[Quite a coalition!]
Parishes, Catholic schools urged to show film on climate change
CWN – August 16, 2012
The Catholic Coalition on Climate Change “and our partners,” which include the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Relief Services, and Catholic Charities USA [emphasis added], are inviting Catholic parishes, colleges, and schools to show Sun Come Up on or before October 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
The Oscar-nominated documentary, according to its web site, “shows the human face of climate change. The film follows the relocation of the Carteret Islanders, a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean, and now, some of the world’s first environmental refugees.”
Additional sources for this story: See www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=15253
The Moral Downside of Climate Change
By Dr. Jeff Mirus | August 16, 2012
www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otc.cfm?id=995
Now that parishes and Catholic schools are being urged to show a documentary on climate change, perhaps it is time to comment on the wisdom of attempting to turn climate change into a moral issue. This is a danger currently being courted by those who portray climate change both as a disaster of epic proportions and as something we can control, causing them to seek to invest the issue with a high moral priority in both education and politics.
Based on my own review of the arguments surrounding climate change, I believe that the evidence is scanty or non-existent that these changes are either well-understood or under our control even in theory. The situation is even more dubious when we consider what realistic steps a disunited world with very limited financial resources is likely to be able take to effect any consistent or controlled change. If I am correct in this assessment, then climate change may still be a problem for some people in some regions, or it may even be a general human problem at some point, but it is not a moral problem. We may be called to assist those who suffer (as we always are, for whatever reason), but we are not morally impelled to join the fight against climate change itself.
Catholics, of course, have more reason than most to foster good stewardship of creation, as a moral priority, so that present resources are not used by some to the detriment of others, including future generations, and so that we weigh carefully the potential harm of various human activities which may be under consideration for approval, disapproval, expansion or restriction. But to more deeply grasp the implications, consider that we might start by ceasing to pollute our bodies and our waters with contraceptive chemicals. In any case, as Pope Benedict has pointed out, such an analysis must be done not as if man is the enemy of nature, but as if man is the apex of visible creation, to whom all of nature has been given for use, while at the same time being placed under his stewardship by God, to Whom he must give an account (Caritas in Veritate, # 48).
At the same time, preaching a moral responsibility when there really is none (as I believe is the case with our current knowledge of climate change) can only serve to distract people from more pressing things that they ought to be doing to protect and enhance human life and the common good. It is no coincidence, I think, that belief in the moral imperative to “do something” about climate change declines in inverse proportion to how religious people are and, for Catholics, how frequently they attend Mass. The issue is widely viewed in such circles as another alleged crisis fashioned by “the world” as an excuse for ignoring the more pressing moral and spiritual business of the human person.
It seems likely, after all, that what we are witnessing in the furor over climate change is a rerun of the wildly off-base population explosion announced in the 1960’s, or the brief romance with a threatened ice age in the next decade, or the treatment of pregnancy as a disease, or the pressing need for safe sex, or the horrors of growing up in a world in which not everyone respects and affirms our every choice. These have all been made the moral basis for social, political and economic action, yet most people in our culture understand these issues either badly or wrongly. Worse still, the actions taken at best waste time, energy and resources and at worst either make the problem worse or create new problems in their wake.
Think how much more good could be done if those who are rushing to join the climate change crusade, especially as it relates to yet another set of coercive government policies, were to put even half of their fervor into living chastely, protecting the lives of the unborn, discouraging divorce, nurturing families, participating actively in local churches and community organizations, supporting neighborhood health clinics, promoting charitable work, or actually lending a hand to those in concrete, discernible and remediable need. Instead of trying to be seen on the “moral high ground” of the latest fashionable cause (be it whales, diversity, gender-neutral speech, or climate change), we could all actually begin to construct a better world one person at a time.
After observing the secular social order for some fifty years, I am absolutely convinced that both the human person and society as a whole have a deep need for a moral orientation, and when a society either rejects or ignores the natural law and Divine Revelation because these conflict with inordinate desires, then people are strongly drawn to ersatz causes in order to achieve moral satisfaction while distracting themselves from deeper issues. The effort to get climate change documentaries into parishes and Catholic schools is, I believe, a signal example of this common failing, arising as it does from an almost willful refusal on the part of the proponents to open their eyes to the for more pressing moral infections which have already metastasized in our culture like a deadly cancer.
A study of climate science in educational institutions is certainly both appropriate and important. As with knowledge of almost anything else, but especially of those things which may affect our lives, we should want to study climate and learn what we can about it. But we also need to recall that there have been significant climate changes before, even during the past few thousand years of recorded human history, complete with widespread shifts in what crops could be grown in different places and where people preferred to live. One thinks, for example, of the Medieval Warm Period which affected Europe and other regions between about 950 and 1250, which was followed by the so-called Little Ice Age. We probably do not even have a long enough window of serious climate study to know what we ought to consider the outer limits of “normal”.
In any case, it will take far more study, with far more accurate and universally respected results, over a much longer period of time before our limited human comprehension can form a true picture of what is happening, why it is happening, whether it is a source of long-term concern, and whether there is anything particular to be done about it. Under these circumstances, making climate change into a moral priority—that is, a guilt trip—is extraordinarily imprudent. It will serve as more than a distraction. Like many a cause célèbre before it, climate change will become an excuse to ignore the damage done through human relationships that are sadly based on a rejection of God and the natural law.
As many a pundit has said in other contexts: It’s not the heat, it’s the humility. Or at least it ought to be. We could place greater trust in researchers who recognize this. And if all the rest of us could recognize it too, and so stop our endless rebellion against the real moral law, even the environment would benefit.
1200 words? And Jeff still missed the story.
The bishops are foisting left-wing alarmist propaganda on Catholics in order to help Obama get reelected. 17 words.
Climate Change and Moral Knowledge
By Dr. Jeff Mirus | August 17, 2012
www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=545
Since writing yesterday’s On the Culture entry, The Moral Downside of Climate Change, I’ve received quite a bit of email, including some from Catholic climate scientists, contesting and, in some cases, misunderstanding the point I was trying to make. Let me say at the outset that, after doing some more research, I will write something about the specific disputes among scientists concerning climate change. Because I am not yet prepeared to do that here, many will be disappointed. But for now I wish to offer some clarifications relating to my original moral point.
I have argued that it is both wrong and dangerous to elevate climate change into a moral cause, and I would first like to explain more carefully what I do not mean by this statement. First, I do not at all mean that we should be unconcerned about those who may be adversely affected by climate change. Many Catholic bishops and even Pope Benedict himself have pointed out, quite rightly, that any problems which may be occasioned by climate change (or, indeed, by any damaging weather condition) will fall most heavily on the poor, for the strained resources of the poor do not permit them to protect themselves as easily against the repercussions of drought, flooding, rising sea levels, or anything else which might negatively impact their homes or their livelihood. Clearly, it is a central moral demand of Christianity to assist the poor in their distress.
Second, I do not mean that there are no compelling reasons to do some of the things advocated by those who have elevated stopping climate change itself to the status of a moral cause. For example, there are many good reasons to limit both our use of fossil fuels and the way in which we use them. It is good to reduce pollution, to conserve resources for future generations, to decrease our dependence for fuel on unstable regions of the world, and so on. There are both pragmatic and specifically moral reasons for taking these goods seriously.
Third, I am not here disagreeing with any Catholic moral teaching. Churchmen are as free to have opinions on climage change as laymen, but at the Magisterial level the Church can only e xplain the moral principles which govern our judgments and actions; she cannot determine whether climate change exists, whether it is dangerous, whether it is caused by human action, or what might be done about it.
Now the legitimate moral concerns I have just discussed are very different from a moral obligation to resist climate change in itself. Many conditions on this earth change over time without any human responsibility for the changes, and many of these changing conditions are harmful to specific persons or groups of persons. One thinks of earthquakes, volcanos, continental shifts, normal variations in polar ice which affect sea level, tsunamis, warming and cooling trends that we do not yet fully understand (but are likely at least partially related to natural events going on elsewhere in our solar system), the natural warming and cooling of fissures which derive their heat from the earth’s core, and so on. When people are harmed by these things, the relevant moral knowledge is that a brother or sister is suffering and needs our assistance. But is there any relevant moral information concerning climate change in and of itself?
Well, there may or may not be. What would determine the answer?
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Moral Considerations
There are many things which are intrinsically immoral. We know them from the natural law, which is often reinforced by Divine Revelation. It is the first responsibility of the human person to avoid doing things that are intrinsically immoral. Moreover, if we do something that is intrinsically evil, and someone else suffers as a result, we have a strong moral obligation in justice to make restitution. But climate change is not intrinsically immoral. Therefore, any moral imperatives concerning climate change must derive from secondary considerations, from the harm that climate change does and from the degree of responsibility others have to prevent or ameliorate that harm.
Climate change is a natural phenomenon, and we may gain some insight into questions of morality surrounding natural phenomena by comparing climate change to one of many possible simpler but ultimately similar phenomena. Let us take fire. Fire is natural, and it can have good or bad natural consequences. It goes without saying that the human person wishes to escape bad natural consequences (commonly called “evils”, but not in the moral sense) , and if he sees that a fire will cause bad natural consequences, he will almost always consider some form of intervention to minimize those consequences. But he must be cautious in his interventions, because he does not always know the full range of consequences of the fire (both good and bad), and he does not always know the full range of unintended consequences of his intervention.
Thus, for example, the conventional wisdom used to be that forest fires should be fought because the destruction of forests was a “bad” natural consequence. As knowledge of the role of fire in the pattern of nature grew, we learned that periodic burns were part of a natural cycle that was, on the whole, beneficial in the natural sense. Therefore, forest managers began to call in fire fighters only when significant human assets (including human life) were at stake. This of course reflects our culture’s continuing (though perhaps waning) appreciation for the superior importance of the human person in nature. The moral imperative here is to protect human life and property whenever it is reasonably possible to do so. And if it is not possible to provide this protection in a manner commensurate with the number of lives and amount of property to be affected, then the next recourse is to evacuate the threatened persons.
Sources of Moral Responsibility and Justice
So far so good. The same criteria can reasonably be applied to extreme weather or to climate change in general which, should it arise, will certainly affect some more than others. By virtue of solidarity, we all have a moral responsibility to provide reasonable assistance to others in escaping the bad consequences of natural threats that are beyond their control. There is also a general moral responsibility to assist injured or displaced persons in returning to a reasonable level of safety and prosperity. We are quite simply wrong to habitually ignore those in need, even if each given situation requires an honest assessment of how we might or might not choose to help.
But there is no moral obligation to fight the fire at any cost, or perhaps even to fight the fire at all. That obligation depends on what is at stake, whether it is reasonably possible to preserve and protect what is at stake, whether there is a consequent moral obligation on the part of the larger community to preserve and protect what is at stake (as there certainly is with human life), and whether fighting the fire at some particular level of commitment is the best way to preserve and protect these endangered goods.
Of course, the problem escalates with its severity. If fires suddenly become increasingly frequent and widespread, such that they regularly threaten a great many human goods, the need to understand them and prevent them from happening grows very strong. At one level, this is a pragmatic matter of self-defense, which is not a moral imperative but a natural and normal response to a threat. At another level, this arises from a genuine moral responsibility to assist others through prevention because so many people are being adversely affected by the trend (though a community could, for all that, decide that it is best simply to trust in God, such a community would be very different from our own!).
Now we must ask if there is anything which could tip the scales so as to significantly raise our level of moral responsibility. The answer is, perhaps, obvious. If we find that human action is causing or significantly increasing the threat of damaging fires, then there is a corresponding moral responsibility in justice to compensate those who have been injured and either to eliminate that human action in the future or to alter it in a way that prevents others from being harmed. This moral responsibility increases if these human actions are, by any reasonable standard, optional. It increases still more if these human actions are deliberate. And the moral intensity reaches its highest point when these human actions are chosen from a range of options to maximize the good of one person or group while being aware that these actions will threaten or harm others.
As a matter of solidarity and charity, of course, good people will attempt to limit the damage or assist those injured in their recovery. But now there is also a matter of justice at stake. Particular individuals and organizations must be held accountable in justice for causing fires, to a degree corresponding to their knowledge and their willfulness, and in justice they must also be prevented from causing more fires in the future. More generally, if we find through experience and study that a general method by which we achieve certain goals or accomplish certain tasks in our culture as a whole is contributing significantly to a higher incidence of damaging fires, then any sane culture will seek to restrain or alter that method, and a just culture will press even harder to do so out of its moral obligation to protect the innocent from harm.
Caution and Care
We must remember in all this that natural phenomena are something of a mixed bag. The annual monsoon, for example, is absolutely necessary to the economic life and sustenance of those who live in monsoon regions, and yet any given monsoon may wipe out the homes or businesses or even lives of some particular persons and families. We do not therefore seek to ban the monsoon. But if some person or persons were taking actions which significantly increase the incidence and severity of monsoons, we might look to correct that situation, assuming we understood monsoon formation well enough to reach a clear conclusion, and always assuming we were not prone to blame all the usual suspects—that is, whoever the witches in our culture happen to be.
As with an increasing incidence of monsoons or fires (which, indeed, some argue are related to climate change), so too with climate change itself. We must beware of our culture’s confidence that we can transcend and improve on nature (which historically leads us to charge into government regulation whenever we perceive the slightest problem). But if we are reasonably certain that a broadly damaging trajectory in climate change is occurring, and we are reasonably certain that we know how to correct this problem, we might investigate the possibility of attempting the correction because we share the normal human propensity for survival or even for comfort. But we might also be foolish to attempt this correction if we concluded it were part of a natural cycle, a cycle that we did not yet fully understand, for we ought to be leery of both the costs and the unintended consequences of imperfect human tinkering. Under these circumstances, prudence would suggest that we must be faced with a great need and a severe threat to attempt to compensate.
Still, if after careful study we become reasonably certain that it is human intervention which is causing a clearly traced and damaging trajectory in climate change—and we also find that this human intervention can be eliminated, altered for the better, or reversed—then it would be reasonable to attempt the fix, but only if the expected expense, effort and full range of consequences will be less damaging than the initial problem. And finally, if we see that those least responsible are suffering most from this damaging trajectory caused by human action, then we would have a strong moral charge to correct the problem (if possible), and certainly to protect the innocent from its consequences.
Back to the Science
Ultimately, then, there is a natural reason to pit ourselves against climate change only if we are reasonably certain (a) it is occurring along a clear and damaging trajectory; (b) we understand it well enough to fix it; and (c) we have good reason to believe our fix will be manageable, and will not cause more problems than it solves. (At this natural level, when these conditions coalesce in the face of a clear threat, it is reasonable to suppose our human survival instinct will finally bring the debate to an end.) But in addition to this natural and normal human response to a threat, there is a moral imperative to pit ourselves against climate change only if we are also reasonably certain that this same well-understood and damaging trajectory is being caused by human action, such that there is a need in justice to restrain the guilty or protect the innocent.
Because climate change is not intrinsically evil, these judgments are necessarily provisional, and they depend entirely on the clarity of our understanding of the reality, the trajectory, the causes, the consequences, the damage, and the potential corrections of climate change. Once we understand the reality, the trajectory, the causes and the consequences of climate change, it will often (but not always) easy to assess the damage. But we must rely on the physical sciences to understand the reality, trajectory, causes, consequences and potential corrections. Therefore, our moral conclusions are inextricably dependent on what we learn about climate change from the scientific community.
When we map things out in this way, we see more clearly the heavy and comprehensive demand we are making on science and its fallible human practioners, especially in connection with such a vast system as climate, with such an enormous number of variables. One could write an entire book on both the successes and the failures of scientists, on how science works in the modern world, on whether scientists are immune from finding what they are expecting to find, on how few scientists are actually in a position to determine something based on their own research, on how hard it is to nail down scientific agreement on matters which are hotly contested in society as a whole, and so on. We could also carefully explain why all scientific findings are by nature provisional, and we could debate whether our culture is wise to place an easy trust in science as compared with other forms of knowledge.
But while all of this might make us even more wary, it would not change the reality that we must rely on science to determine whether climate change is occurring, whether it is dangerous, whether it has human causes, whether we can isolate these causes, and what we might do about them. I freely admit that the conclusions in my previous essay stand or fall on whether my assessment of the prevailing scientific claims is correct. This is not something we can know from Revelation or philosophy. But does that not give us even better grounds for caution, for a careful examination of the scientists and the evidence they present, and for an airtight case before making moral claims?
Jeff has blasted a total of 3700 words into the aether over this and still hasn’t hit the target. The bishops don’t give a rat’s patoot about the science of climate change.
[To add some more words, Dr. Jeff's blathering introduction to his blather]
Climate Change and Moral Responsibility
First appeared on 08/17/2012
www.catholicculture.org/commentary/insights.cfm?task=show&id=2322
To mix a metaphor, I’ve stuck my neck out on a limb this week, by breaking a long silence on the problem I find with most discussions of climate change: The Moral Downside of Climate Change.
This created quite a stir in my In Box, and I heard from a number of people who either thought I was scientifically illiterate or misunderstood my moral point. I’m afraid that led me to a further In Depth Analysis today: Climate Change and Moral Knowledge.