in its physical manifestation by scientists within their diverse disciplines over the past few decades.
Living creatures
To take one example, modern biology and genetics teaches us that we are related to all living creatures and when we call them kin, as St Francis of Assisi did, we are not speaking metaphorically.
What I am suggesting here involves a Copernican-like revolution, but this is what is being clearly demanded by the new scientific knowledge of the past century and a half. Thus far no document from Rome has embraced this new vision of our universe, solar system and earth. The Vatican’s option for the term human ecology which, at best, is a very questionable notion, if one understands the science of ecology, shows how reluctant Rome is to accept this paradigm shift.
A possible reason for Rome’s reluctance to embrace a bio-centric view of the world is the fear that it might legitimise abortion and euthanasia. But one does not have to turn science on its head to defend the Catholic teaching on either of those issues.
We humans are challenged to see ourselves as an integral part of the world, nourished by our environment in body and in spirit.
This does not mean denying our special role, but it does place us firmly within the wider natural world which is now under threat because of human activity. Human flourishing always takes place within thriving ecosystems. Hopefully, the encyclical will inspire Christians and all people of goodwill to respond generously to the plight of the poor and care for the earth.