Note that I did not use the title "The Pope and Global Warming." Laudato Si' is a huge letter (82 pages) and the actual text specifically on CO2 is actually quite small and mixed in with "pollution" in general. I'm going to quote a few portions of the letter and give my comments.
1. “LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.[1]
2. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.
This is wonderfully vague, but we still have a whole lot of paragraphs to go. Let's just stick to the point: do we irresponsibly use and abuse the goods which God has endowed the earth? Why of course! That's intuitively obvious to even a casual observer. We live in a throw away society. We waste resources without a second thought. (Ironically those who claim to care for the environment the most, at least publicly, waste these resources the most, jetting around the world and dining on the most expensive imported food.)
13. The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change. The Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us. Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home. Here I want to recognize, encourage and thank all those striving in countless ways to guarantee the protection of the home which we share. Particular appreciation is owed to those who tirelessly seek to resolve the tragic effects of environmental degradation on the lives of the world’s poorest. Young people demand change. They wonder how anyone can claim to be building a better future without thinking of the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the excluded.
This is key, we all have the ability to work together.
20. Some forms of pollution are part of people’s daily experience. Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths. People take sick, for example, from breathing high levels of smoke from fuels used in cooking or heating. There is also pollution that affects everyone, caused by transport, industrial fumes, substances which contribute to the acidification of soil and water, fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and agrotoxins in general. Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others.
21. Account must also be taken of the pollution produced by residue, including dangerous waste present in different areas. Each year hundreds of millions of tons of waste are generated, much of it non-biodegradable, highly toxic and radioactive, from homes and businesses, from construction and demolition sites, from clinical, electronic and industrial sources. The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish. Industrial waste and chemical products utilized in cities and agricultural areas can lead to bioaccumulation in the
organisms of the local population, even when levels of toxins in those places are low. Frequently no measures are taken until after people’s health has been irreversibly affected.
22. These problems are closely linked to a throwaway culture which affects the excluded just as it quickly reduces things to rubbish. To cite one example, most of the paper we produce is thrown away and not recycled. It is hard for us to accept that the way natural ecosystems work is exemplary: plants synthesize nutrients which feed herbivores; these in turn become food for carnivores, which produce significant quantities of organic waste which give rise to new generations of plants. But our industrial system, at the end of its cycle of production and
consumption, has not developed the capacity to absorb and reuse waste and by-products. We have not yet managed to adopt a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations, while limiting as much as possible the use of non-renewable resources, moderating their consumption, maximizing their efficient use, reusing and recycling them. A serious consideration of this issue would be one way of counteracting the throwaway culture which affects the entire planet, but it must be said that only limited progress has been made in this regard.
Let's look at this closely "atmospheric pollutants" here make people sick. Pollution in general affects everyone and harms the environment.
Now at this point I'm going to make an exception, but perhaps I'm the only one. Where I live, Paper is recycled every other Wednesday. I even make sure I use paper bags at the grocery store in order to use them to bundle the many newspapers my father reads every day. (There is a recycle bin for the plastic bags but I've been told that the supermarket doesn't actually recycle them but throws them in the trash. I have a special wastebasket in the bathroom that is designed to use those bags, so I use them instead of the normal trash bags in the bathroom.) Our town has a special bin in front of the town hall just for recycling old batteries. Even when they resurface the roads these days, they scrape off all the old stuff, process it and return it back to the road. Can we be even better in recycling? YES WE CAN. But let's not argue about it or establish useless laws to attempt to enforce it. Instead let's turn hearts and minds to want to do it.
I remember when I was a high school kid, bundling up all my newspapers. I purchased the twine to get them into the proper form, moved them all into the car trunk and my mother drive me to the place, which was at the end of a very steep driveway with a car laden with newspapers. They weighed the newspapers and I got my money. Turned out it was less than the cost of the twine. (Fortunately, in those days gas was cheep.)
Well this post is long enough and I'm only at paragraph 22 of 246.
