Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action
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New coal plants aren't built (mostly) and old ones are closing not because of altruism or a genuine concern for climate change. It's because other options are more economic, specifically LNG and solar. Now LNG isn't much better but it is better. Solar is definitely better. But what drove solar adoption over the last decade is the plunging price of panels, not altruism.
Governments can make it economic for companies and individuals to behave in more environmentally friendly ways, and will do so when enough political pressure arises (note that since we’re correcting for externalities, this is more economically efficient than letting pollution be “free”). To this end, coming out in favour of climate change action is useful.
People and companies break laws all the time when it's cheaper to do so.
I can't help but think of Fight Club [1].
For consumers, putting a price on carbon can make it simple and economic for them to chose greener options
And for corporations, the EU has been working on various schemes to price carbon for EU companies and to put a corresponding penalty on companies from other countries that don't (to avoid disadvantaging their companies).
I think this is the consistent empirical fact. People say and think they act in the public interest, but in reality they follow incentives.
This could in theory be fixed with Carbon Taxes, but they turn out to be politically impossible in most places.
So I think the only path is developing new technology that is cheaper and better per kWh. Solar and battery tech is coming along quite well.
> New coal plants aren't built (mostly)
China is building new coal plants at a furious pace:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-coal/chinas-new-coa...
"Including decommissions, China’s coal-fired fleet capacity rose by a net 29.8 GW in 2020, even as the rest of the world made cuts of 17.2 GW"
...which was heavily subsidized by the Obama administration plowing billions of taxpayer dollars into solar R&D. We could end the reliance on gasoline tomorrow by removing subsidies on ethanol and putting them into EVs, but it's politically unfeasible. Although I totally agree with you that economic change must precede any big change in energy.
Rebuilding grid for solar and EVs requires major overhaul. That is not happening. In EU prices are already up by 50% and grid is becoming more unstable. When Germany switches off its remaining nuclear and coal power plants, it will sky rockets.
People will build off-grid solars to avoid fees, and government will make off-grid illegal or tax it severely.
That sounds like a waking nightmare
Christ almighty, if the fellow you're complaining about walks up to you and says "I've been thinking about that thing you've been going on about, and I'd like to help you..."
... then maybe don't slap them across the face in response.
Areas with steam-friendly industries (Britain, Northeast USA) converted to steam and got rid of slavery.
The US isn't the world.
Catholics have instructions on how to resolve the dilemma where one candidate supports doctrine A, and the other candidate supports doctrine B. In plain terms, it's basically "choose your battles." This came to light when the dilemma of the day was abortion versus capital punishment and the poor.
Owing largely to the culture war, American Catholics have provided decisive support to the party that calls global warming a hoax. This isn't a political statement on my part, but just a statistical one.
My view is that the Church has quietly held a token position on global warming while concentrating its social influence on other matters. I don't have a definitive answer on this, and could of course be wrong, but choosing the wrong battle is a moral failure.
You’ve maybe been looking at polling data that breaks out White Catholics (but not Catholics as a whole) as a subgroup and not realizing how much work the “White” part is doing. (Though, even there, its only a slight majority of White Catholics that support the Republican Party; while Catholics as a whole have a slight majority supporting the Democratic Party.)
Than why are 44% of Catholics Democrat and only 37% Republican?
https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/party-aff...
Methinks your own POV poisons your opinions.
That's what I mean by decisive support. The Bishops could tip the scales if they were told to. This is about how the Pope could influence the situation.
I don't know how any individual Catholic votes, and both party allegiances and voting patterns are merely crude attempts at getting a statistical foothold on the question.
No, they couldn't. This is pretty evident on the political issue that the Bishops have most aggressively tried to tell people what stance to take, abortion, where Catholic attitudes are nonetheless split just like the broader country.
[1] https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious...
It would be a tricky thing. You'd have to convince Catholics that Oregon-style abortion law (legal right up until birth) was reasonable and that the normalization of mental illness was desirable (the current rage for transsexuals).
OTOH, as a trans-national organization, I could see shifting the Catholic hierarchy into thinking that unlimited mass immigration to Western countries was desirable. More membership, more souls to save and all that.
I don't think that's how it works. Churches are usually very "local", and "local" stuff is usually the ones that resists the most immigration.
This is not how churches should work and how they work. Religion can't be non-inclusive and accepting poor souls of migrants, regardless of their religion is humanitarian trait which is also considered equivalent of being Christian, according to how Christians are taught. Islam takes inclusion to even higher level and development of non-Arabic identity is considered corruption of religion(exception is to Arabic, because Quran is written in it). They do not take migrants, because migration is another sham and if rich nonIslamic countries have decided to take care of them without requirements to receive this support, then they are only bringing problems upon themselves.
Also, lets not forget that Christianity birthed revolutionaries of Europe(at least in eastern part), as it is impossible to make global terrorists from local minded people, it takes Large idea to start to kill other people in the name of one happy united brotherhood of mankind.
For those who have a hard time understanding what I am refering to - Stalin was studying to be a priest, his comrades of that time and 20 years prior mostly came from very religious Christian families, who were more religious and who shunned local "pagan" traditions more than other people. When people lose roots that are string together with traditions, they start to participate in crazy experiments with themselves and other people.
Personally, I would like to see practical ways of acually reducing fossil fuel demands but this is much harder for the church, except in their own properties, and easier for governments.
The environmentalists have faced stiff resistance in my life time not because anyone likes coal or oil, but because there were no alternatives. It isn't like the Catholics have ever had a point of doctrine like "and yea, your electricity shall only be sourced from fuels that are greater than 60% carbon by mass, for the atomic number 6 is especially holy!". They already have a longer term time horizon than most nations.
Being a good steward of nature is and has been a very important part of Catholic doctrine for a very long time.
I view religion as a large corporation, they have finally realized the long term impact of CC will be bad for business. Just like corporate BODs they are increasingly asking management to put forth a climate strategy. And investment firms that are moving their portfolio away from fossil fuel, it’s just modern corporate policy to have a stance that protects shareholder value in the long term. But really it’s just something to point to when asked “what are you doing about the climate?”
A bit of a rant there, but to reiterate, I don’t see how this influences action in a meaningful way. I’m glad they are doing it, it’s better than not.
Maybe the ideological match is that this pope seems very fond of the idea that every human is equal, to the point one should not be measured by how much they work or how peaceful they are. And therefore, countries which have already implemented good things for climate change such as regulating their population and reaching lower density, should not, according to this pope, benefit from any permit to collectively consume as much as a dense country, which means that grossly overpopulated countries must not perform larger efforts than the West, and which also means that the country who grossly overpopulates itself is still bound to win the power balance. The West man holds, in this pope’s ideology, a very sour place anyway, he is practically the epitome of the current progressist ideology.
If the former, I would say the Western man holds a pretty powerful place in this Pope's ideology.
Which, you know, we’re seeing that on the 3 main topics of our lives currently (feminism, racism and covid), so it’s not like it never happened.
In the last 15 or so years I have read hundreds (probably well over 1000) science papers about various topics. Those in climate change seem to me to be scientific enough compared with other fields.
Also racism and feminism are very far from main topics of my life, maybe because I am from a different part of the world and also left most social networks. But the climate change seems to be still happening around here.
CC = Climate Change
CC = Catholic Church
And various religious movements have had their moments of realizing economic change by educating and motivating their adherents to demand it. (E.g. racial equality boycotts)
If more people come to believe that they have a moral obligation to do what they can to prevent climate change—including by supporting government interventions and investments, and gracefully accepting higher energy costs and energy taxes—then maybe we can hope for a break in the political logjam that is preventing energy reforms from being implemented in the United States.
Papal infallibility today doesn't seem to be what it was in the past in the minds of many American Catholics, however. There has been a surprising amount of direct criticism of the pope among conservative American Catholics in recent years, many of whom seem to place their political loyalties ahead of their loyalty to the church (which I have found surprising).
That’s not how Papal infallibility works. It has to be explicitly invoked and only for matters of faith and morals. Furthermore doctrine cannot be changed. The Pope can’t speak infallibly about science. So Catholics are free to accept or not what he says on the subject. That’s not the case for abortion. We don’t get to say we disagree with the commandment against killing human beings and remain in good standing.
Also do not confuse loyalty to the Church with loyalty to the clergy. There is quite a lot a Catholic can legitimately be critical of there.
That’s a very cynical statement. Goes to show why both sides will never meet in the middle of the road with thinking that way.
Voting republicans doesn’t mean I am against climate change reforms. The issue at hand is how practically we deal with it and reduce demands on fossil fuel and transition to clean energy. Policies touted by a lot of left leaning politicians aren’t practical and many of them know it but they say it anyway. Look at California and its recent outages to any demand spike of utilities as an example.
Your point stands, Democrat solutions addressing climate change are definitely pretty bad. That being said, at least they have some climate change policies they're pushing for right now instead of kicking the can down the road. Can you honestly say the same about Republicans?
My own take is that you can avoid ecological devastation only through population reduction and in the short term by not up-leveling the Third World via mass immigration and industrialization.
Almost like pulling the ladder from under us after we're at the top. Doubt it would mean anything unless it's backed by sanctions, military action or intelligence operations to topple governments that attempt to pull their countries out of poverty. That would make us decisively "the bad guys", regardless of motive.
Perhaps one answer would be to allow people to swap citizenships. If you are feeling guilty enough, you could move to Lagos and someone there could move to Palo Alto.
Since this would necessitate birth control, it would be in direct conflict with the beliefs of the Catholic Church and couldn’t be supported by the Pope.
What we (the world) will be awash in is Moslems and sub Saharan Africans unless those curves get bent via behavior changes, resource depletion, or war. I can't say that the Pope is much involved in that situation.
Like the 15% of (mostly-sub Saharan) Africa that identifies as Catholic? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_in_Africa
hah. Partly answered.
I really meant only to reflect the reality that by voting for a Republican you are voting for someone who will use their power to prevent climate change reform. Is this actually controversial at all? I'd like to see the counterexample.
Sure, some voters may have other things in mind when they vote Republican (for instance, taxes, or abortion) but the end effect of that vote is that if the person they vote for is elected, reforms to prevent or slow climate change will be less likely to be implemented. Do you disagree with this as a factual matter?
> Voting republicans doesn’t mean I am against climate change reforms. The issue at hand is how practically we deal with it and reduce demands on fossil fuel and transition to clean energy.
I am incredulous that you actually believe that today there is any kind of Republican plan to "reduce demands on fossil fuel and transition to clean energy" that has any chance of doing anything in any way to prevent the worst outcomes of climate change.
Even if there were such a plan proposed by a small clique of Republican politicians, it would never be implemented by any Republican-controlled legislature or executive because, as a whole, the party still sees fossil fuel energy as a moral good (see: rolling coal), rejects pollution regulation (dismantling it at every opportunity), and dismisses climate change science as a fiction promulgated by their political enemies in order to further a diabolical agenda.
Even if you can assuage your own guilt by telling yourself that the individual politician you are voting for supports some kind of "Republican climate change plan", your vote for that politician will make any reform less likely to be implemented than if you had voted for their opponent. As a factual matter, no Republican-controlled legislature will ever enact climate change reforms into law, and no Republican executive will ever implement any climate change plan—not even a Republican-authored plan—within the next 10 years, unless we see a sea change in sentiment broadly within the party.
> Goes to show why both sides will never meet in the middle of the road with thinking that way.
If there was a reasonable prospect of a "middle of the road" plan to slow climate change that the Republican party would actually support—meaning, would actually help push through Congress—then the Biden administration and the current Congress would pass it in a minute and immediately begin implementing it.
The reason that this is not happening is because there is no plan whatsoever that the Republican party will put any support behind. I wish there was such a plan.
(Ok, well, even if not, the gesture in support of environmental justice is appreciated)
There's no system that will perfectly allow people to both find value and meaning in their world AND also promote totally free action of others.
Thus we live in a contemporary world of non-religious people seeking out value (look at the current obsession in Silicon Valley with Stoicism, mindfulness, pyschadelics, etc). But Silicon Valley also tells their people that they can't use those methods to find an actual belief system of values. It's like, definitely always look for meaning and value in the universe, we like that. But, don't find it and a be bold about it.
Catholics are against birth control because we're for a world in which human life is nourished, valued, and lifted up within the family. Not that it's seen as a problem to be dealt with. A knock on impact of that mentality is the sex becomes seen as a sacred act of deep value to humanity, an act with profound power and responsibility.
Almost no Catholics suggest that we legally outlaw birth control. We recognize that fundamentally free agency should be left to moral agents (unless it cause a direct moral hazard to others like abortion, theft, dishonesty, etc). But why would we change our view on reproduction and the family? Moreso, birth control doesn't even do that great of a job at slower birth rates in developing nations.
Once you're intermittent fasting, microdosing, cutting out meat and/or processed foods from your diet, going on "dopamine fasts" without your phone/PC, avoiding tobacco + alcohol because of the harm it does to your body, choosing the media you watch to avoid negativity, confessing to your therapist regularly, seeking out deeper meaningful relationships with people, meditating every day, etc you might as well be religious.
Totally. I'm excited about efforts to buy old churches to repurpose them to serve the spiritual and cultural needs like you list. It's like, rationally speaking, we need spiritual wellbeing, but don't need the baggage of the world religions.
The Church is obliged to teach that sex is supposed to be about a man and a woman taking part in God's ecstatic act of creation, a selfless act of love. Sex without being open to life is porn: without the act of self giving and preparedness to receive children, you are left with a corrupted, self-directed form of pleasure.
This is why the Church is not against quite effective natural methods like NFP, because in this method it's the people who change their own behaviour, based on a natural cycle. It's quite effective but does not close fertility in a mechanical way.
Second, if people were really listening to Jesus Christ and the Church, much more people would hear a calling to lead a consecrated life, as a priest or a monk or a nun.
Nope. I've had 3 kids. I have emotionally and rationally concluded that having another child is inappropriate; it is a form of excess and inbalance. So, I want to have sex for love now. Really, you are going to tell me that, by stopping at 3, I am going against the will of god?
Also, what's up with believing in a God-man that supposedly rules over 100 billion galaxies and yet is so damn petty about human sex lives and other foolishness? I'm all good with the importance of spiritual fulfilment, an underlying faith in an ineffable oneness of the cosmos, and even in the notion that belief in the eternal Logos gives eternal life (i.e., if i believe that my self is vastly bigger than my bodily identity, then "I" don't die with our body). It's comforting and rational.
But damn. Belief in a petty, spiteful God-man? How can people perpetuate such an idea? Just to scare children?
this is something i've always found hilarious. he's all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing. he created us, and now demands our love, adoration, and is jealous. is he lonely? is there nothing else to do in this universe except be concerned with how we live our lives? punish us with plagues? he gave us free will to then judge us in the end based on how restrained we were in exercising it?
it's silliness.
Job is the best book though. God and Satan make a bet...
Can you get large groups of people to do stupid stuff like don't have sex before marriage, don't swear etc, by any method? The only way, is religion. We can read religious texts and take some good things from them, but following everything a religion (any religion) says blindly is just dumb. Most the time, religious texts are interpreted for convenience and petty agenda anyway, not necessarily for truth.
Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r-e2NDSTuE
But if you give contraception a fixed place in your life, to have sex which is fundamentally closed to children, then you have introduced a contradiction into your body and into your life.
And yes, He rules over 100 billion galaxies (more if we live in a multiverse) and cares about such things. If you think this is petty or spiteful, then you think too little of your sexuality and of yourself. These 100 billion galaxies were required for you to exist as a human being, called to (try) living a life that prepares you for Heaven.
No, i just expect more from the unifying principal of the universe. And so should anyone who wants real faith and not myths and fairytales.
You could treat it as a learning opportunity. Carry on doing the good stuff and stop doing the bad stuff?
>>>> There's no system that will perfectly allow people to both find value and meaning in their world AND also promote totally free action of others.
In turn, that's the curse of infallibility.
>>>> Catholics are against birth control because we're for a world in which human life is nourished, valued, and lifted up within the family. Not that it's seen as a problem to be dealt with. A knock on impact of that mentality is the sex becomes seen as a sacred act of deep value to humanity, an act with profound power and responsibility.
A way out of this dilemma is to acknowledge that sexuality and reproduction are not supernatural phenomena, therefore there is no need for them to be a topic of theological interest, any more than the orbits of the planets or the evolution of species.
>>>> Almost no Catholics suggest that we legally outlaw birth control.
Cynically, I wonder if that's strategic -- to avoid alienating voters until abortion is outlawed. Also (I took "Catholic classes" when I got married), birth control is portrayed as causing abortion.
Pretty stoked with the current state of liberal democratic market systems, actually. Way better than any other system, especially the theocracies. But, I am missing social and cultural capital. I am trying to find this in academic scholarship in western esotericism and psychedelics. It works out ok, but then, you know, it can alienate others. But at least it is rationally and emotionally fulfilling.
Put another way, birth control is an important topic and without groups that disagree with you we don’t get Alpha/Beta tests.
You want more?
Climate change is mostly a large political issue, much more than racism or inequality, it's a much more large scale issue, which requires that people with a lot of influence need to speak.
Not to mention that the Vatican, even with all the evils of religion, is still a place with a lot of thinkers.
How is that coherent at all?
(42% is the share of Catholics in the Catholics plus Protestants subpopulation, the latter are 40.6% of their sample).
It won't solve all problems, but it will help a lot.
There is plenty of scripture he could call on to justify it. One, for example, is that the prophecy of having as many descendants as grains of sand on the beach couldn't have meant all at once, because we wouldn't all fit. Decreasing the chance of that many descendants undermines the prophecy.
Italy's low birth rate means Catholics are using birth control anyway, so people have figured it out.
For most people doing this is harder than not and people will protect their investment.
This appears to assume that all Republican senators will vote against the climate proposal, which I find overly pessimistic.