We are beginning to be bombarded with interpretations of the popish call to save the planet from ourselves. And many religious people are using this as a conduit to reinforce faith and proselytise religious beliefs. I have no beef with this... as long as the planet is protected from our greedy hands. Easier said than done... So:

 

The Greens senator Larissa Waters has caused uproar among government senators after asking if Tony Abbott would pay attention to the Pope's recent proclamation on climate change. Waters attempted to ask several times whether the fact Abbott is a Catholic who trained to be a priest would mean he would take note of the Pope's warnings on the gravity of human-induced climate change. One senator demanded to know if Waters was married, before government leader of the Senate George Brandis said reflecting upon the religious beliefs of any member of parliament was 'disgusting'

 

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2015/jun/22/liberals-disgusted-after-greens-larissa-waters-asks-if-catholic-tony-abbott-will-listen-to-pope-on-climate-change-video

Brandis again, appearing like a disgusting bigot by basically ignoring the contradictions showed by a zealot PM, Turdy (his policies are smelly shit), full of his own caca, and as a Cacatholic professing no intention of saving the planet from himself and his carbon destructive ways. So:

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Here is a challenge to our contemporary cult of the disposable, in which we make the natural world, our fellow creatures, and even other human beings into products to use, and then waste products to forget. If we cannot, individually and politically, find a way to see and express the dignity in our fellow human beings, we will not be able to find a sustainable way to live together.

Individualistic Western culture, however, finds this increasingly difficult to do. You do have a kind of surface-level romanticism about human dignity, driven largely by the sentiment of popular culture. But autonomous individualism is at heart cruel and rapacious. It celebrates the virtues of independence, not our interconnectedness.

If we suspect that recognising the dignity of other creatures, including our fellow human beings, is the key to a renewal of the planet, then the Christian faith provides the intelligible structure for this recognition. As Francis says:

How wonderful is the certainty that each human life is not adrift in the midst of hopeless chaos, in a world ruled by pure chance or endlessly recurring cycles!

We are not God. And thank God for that.

Rev Dr Michael Jensen is the rector at St Mark's Anglican Church, Darling Point, and is the author of My God, My God: Is It Possible To Believe Anymore?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-22/jensen-the-pope-on-climate-change/6563238

 

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Yes... But no... We do not have "a cult of the disposable"... the disposable concept has only been imprinted in our brains by constant advertising to sell disposable products to satisfy lazy greedy manufacturers. It would only take a few months for this "cult" to vanish should we be reminded with the need to recycle and manage obsolescence for as long as possible with repairs and targeted improvements, while removing adverts for "disposables" (or making them illegal). This of course would need a progressive shift in the workforce. Fewer sales assistants and more clever fixer-uppers... Less gloss and more artisans. Hey ! Employment ! 

 

The disposable is not a religion, nor a cult... it's only a "convenience".

 

On the other hand, the teaching culture of Christianity has long been "to go and conquer the world", populate the space ad infinitum and these two major religious devices have infected our behaviour towards the planet. 

 

Since the industrial revolution — and possibly since mechanical ducks were invented to amuse kings and sundries — we, humans, homo sapiens have turned into homo pollutus, slowly evolving into homo crappus. At first, this was innocuous because the amount of human pollution was relatively small in comparison to the rest of nature. Nature could compensate. Most of what we did was TRULY biodegradable — using mostly biotic products such as wood for burning and grass to make baskets. 

Now humans occupy most of the planet except a few niches that are too hard to survive in, such as deserts, tropical forests (ah ah, we're cutting them at a rate of knots), mountain tops and the sea, though we're doing a darn job at destroying these as well — including "our" plastic vortex in the middle of the oceans. 

 

Our religious urge to take-over the planet seems to be too strong and we can't leave anything alone... We've got to piss in the swimming pool and crap on the porch, as well as mow the lawn to keep busy. Through the sheer number of us, NATURE CANNOT COMPENSATE to stay as it was. The equilibrium is broken. Nature does not really care, but it recombines with different sets of values, like vanishing of species in places  — and by increasing the temperature, not to annoy us, but because that IS THE WAY PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY WORK in most of the universe, at this low level of energy.

 

The worst of our pollution is often the one we don't see... Piss and crap are more or less natural, except when there is too much of it. On top of this we use poisons, create deadly chemicals and produce a destructive amount of warming gases that enter the air we need. All this won't kill us directly soon, but it will precipitate extinction of some species at key tragic moments (tragic for the species — our sense of tragedy only exists if we accept that extinction is a tragedy). 

 

There is not enough room on this planet for humans expanding at a whatever rate forever and for species to survive. It's called habitat destruction when it should be cohabitation, in "separate dwellings" preferably. Zoos are not a salvation for destruction. We need to know the limits... which we have long surpassed, thus we have been in destruction mode for quite a while. 

 

And now our Turd-in-Chief wants to further destroy the northern part of this country for illusionary fairy tale profits. EFFF OFFF, Turd! Leave the space alone! I know it has already been semi-destroyed by grazing and crops, but most of the wildlife has managed to cope while there are still some pockets of "wild". For example, I have studied Cape York's natural and geological aspects in detail, mostly in 1994-95 and, though my memory is a bit fuzzy, I know where to find the info again, including the specific bird populations figures. But the recent degradation of the area by destruction of the bush, under "lawful" tricks of the previous Queensland government, is not a good look... Let's hope the present government has a better understanding.

 

And today, we are advised that Marble Bar (residents: 383) is "happy" to store nuclear waste nearby... Goodo. If you know Marble Bar, you'd be horrified. The place is a repository (not a suppository) for magnificent rock formations and sedimentation like you would not believe... As well Marble Bar is one of the hottest place in Australia.... itself not far from another hot place that used to be close to the South Pole in aeons gone by. The place of course has been called North Pole as a joke because it breaks all Australian temperature records regularly, if my memory is correct...

 

Satan sat by the fires of Hell
As from endless time he's sat,
And he sniffed great draughts of the brimstone's smell
That came as the tongue-flames spat;

Then all at once the devil looked stern
For there in the depths of Hell
Was a fellow whom never a flame could burn
Or goad to an anguished yell;

So Satan stalked to the lonely scene
And growled with a stormy brow,
'Now, stranger, tell me what does this mean?
You should be well scorched by now.'

But the chappie replied with a laugh quite new;
'This place is too cold by far
Just chuck on an extra log or two
I'VE COME IN FROM MARBLE BAR!

Victor Courtney

 

Eventually, sooner than later, like now, we will have to come to our senses, that have been diverted by the unnecessary "need" for unsustainable "growth". 

So whether we believe in god or not, the problem is the same: the surface of the planet is warming up and being destroyed — and this is the only place where we can live, in that small band of biosphere contained within 10 kilometres (less than 5000 metres in reality for breathing) of atmosphere and a few metres of soil, plus a reservoir of salty water, of which we know little. 

This very THIN biospheric band has given birth to millions of species in which we consider the Human species as the most evolved but certainly not the smartest since we're too greedy to see what we're doing to the place. 

So, we're barely awakening to the dangers of our own crap. We keep pushing the self-destruct button, and because we survive, we think the button does not work... As I have mentioned many times on this site, should we be able to feel global warming with our senses, we would be cooked within five years.

Science tells us of the links between pushing the button and the result, which for all we know is a bit like a pedestrian crossing button that we press on and on trying to speed up the change and nothing happens... The change from green to red or red to green happens to a precisely calibrated timer. Having pressed the button once is sufficient to instigate a change,

Meanwhile, we think we smart by fiddling with the timer. We can't wait to prove that global warming is a hoax... The change then is quite rapid, with a slight warning as the traffic lights go orange... Then we cook.

On this global warming issue, We have not seen the orange warning yet, but the change is happening according to the Lagrangian mechanics of climate change... Not only that, we can see the timing device ticking as we madly fiddle with it... The time bomb is ticking and please don't cut the red or the green wire. Just stop producing warming gases. Simple.

I will add here, contrarily to the pope, that we are no adrift in a world of hopeless chaos... We can live as best as we can in a world of relative interaction where particle, atomic and molecular chances has let evolution make us who we are. AND we're STILL EVOLVING. The "endless" cycles are long and various. We cannot dismiss them as they rule whom we are and life in general — the stars, the sun, the planets have various cycles, and so does our DNA and that of other species. These cycle are not "endlessly recurring". We know the Solar System is about 5 billion years old, is "middle aged" and has about 5 billions years of sun existence left in it. 

We know that planets have evolved from spacial dust into congealed blobs, some with a crust, under specific processes that have been expressed by the Laplace cosmic equations. We know that the surface of the planet evolved with shifting continental plates and the shifts are still happening today. The earthquake in Nepal being one the results. We know that we get seasons, Milankovitch cycles and various climatic cycles. We know that some species' DNA, like that of dogs have an average life of 15 years. 

We know that human DNA timing device is around 70-80 years depending where you live and and genetic make up. We also know that some trees can survive beyond 1000 years. We too often see them as timber to make tables and chairs rather than marvels of nature. We're pricks. 

We can do better, religiously or atheistically, it does not matter. But we need to take care of the place, which means not destroy habitats, in order for other species to live in. We can do it as a religious duty or as an altruistic humanism. I don't care what our motivation is, but let's do it. 

For me, I do not need the hope of an eternal life in some paradise. All I need is to be the best I can here, while minimising pain and avoiding hurting others, including species, till the end of my days...

Simple really. I could just care about myself in my room, but I care more about the other life-forms that will be eradicated should we carry on with our carelessness. 

I think the pope understands this.