David Quinn
Talk is cheap when it comes to environmental piety, writes David Quinn
Greta Thunberg is a 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl who has risen to prominence lately by warning us of an impending environmental apocalypse if we do not immediately make drastic changes to the way we live.
Thunberg was the initiator of the first school strikes for climate action last year in her native Sweden. We have now had two of our own in this country.
Thunberg has addressed major meetings around Europe. She recently warned British parliamentarians that without radical action now, by 2030, just 11 years away, we will have set off “an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it”.
Before then, she warned, “permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society [must] have taken place, including a reduction of CO2 emissions by at least 50%”.
Emissions
Our own parliament recently declared a ‘climate emergency’, making us only the second country in the world to do so after Britain. This week, the Government published a major report outlining what it plans to do to tackle climate change in the coming years. Presently, Ireland is far behind the target it has agreed with other EU countries to reduce carbon emissions. If we don’t get our act in order, we are going to be hit with huge EU-imposed fines.
In the recent local and European elections, the Green party performed well. It received 5.6% of the vote in the former and 11% in the later. There was much talk of a ‘Green wave’. We seem to be prepared to do what it takes to save the planet, but is it really true? Are we really prepared to make the necessary sacrifices or is it mainly talk, cheap and easy ‘virtue-signalling’ with no real substance behind it?
Religious people are very familiar with the figure of the ‘Holy Joe’, that is the person who puts on a great display of public piety in order to make themselves look good in the eyes of their peers. Even when we were a lot more religious than we are today, people didn’t have much time for ‘Holy Joes’, and Jesus certainly didn’t. He loathed fake piety.
We are also familiar with the figure of the à la carte Catholic, that is, the person who picks from Catholicism the bits that suit them, usually leaving out the more difficult and challenging parts.
Are we now in the era of the Green ‘Holy Joe’ and the ‘à la carte environmentalist’? That is to say, do we now have lots of people who say they are ‘Green’, who insist that the planet is doomed unless we follow the advice of Greta Thunberg, but are not leading by example in their own lives?
Most Green support is to be found in well-off middle-class areas. The middle-class Western lifestyle is a massive contributor to climate change. Middle-class people commonly have more than one car, often big SUVs. They live in well-heated houses, usually using oil or gas for the purpose. They drive their children to and from school.
They fly off on at least one foreign holiday a year. We nearly all use smartphones and upgrade them when we can. These use huge amounts of data and the data-centres run by the tech companies use vast amounts of electricity.
In middle-class homes today, each child usually has a room to themselves. In other words, middle class people do not live ‘small’. Their carbon footprint is large.
How many dioceses and parishes are striving to reduce their carbon emission to net zero?”
If Green supporters are right, and we really are faced with a climate emergency, increasing carbon tax by a bit won’t go half far enough. Nor will reducing our use of single-use plastic, or cutting a portion of meat from our diet, or declining the next phone upgrade. We have to go much, much further than this.
Greta Thunberg, for example, has stopped flying on planes. She now gets about by train, even if it takes several days to reach her next destination in Europe. How many of the pupils who demanded more action on climate change outside Leinster House recently are willing to do this? What about their parents?
If this is a climate emergency, and if the next decade will literally decide the fate of the planet, then we have to immediately make huge and painful changes to the way we live. We must also be willing to face and cause a massive economic downturn.
There is simply no way to change to renewable energy on time. The modern economy has been made possible by fossil fuels, and for the foreseeable future, we are going to be dependent on fossil fuels to maintain our standard of living.
If we reduce our use of fossil fuels drastically and soon, then we must face up to a massive economic contraction. That will not alone mean a big reduction in our living standards, but greatly reduced spending in areas like health and education. Are we ready for this? Will it really be politically and socially acceptable if push comes to shove? Will voters rebel?
Action
What is the Church doing? How many dioceses and parishes are striving to reduce their carbon emission to net zero? They talk about the issue a lot, but action speaks louder than words. For example, is it acceptable to preach about climate action and then organise annual pilgrimages to Lourdes, Rome and the Holy Land? All those flights emit lots of carbon.
In other words, we must decide now if we are really serious about tackling climate change and how much pain we are willing to accept in that fight. If we are not serious, then environmentalism will simply become the new form of fake piety.