Defense of environment presupposes personal conversion, says Pope

He [Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombari] said that when asked about the Catholic view on protecting the environment, Benedict XVI stressed that “God, as Creator, cannot be excluded from history.” ...

The Pope believes that those who are conscious of the fact that God has entrusted man with creation have a solid foundation for respecting the environment Father Lombardi explained,. “But if one denies God, the world is reduced to the material, and in a world closed in on its materialism, it is easier for the human being to make himself the dictator of all other creatures and of nature,” he said.

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Speth asks us to consider deeply what represents good growth as opposed to ruthless or irresponsible economic growth. Good growth means growth with equity, employment, care for the environment and empowerment. But present day capitalism (which needs to be distinguished, as Pope John Paul II did in his encyclical, Centessimus Annus, from a ‘market economy’) is both destructive of the environment and no longer really enhancing human well being. Speth, who was once considered a careful, moderate environmentalist, now turns more ‘radical’, supporting moves to revoke corporate charters which undermine the common good; to roll back ‘ limited liability’ for corporations; to re-examine the concept of corporate personhood; to get corporations out of politics.

Because he pays extraordinary attention to the empirical data, Speth’s new ‘radicalism’ which calls for both a transformation in consciousness and a transformation in politics (since, at present, the political system, largely dominated by corporate interests, does not work when it comes to correcting the economic system) is compelling. Speth, coming to see the limits in the currently regnant environmentalism, argues now that “working only within the system will, in the end, not succeed when what is needed is transformative change in the system itself.”

I leave it to readers to harvest for themselves the rich analysis in this new book. Two of Speth’s contentions strongly recommend themselves. He defines getting the environment right in the following terms: full protection of human health, no harvesting of resources beyond long-term sustainable yields, no release of waste products beyond assimilative capacities and full protection of ecosystem structure and function.

To guarantee that these goals might, minimally, be achieved in the narrow time-lines before global warming becomes irreversibly destructive, “ the environmental agenda should expand to embrace a profound challenge to consumerism and commercialization and the lifestyles they offer; a healthy skepticism of growthamania and a sharp focus on what society should actually be striving to grow; a challenge to corporate domination and a re-definition of the corporation and its goals, a commitment to building what the economist Gar Alperavitz calls “ the democratization of wealth”. Suffused as it is with notions of genuine human welfare, the common good, subsidiarity, concern for deliberative democracy and the right of citizens to participative voice, devotees of Catholic Social Teaching will find in this new Speth book rich data for their own social policy proposals.