The cry of the Poor and the cry of the Earth (Fr. Sean McDonagh, SSC)
The following parable, based on an insight I came across recently in the writings of the Muslim scholar Fazlun Khalid, captures some aspects of the present ecological crisis which I will speak about tonight. It highlights, particularly, the inability of many people and, especially, those in leadership roles in institutions to deal with this new and radical challenge in any significant or effective way.
A group people where invited to attend a banquet in a medieval castle. The food was so sumptuous and the drink so delicious that they simply couldn't get enough. They continued to gorge themselves long after the point of satiation. As the night wore on, instead of ending the meal, relaxing and going home, the revelers became more and more intent on securing additional helpings of the mouth-watering food. Their demands became so voracious that fuel to cook the food ran out so the cooks had to chip away at the timber beams that supported the roof to get enough firewood to continue cooking. After a while cracks began to appear in the ceiling. But banqueters were so distracted that they were completely oblivious of what was happening. They simply didn't give a thought to the fact that, unless they stopped hacking at the supporting pillars, the ceiling would eventually come crashing down on their heads. Their obsession with food was endangering not alone those who were feasting but everyone else in the castle compound. .
The din, buzz and activity in the kitchen and dining hall was electrifying. People were milling around the cooking stoves, shouting orders for more food and eating with relish. Yet not everyone was caught up in the frenzy. A small number of people stood by the doors with neither plates nor glasses in their hands. They were imploring the diners to end the meal and thus avert the disaster that was threatening. A few of those eating would occasionally stop to listen to their heartfelt pleas, but as soon as a waiter with food came close, they would lose interest and join in the scramble for more. The majority of those who were celebrating, however, didn't take any notice at all. They were simply so engrossed in the meal that nothing else really mattered.
In my presentation here I will attempt to elucidate some of the issues involved in this parable and look at how they are being addressed by the Churches, especially the leadership of the Catholic Church. I am speaking to you not as an ecologist nor as a development worker, though I have been extensively involved in a variety of roles in the ecological and development arena; I am here as a missionary, as one who has lived for twenty years in the Philippines. This is one of the countries of which people often now call the Majority World.
Until the demise of Marxism the world was divided into three groupings - First, Second and Third world. The First World referred to the industrialized countries of Europe, the United States and Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand. A few countries like Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong have joined this club within the past decade. Even though Australia and New Zealand are in the southern hemisphere and some of the newly industrialized countries are in the tropics, because the majority of industrialized countries are in the northern hemisphere, this block is often referred to today as the North. The Second World comprised the Socialist countries of Eastern Europe, the USSR, China, North Korea and Cuba. With the demise of Marxism became an endangered species! The Third World, often also referred to as 'underdeveloped', included the countries of Africa, Latin America and much of Asia. This block is also often referred to as the South. The term was coined in the 1950s to highlight the economic, social and political connections which still bound the newly independent countries to their former colonial masters, or, at least, to the dominant Western economy. While the term Third World is less offensive than the term 'underdeveloped', it still has major disadvantages. In a hierarchical world it is, after all, third and last. This is why many people are now using the term Majority World. That is where the majority of the people of the world live.
In the Philippines I have seen at first hand the impact which the modern technological, industrial, consumer, throw-away society is having on the poor and the earth itself. I am convinced that it is only when we look at the broader picture of what is happening globally and locally that we can begin to deduce moral and religious principles which can challenge our present earth-consuming way of living. Only then can we begin to take the imaginative leap which will enable us to design anew culture or way of living which will share the goods of the earth more equitably among the peoples of the Earth and which will be less destructive of the natural world.
But let me introduce myself and in the process outline the frame of reference from which I will address this topic. I am an Irish Columban missionary who has spent the past 20 years on mission on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. I arrived in the Philippines just three years after Vatican II ended, and so I have had the privilege of living in one of the most exciting periods in the entire mission history of the Church. During that time, individual missionaries, missionary congregations and Churches have gradually redefined the role of the missionary in today's World and Church. He or she is no longer that distant figure of popular imagination who stalks across Africa wearing a pith hat, baptising "black babies" to ensure their eternal salvation or inoculating them against communicable diseases.
The modern missionary, in continuity with his or her predecessor, are still bearers of Good News. But preaching the gospel or witnessing to the Good News of Jesus Christ takes a variety of different forms today.
Option for the poor
One area where this shift in emphasis, often called a paradigm shift, is clear to many active Christians is the justice and peace ministry. Missionaries and all Christians are challenged today by all the major Churches to promote justice and make a preferential option for those who are poor, discriminated against or marginalized by a particular religious, social, cultural or economic system. For some communities this still means providing relevant education, health care and even emergency relief to those who are forgotten by society or facing death from starvation like many people in Africa today. But spurred on by the reflections of liberation theology, that initially emerged from Latin America in the late 1960s and 1970s, there is widespread agreement that an adequate response to the plight of the poor, especially in the majority world, must go beyond emergency help and address the real social, economic and ecological problems. Missionaries and, for that matter, all Christians are challenged to understand why widespread poverty is still prevalent and sadly is increasing in the world today after four decades of so called "development". It is also quite clear that most people laud the person or organisation which cares for the victims. Just look at the response over the years to the ministry of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. While not everyone would emulate her behaviour she was universally admired and respected.
I do not mean to trivialize or down play the importance of responding to every human need in the way that Mother Teresa did and the Sisters of Charity continue to do. Today. I only mean to contast it with what happens when one raises questions about the structure of society. Conflict almost always ensure when one asks why there are victims? and who benefit from the current unjust system? This tension has been put mostly clearly by one of the greatest religious leaders of the 20th century -Archbishop Helder Camara. He once said that: when I feed the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor are hungry they call me a communist
The City of the poor and the City of the earth My thesis at this point is very simple. In this talk I will attempt a number of things.
1. I will try to show that the demands made by our modem affluent way of living are impoverishing the poor, especially in the majority world. The constant teaching of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and all the Christian Churches is that the goods of this world are meant to sustain all human life on earth. Therefore, an economic and political system, which creates such gross inequalities, by the very logic of its operation, stands condemned by the gospel of Jesus.
I will then proceed on to argue that this same system is also killing the earth itself. You will, of course, appreciate that this is a very large canvas and that all that can be achieved here in one hour are fairly general strokes. Much of the details I have gathered together in books To Care for The Earth (Chapman: London, 1985), Greening of the Church. (Chapman, 1990), Passion for the Earth (Chapman, 1994), Greening the Christian Millennium (Dominican: Dublin, 1999), Why are we Deaf to the City of the Earth (Veritas, Dublin, 2001), Dying for Water (Veritas, 2003) and Patenting Life? Stop! Is corporate greed forcing us to eat GE food? (Dominican, 2003). I will argue that our economic system is precipitating extensive changes to the biosphere, which is diminishing life on Earth for all future generations of humans and other creatures. This devastation of the earth is condemned by the Gospel of Jesus. The thrust of the Gospel of Jesus can be summed up, without distortion, in the text of John 10:10- "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." Anything that diminishes life sins against this.
Next I will examine how the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth challenge dominant institutions in our society, especially, the Catholic Church, and religious institutions. These are only beginning to cope with the impact of our worldwide industrial society on the majority world or the Earth.
Impoverishing the Poor
I will look briefly at the two legs of this tale of woe. While our modern, industrial, throw-away society has benefited multinational corporations, the rich and middle class in First World countries and the elite in majority world, it has impoverished the poor. The top 500 corporations control almost one third of the global Gross National Product (GNP) and 76 percent of world trade. Their power and influence continues to grow. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), TNCs controlled 17 percent of global GNP in the 1960s. By 1984 this had jumped to 24 percent and pushed ahead further to 33 percent by 1995. Sales of the ten largest TNCs now exceed the combined GNP of the world's 100 'least developed' (economically) countries. This includes all of Africa.[1] TNCs are among the most powerful organizations globally and yet they have no obligations to promote human or environmental well being. Their goal is simply to make more and more money. Given the outcry against TNCs in 2002 in the wake of the Enron, World.com and other corporate scandals one would have thought that the corporations would have acted in a less greedy way for at least a few years. Not all all; a recent study from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University entitled “Gainers and Losers from the National Economic Recovery 2002 and 2003 showed that corporate profits gained a larger share of the growth of income than labour did. The study claimed that normally labour gets 65 percent and corporate profits 15 to 18 percent. This time the corporate profit share jumped to an unprecedented 41 percent and labour, in which they include all forms of employee compensation, including wages, benefits, salaries and the percentage of payroll taxes paid by employers) got 38 percent. The study concluded that in no other recovery from a post-World War 11 recession did corporate profits ever account for as much as 20 percent of the growth in national income. And at no time did corporate profits ever increase by a greater amount than labor compensation[2].
The pernicious influence of corporations on issues like pubic health was evident again in recent weeks. A report released by the US House of Representatives committed describes how the Bush administration schemed with U.S. chemical companies to undermine EU plans that would require all chemical companies to test their industrial chemical both for cancer causing properties and their impact on the endocrine system before they could be marketed in Europe. The US administration complained that it would threaten their $20 billion dollar exports of chemicals to Europe because, it was alleged that the cost of testing would be prohibitive. The lobbying has succeeded as the EU has revised the proposals known as Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals. It is obvious that for the Bush administration corporate profits are more important than public health[3].
Rich get richer
Modern development theory and practice assumes that development will take place if the volume of economic activity is increased. In the process some benefit will trickle down to enhance the lives of the poor. This simply does not happen. What, in fact, happens is that the gap between the rich and poor on a national and world wide stage increases as income distribution becomes more lopsided. Today most indicators suggest that poverty has increased dramatically in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South East Asia. The figure stands at 1.2 billion. What is more alarming is the fact that, while the percentage of the world's population who are in this category dropped steadily between the 1950s and the 1970s, it began to climb again during the 1980s. In 1980, for example, the percentage of the world's population living in extreme poverty stood at 22.3%. By the end of the decade the figure had risen to 23.4%.
At the beginning of the 21st century the situation is even worse. In 2003 the richest 10 percent of the world's population has an income 117 times higher than the poorest 10 percent. These figures have been produced by the Economics Policy Institute, using data provided by the International Monetary Fund. This is a huge jump from the ratios that held as recently as the 1980s. At that time the richest 10 percent was about 79 percent higher than the poorest 10 percent.[4]
There is something profoundly immoral about a world where 400 individuals in the United States make more money than the entire population of 20 African states - more than 300 million people in all[5].
Third World Debt The Third World debt, which at present stands at something in the region of $2.3 trillion, is an excellent example of one mechanism, which enables rich countries to fleece countries of the majority world. The Sub-Sahara nations, some of the poorest in the world and many facing an HIV/AID owes $200 billion. Many of these debts were contracted with the connivance of Northern governments and bankers in the 1970s when Northern banks were flush with petrodollars and wished to recycle them and in the process make a hefty profit. Northern governments knew that the loans were being made to repressive regimes, like the Marcos regime in the Philippines which, it is commonly believed, embezzled much of the money and squandered the rest on projects which were of little benefit to the majority of poor people in the country. In the early 1980s the debts ballooned out of control, mainly through currency fluctuations, rising interest rates and the dramatic drop in commodity prices in Northern countries.
Servicing these debts has placed an enormous burden on most Southern countries today. Susan George in her recent book, The Debt Boomerang gives some mind-boggling data on the figures involved in this transfer of wealth to the rich[6]. During the period 1982 to 1990 there was a net transfer of $418 billion dollars from the poor South to the rich North. To give some idea of the huge sums involved she calculates that the poor of the world have financed six Marshall Plans for the rich through the single mechanism of debt servicing alone. The HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) initiative aimed at some form of debt relief for the 42 poorest countries in the world has only had modest success. I have just come from the Philippines where foreign debt is still a mill stone around the neck of the people absorbing almost 40 percent of the budget each. This is money that should be spent on education, health care and promoting environmental programmes, especially those on biodiversity.
The World Bank, for example, assiduously promotes itself as the knight in shining armor battling to eliminate poverty in the South. Critics of the Bank tell another story. They are scathing in their attack both on the dismal environmental and development record of the bank and on its autocratic and secretive procedures. Billion have been spent on poorly conceived projects -roads, dams, irrigation and power plants. An internal review in 1994 found that 37 percent of the projects have been colossal failures and have severely damaged fragile ecosystems[7]. The Bank has pursued its "development" goals around the world through promoting economic growth, free trade, untrammeled entry of foreign investment and the integration of local economies into the global economy without ever considering that these very policies might be impoverishing people and destroying, irreversibly, indispensable eco-systems, like the rain forests. It has used the foreign debt crisis and accompanying structural adjustment programs to fostered policies that have, in the main, benefited Northern construction companies and banks and the Southern elite. According to an 1997 UNCTAD (The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) report[8]: In almost all developing countries that have undertaken rapid trade liberalization, wage inequality has increased, most often in the context of declining industrial employment of unskilled workers and large absolute falls in real wages, of the order of 20-30 percent in some Latin American countries. Sweat shops switch from Mexico to El Salvador to Indonesia and now China in search of lower wages and unregulated conditions -or, as the World Bank and IMP put it, labour market flexibility. In January 2003 the IMF complained that so-called labour market reforms do not go far enough because the minimum wage is still indexed to the cost of living.
For the past two decades the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMP) have acted as global police for the Western capitalist. They have imposed conditions of repayment on countries in the majority world, which have caused starvation, illiteracy, political and social breakdown and irreversible destruction to important ecosystems like the rainforests. These two institutions are now ably support by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) since it succeeded the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1995.
In my recent book Patenting Life? Stop! Is corporate greed forcing us to eat GE food? I argue that the TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Properties) agreement of the WTO will effectively give control of the staple foods of the world to a handful of TNCs who will make billions of dollars from selling GE crops. Joseph Stiglitz who won a Nobel Prize for economics in 2001 is scathing on the way the World Bank, the IMP and the WTO have mismanaged the process of privatization and that their advice has left many former communist countries and majority countries much worse off than they were [9].
Destroying the Earth
My parable at the beginning of the talk linked the impoverishment of I people with the destruction of the environment. The most important thing to do when looking at the details of environmental devastation is to present it in an adequate context of understanding so that the implications of the data can be clearly appreciated. Unless this happens it is very easy to fall into what I call the approach to the environment. This merely lists environmental problems and adds them to a list of other woes like poor housing, unemployment, immigration, social tension etc.
This trivializes the environmental issue for two reasons. Firstly, each new report of environmental damage is seen in isolation and thus the cumulative and global impact of what is happening can easily be missed. Looked on merely on a case-by-case basis we can delude ourselves into thinking that ecological destruction is not a serious threat to life and that environmental campaigners are like the boy in the wolf story, simply trying to attract attention when there is no danger.
Secondly, there is often a time lag problem. No sane person will jump from a five-story building and hope to survive. The result of the action is immediate. This, however, is not true in the domain of environmental problems like global warming, acid rain, ozone depletion, or mercury poisoning. It may be decades before the impact of our actions today is truly appreciated or will affect the earth and human community. Since our industrial society is focused on immediate responses and immediate gratification, this time lag permits politicians and communities to leave environmental issues to one side and concentrate instead on tangible problems, like unemployment or inflation. The tragedy is that some of the responses to today's problems, like unemployment can exacerbate environmental damage and thus preclude the possibility for really good human work in a local area for decades or even centuries.
Humans are causing changes of a biological and geological order magnitude. We are ending the Cenozoic period.
So what is at stake in all of this? Put briefly, we are invited to recognize that, apart from creating the saga of human pain and, injustice I have outlined above, our modem industrialized society is also destroying our water, air, sunlight, soils and causing the extinction of a vast number of creatures which God has placed on this earth with, us. The scale of the destruction is enormous. Every part of the globe and every ecosystem on earth is now affected, in some situations in an irreversible way. The human and, therefore, moral and religious challenge of our times is to halt this destruction and heal, where possible, the damage which has already been inflicted on the planet.
The most comprehensive way of understanding our present historical situation is to see it from a geological and biological perspective rather than in a historical or cultural one. The changes which humans have brought about to the planet in the past 200 years, but especially during the past 50 are changing the chemistry of the air and water, transforming the soils and bringing about mega-extinction.
In a very real way we are witnessing the end of an era Cenozoic (or new life period) which has lasted for the past 60 million years. This is the period in which most of the life forms with which we are familiar - with some exceptions - came into full flowering. We are challenged to enter into what one commentator, Fr. Thomas Berry, calls the ecozoic period or ecological age. As we enter this age human beings must stop acting like a cancer on the rest of creation and must develop a mutually enhancing relationship between themselves and the rest of creation. This will require anew sensitivity towards all the living and non-living members of the natural community to which we belong. It will mean, as we will see later, a major shift from a totally human centered religious and moral preoccupation, which is where we have been until now, to an eco-centered one. I will briefly look at how crucial life-systems on our planet have already been damaged.
Water
Let us look briefly at some of what we have learned over the past decade. In May 2002 the -United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) published a Report called Global Environment Outlook. The Report was based on the work of over one thousand scientists and was prepared for the Summit on Sustainable Development, which was held in Johannesburg in August 2002. The report states that human activity is polluting water in rivers, aquifers, lakes and the ocean around the world. The situation is extremely serious and poised to get worse unless concerted action is taken at local, national and global levels. The report estimated that 1.2 billion people, about one fifth of the world's population have no access to clean water. 2.5 billion have no adequate sanitation. This is over one third of the world's population. The report projects that unless the situation is addressed in a serious way by the year 2032 over two-thirds of the world's population will be living in a water-stressed condition.
Such water scarcity could lead to major wars in this century .The conflict between Israel and Palestine is one of the running sores of our time. We know that it has the potential to destabilize the Middle East and the world. We seldom hear of what might be called the "water dimension" of the conflict. To put it simply Jewish communities have seven times as much water per capita as the Palestinian[10]. The Tigris-Euphrates river system is another potential water hot spot. In the past decade Turkey has spent $30 on dams and irrigation systems, forcing countries that are downstream, like Syria and Iraq to curtail their water requirements. There is tension between India and Pakistan over the waters and tributaries of the Indus. In May 2002 prominent Indian politicians called on their government to scrap the Indus Water Treaty unless Pakistan stops terrorists crossing over into Kashmir[11].
Water will be a problem in this century. There is a need for concerted action about local, national and the international level to address this problem. Dr. Peter Gleick, director of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development and Security in Oakland California told a the Third Water Forum in Kyoto in Apri1 2003, that $10 to $20 billion would go a long way to address many of the issues about water, provided that the money was spent on community based projects, and not on massive expensive and problematic dams[12]. The World Bank is not impressed. At the moment it is aggressively promoting water privatization which will reap billion of dollars for TNCs. Water companies do not serve the needs of the poor who, like all other human beings, need water to live.
The 2002 Social Justice Sunday Statement shows an awareness of the water crisis in Australia - the driest continent on the planet. The Bishops state: The health of the Murray-Darling Basin epitomizes the ecological crisis. This once great waterway new surrenders 80 percent of it flow for human consumption. Since European settlement between 12 and 15 billion trees have been lost to the Basin. This river system, which is a major artery of Australia's agriculture, is exhausted and dying. Because of water removal for irrigation, the river at times does not have the strength to reach the sea.
Land People also need food yet the land yet fertile land is being lost at an unprecedented rate. Poor land management, overgrazing, chemical agriculture, deforestation and population pressures have caused soil erosion and desertification on an unprecedented scale. About 3500 million hectares - an area the size of North and South America are affected by desertification. Each year at least another six million hectares of land are irretrievably lost to desertification, and a further 21 million hectares are so degraded that crop production is severely affected.
World-wide about 85 billion tons of soil are lost each year. Most of this damage, unfortunately, is in the majority world. In the Philippines, for example, the Bishops in a pastoral letter entitled, What is happening to our beautiful land? Estimated that 100,000 hectares one meter thick is being lost each year, mainly as a result of deforestation, mono cropping and planting in hilly areas, which are unsuitable for annual crops.
Most of the money invested in agriculture in recent decades, especially by multilateral lending agencies like The World Bank was used for mega-projects like irrigation or for farm machinery, agricultural credit and petrochemicals. This form of agriculture is extremely expensive because it is dependant on foreign loans and imported petrochemicals and seeds. It benefits the agribusiness corporations, oil companies, the manufacturers of farm equipment, banks and the large farmers. It has impoverished the poor and in many parts of the world it has destroyed the fertility of the soil.
Repeated research in many parts of the world has demonstrated that the most successful programs aimed at halting desertification and soil erosion are, in fact, cheap, local, and small in scale and run by those who are most intimately affected. They involve tree planting, improved farming techniques and, especially small-scale organic farming and better land use. Unfortunately very little money has been made available by governments or multilateral lending agencies for such programs, whereas millions have been poured into research institutes like the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños near Manila in the Philippine which have pioneered and promoted chemical agriculture.
Agribusiness - a move from diversity to monocropping and corporate control is devastating the earth and impoverished human communities
Agribusiness has undermined diversity at the biological and human level and led to the demise of the family farm. Since the end of World War II forty million people left agriculture in the US. When agribusiness enters into a local community the profits they make there are seldom reinvested in the rural community. They are repatriated to the urban area or, in the case of the majority world to the "mother" country. Studies in Australia and the US have shown that for each person leaving farming another job is lost to the rural towns, which serve the farming community. Agribusiness rationalization plans invariably leads to closure of local processing units.
Walter Goldschmidt's study in California's Central Valley confirms that where viable family-farms predominated the people in the surrounding rural towns had a higher standard of living, better community facilities, public services and amenities like parks, stores and civic organizations, than in towns where corporate agriculture held sway[13].
Poisoning the Earth
The environmental cost of so-called modern agriculture has been well documented worldwide since Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring. Pressure to increase productivity and output ensures that farmers employ techniques, which are incompatible with environmental safety. Artificial fertilizers do improve plant growth but they do not improve the quality of the soil.
Short-term benefits, long-term misery:
By the mid 1970s the corporate world had reaped the benefit of the changed agricultural focus. In the US, for example, a mere twenty corporations controlled poultry production. Twelve oil companies have reorganized the beeflot. They have moved away from the 1,000 to 10,000 acre lots in the mid-West to 100,000-acre lots in Texas. Twenty-five of the largest supermarket chains accounted for over half the US retail food sales. In California alone forty- five corporations owned 3.7 million hectares -over half the farmland of the state.
In the long-term it is destroying the fertility of land and the rivers and impoverishing human communities. It is based on a concept of soil mining and as such it has no long-term future. It can have no place in an eco-centered moral world where human activity is challenged to fit in with the natural rhythms of the earth and establish a sustainable, mutually enhancing relationship.
Impoverishment is poised to intensify with the introduction of genetically engineered plants and animals. Let us be absolutely clear about one thing genetically engineered food is not about feeding the world. As George Monbiot writes in The Guardian it is about permitting a handful of powerful and rich transnational corporations to control the staple food of the world[14]. The companies have created crops which cannot grow without the application of their patented chemicals. Their terminator technology allows them to develop plants that will suicide on second planting. Most staggering of all in the words of the former environment minister in Britain, Michael Meacher, no systematic testing has yet been carried out on the health impacts of eating GE foods[15]
In my book Patenting Life? Stop! I challenge the “feed the world” argument which even the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace was beginning to believe last year. I also argue that patents on life forms – seeds and animals – are morally repugnant. Like is the case of slavery nothing can ameliorate their destructive impact. They threaten food security, sanction biopiracy of indigenous knowledge and genetic resources, violated basic human rights and dignity, compromise healthcare, impede medical research and scientific research and are against the welfare of animals[16].
Let us not forget that often times there is plenty of food in a country even in the midst of famine. This was true of Ireland in the 1840s. In The Poverty of Nations, William Murdock reported that during the Sahelian famine in the mid-1980s the acreage planted to groundnuts in Senegal increased, while that planted to sorghum and millet for local consumption actually decreases. A similar picture emerged from Brazil. Between 1977 and 1984 the production of basic foods like rice, black beans, manioc and potatoes fell by 13 per cent. While during the same period the output of exportable food -soybeans, oranges, cotton, peanuts and tobacco - jumped 15 per cent.
The Greenhouse Effect The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, methane, CFCs and other "greenhouse" gases are expected to increase by 30 percent during the next 50 years. This build-up is likely to increase the Earth's surface temperature by between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees centigrade by the year 2030. This will cause major, and in the main, deleterious climatic changes. During the last Ice Age, the Earth's temperature was only 5 degrees C colder than it is today. In Northern latitudes, winters will probably be shorter and wetter, summers longer and drier. Sub- tropical areas might become more drier and more arid and tropical ones wetter. The changes will have major, but as yet unpredictable, effects on agriculture and natural eco-systems. As the oceans warm up and expand, sea levels will rise, leading to severe flooding over lowland areas. Much of Bangladesh and the low-lying areas in many countries will simply disappear. Storms of greater ferocity will probably become more frequent.
In January 2004 the chief scientist in Britain, Sir David King, claimed that "climate change is the most serious problem facing (the earth) today, more serious than the threat of terrorism". Sir David criticized the Bush Administration in the US for pulling out of the Kyoto protocol It was obvious to any scientist that sea levels were rising, ice caps were melting and flooding had become more frequent. The ten hottest years began in 1991 and average temperatures have risen, worldwide by 0.6 degrees centigrade in the past century. As a consequence of continual warming, million more people around the world may in future be exposed to the risk of hunger, drought, flooding and debilitating diseases such as malaria[17].
According to Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia the summer of 2003 from June to August was the warmest ever recorded in western and central Europe. The average temperatures for those three months was 4 degrees centigrade above the long-term norm[18]. With economic growth in both China and India it is reasonable to expect that greenhouse gas emissions will increase dramatically in the next two decades. China’s primary energy source is coal. It amounts for 70 percent of the power supply. Experts predict that it will pass the United States as the world’s biggest source of carbon by the year 2020[19]
The Bishops of Australia in their Social Justice Statement for 2002 entitled New Earth - the Environmental Challenge put the global warming challenge very clearly: Possibly the most disturbing environmental phenomenon of recent times is the threat of global warming. The majority of environmental scientists agree that the release of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere is threatening to change our climate patterns, raise sea levels and harm life on earth.
As the worst emitters per person of greenhouse gases, on the planet, Australian are particularly challenged in justice to reflect on the plight of our Pacific Island nation neighbors. Thecry of seven million inhabitants of these beautiful islands, including Tuvalu, Kiribati, Palau, Tonga, Nauru and the Cook Islands who fear that their lands will be battered and submerged by rising sea levels and changing weather patterns, requires us to take immediate measures to reduce green house gas emission[20].
In 1990 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that global emissions must immediately be reduced by over 60 percent in order to stabilize carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at reasonably safe levels. Instead of cutting fuel emissions they have risen by 10 percent in the past decade and a half. Unless emissions are seriously addressed immediately our world will not be a pleasant place for our children or grandchildren[21].
We need to bring pressure on governments to implement the Kyoto Protocol immediately even though the cuts mandated by Kyoto, ranging from 5.2 to 7.0 percent cut on 1990 figures by the year 2010, are minuscule when compared with the 60 cuts which the IPCC feel are necessary to stabilize global climates. In the interests of the common good and future generations governments must stop subsidizing new oil, gas and coal projects to the tune of $300 billion each year. This money should be spent on developing alternative sources of energy such as wind, solar, wave, tidal, geothermal, biomass and hydro projects. Each one of us ought to take personal responsibility for the way we use fossil fuel to heat our houses. These should be energy efficient with double glazed windows. We should travel lightly. Global transport, especially increased air transport, is the second largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions (24 percent). Everyone who cares about the future should take climate change seriously and take every effort to spread the message in order to bring about the change that is absolutely necessary.
Tropical Forests
Tropical forests once covered 20 per cent of the land area of the earth. This is no longer so. They are disappearing at an extraordinary rate. An area greater than the United Kingdom is cleared and destroyed each year. The forests have been cleared through logging, cattle ranching and the need to open up lands for agriculture, often because much of the arable land in tropical countries is in the hands of a small percentage of the elite.
The 2002 Social Justice Sunday Statement reminds us that: The tropical rainforests of north-east Queensland which, more than any other forests in the world are a living link with the vast forests that grew many millions of years ago. This area is blessed with ancient giant trees such as the 3,500 Macintyre Boxwood, living at the time of, and sharing the earth with Jesus himself
The document quotes from the Australian Conservation Foundation and Wilderness Society. These warn that: the threats to unprotected forests have never been greater. The Australian native bush is being cleared at well over one hundred times the rate that it is being replanted. In the year 2000, Australia exported seven million tones of woodchip from native forests -the majority from Tasmania, just 10 percent of Australia original old growth forests remains.
Extinction
The destruction of the tropical forests will have many ill effects on agriculture, human livelihood, the health and productivity of nearby rivers and estuaries and even on local and global climate patterns. The greatest tragedy of all is the mega-extinction of species, which is following in the wake of the destruction of the forests. Already tens of thousands of species have been lost. E.O. Wilson, a Harvard Biologist and author of Biophilia estimates that we are losing 30,000 species each year. Many would consider this to be a conservative estimate, but Wilson warns that the destruction of species will soar as the last remaining areas of tropical forests are exploited and destroyed. "Ruling out nuclear war, the worst thing now taking place is the loss of genetic diversity", Wilson writes[22].
Professor Chris Thomas of Leeds University wrote an article in the Journal Nature in January 2004. He was reporting the findings of a team of 19 scientists who were researching the impact of global warming on plants, birds, reptiles, mammals, frogs, butterflies and other invertebrates using computer models. The scientists were shocked when the discovered that an estimated 1 million species will be lost through global warming alone. 25 percent of all the bird species of the world are affected, as are 54 percent of butterfly species .
If the present rate of extinction continues fifty per cent or even more of all the life- forms on earth could be extinguished during the next few decades. Norman Myers -a British biologist and author of an important work on the rainforest -The Ultimate Resource -considers that the present "extinction spasm" is the greatest set back to life's abundance and diversity since the first flickering of life emerged almost four billion years ago. Extinction on such a scale is so horrendous that it is difficult to grasp. Our inability to comprehend the magnitude of what is happening is increased by the fact that few of the people who make economic and political decisions, which have world- wide repercussions, have any intimate knowledge of the rainforest or any other ecosystem on planet earth.
One of the saddest facts about this mega-extinction is not willed as such. Humans, in fact, have only consciously set about extinguishing one species - small-pox. The mega-extinction is, however, a direct result of the expansion of the industrial economy into fragile eco- systems like rainforests. Because the reality of extinction and the process by which it is taking place is removed from us, our traditional human-centered moral and ethical categories fail to even register what is happening, not to mention, respond to it in a creative way. Our moral principles can deal in an extensive way with suicide, homicide and even genocide, but we have no way of dealing with biocide or geocide. The following quotation from Fr. Thomas Berry attempts to broaden the parameters of our moral universe and thereby enable us to comprehend what is taking place in our times and develop the wider moral categories, which are essential if we are to respond to this unprecedented slaughter. Fr. Berry insists that:
extinction is an eternal concept. It is not at all like killing of individual life forms that can be renewed by the normal process of reproduction...nor is it something that can be remedied...nor is it something which affects only our own generation. No! It is an absolute and final act for which there is no remedy on earth or in heaven[23].
The labor and care and energy expended over some billions of years and untold billions of experiments to bring forth such a gorgeous earth, all this is being negated within less than a century of what we consider as progress towards a better life in a better world.
Summary
One could continue to pile depressing data on data, but the data I have presented above gives us a valid framework with which to begin to appreciate what is happening to our planet and happening locally in Ireland. Human industrial activity is changing the chemistry of the air and water, altering the hydrological cycles and upsetting the entire self -renewing pattern of nature that has taken billions of years to emerge. Only now are we beginning to wake up to the consequence of our activity. There is, of course, a deep irony in what has happened. Western human beings set out, through the mastery of science and its handmaid technology to make human beings as independent as possible of nature and to ensure that nature was subservient to human decisions. While the endeavor has provided enormous comforts for a small segment of humanity, it has impoverished the majority world and is now threatening the very survival of many of the earth's creatures, including human beings.
One of the great tragedies of our time is that we, as a human community have access to the technology and resources that would be needed to begin caring for both humans and nature. These resources are being wasted on militarism. In 2002 global military spending topped $US800 billion. Heading the list was the US with a military budget of $343.2 billion.
For about one third of the global annual military spending the human community could eliminate starvation ($19 billion), provide shelter ($21 billion), remove landmines ($4 billion), eliminate nuclear weapons ($7 billion, eliminate illiteracy ($5 billion), provide clean water ($10 billion), provide health care and address the AIDs crisis ($21 billion), stop deforestation ($7 billion), prevent global warming ($8 billion), achieve energy efficiency ($33 billion), develop renewable energy ($17 billion), prevent soil erosion ($24 billion)[24] .
President George Bush has submitted a $401 billion dollar budget for the military for the year 2005[25]. This is a 10 percent increase in allocation. At the same time he plans to cut the EPA budget by 7 percent. Unfortunately, Australia wants to flex its military muscle also at this time. In February 2004 the defense minister, Robert Hill, announced that the government plans to increase overall military spending by $A21 billion over the next 10 years. This proposal shows that the Australia government plans to be George Bush's sheriff in the Southern hemisphere. This initiative will place Australia behind Japan and Saudi Arabia as the biggest military spenders outside of Europe[26]. What a colossal waste of money at a time when all these resources are necessary for defeating poverty, promoting justice and protecting the fragile ecosystems of the planet. In truth military spending is the ultimate example of the paradox of conscious purpose. The stated aim of military spending is to make the world more secure. In reality the enormous waste of money and other resources on arms and armies is making the world a very insecure place for everyone. Military spending bankrupt the Soviet Union and may very well bankrupt other nations too. We should do all in our power to oppose the increased militarisation of the planet.
Maria A. Ressa, the CNN’s bureau chielf in Jakarta in her book Seeds of Terror, believes that the U.S. lost support among many Third World people for its war on terrorism when it invaded Iraq. By attacking Iraq, the United States became both the hero and villain of the war on terror, its actions making it the most powerful recruitment tool Osama bin Laden could have wished for. Instead of focusing its forces on al-Qaeda, it squandered its strength on an old enemy, giving Muslims around the world more reasons to distrust its motives. The Pew Global Attitude Project survey, released in June 2003, showed that public support for the war on terror in most Muslim nations had fallen…..In 2000, 75 percent of Indonesians said they had a favorable opinion of the United States. In 2003, 83 percent had an unfavorable opinion of America[27]
What can we do as individuals? Let me return to the 2002 Social Justice Sunday Statement. The bishops point out that:
the principle of subsidiarity suggests that responsibility for decision making and action should be kept as close as possible to those most directly affected by a decision or policy.
Politicians and public servants can do much to protect and rejuvenate our ecosystems and natural resources. Stronger environmental protection legislation, accelerated research into safe and renewable sources of energy, further education in ecological responsibility, programmes to address pressing environmental issues such as global warming, land clearing, salination and the sustainable management of natural resources are all needed. Retraining and new employment opportunities are needed for workers displaced by such changes. When we vote in local, state and federal elections, individuals and community groups can encourage, support and challenging governments by assessing the environmental policies of the different parties.
Consumers and traders can promote environmentally healthy practices by exercising their right of choice and advising business of the reason for their decision. Shareholders, too, should use their votes responsibly on corporate resolutions and the election of board members. Those in leadership and managerial roles, from family firms to transnational corporations, are encouraged to demonstrate ethical business practices and good corporate governance.
As individuals we all have a responsibility to do what we can to build a more just and sustainable world. If we do not begin to change things in the next few years the future will be very bleak for our children’s children and for the earth.
[1] Financial Market Lobbying: A New Political Space for Activists, 2002, The Come[House, PO Box 31137, Station Road, Sturminster Newton, Dorset DTIOIY , UK, page 2. [2] Bob Herbert, “We’re More Productive. Who Gets the Money? The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05opinion page 1 of 2. [3] Elizabeth, Becher, “Panel says U.S. undercut European plan on health: Rules on testing chemicals were modified”, The International Herald –Tribune, Saturday-Sunday, April 3-4, 2004, page 8. [4] Robert Weissman, "Grotesque Inequality: Corporate Globalization and the Global Gap between Rich and Poor", Multinational Monitor, July/August 2003, page 9. [5] Ibid. [6] George, Susan, 1992, The Debt Boomerang, Pluto, 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA [7] Linda Gary MacKay, "World Bank and IMF have failed, the poor pay the price,”Boston Globe, July 14, 1994, [8] Robert Weisman, op. cit" page 12, [9] Joseph Stiglitz, 2002, Globalization and its Discontents, Penguin Books. [10] Philip Ball, "Running on Empty", Financial Times Weekend, October 3, 1999, page 3. [11] Fred Pearce, "Water war: India could suck Pakistan dry" New Scientist, March 1,2003, [12] Peter Gleick, "World Water Spending Priorities Misguided", www .pacinstorg/kyoto Apri14, 2003, page 2. [13] quoted in Geoffrey Lawrence's, Agribusiness in Australia, page 54. [14] George Monbiot, “Starved of the truth” The Guardian Weekly, March 18- 24, page 12. [15] Michael Meacher, “You reap what you sow”, The Guardian, April 7, 2004. www.society.guardian.co.uk> page 2 of 2. [16] See World Scientists’ Statement, Institute of Science in Society website www.i-sis.org.uk [17] Steve Connor, "US climate policy is a bigger threat to world than terrorism", Independent, January 9, 2004, page I [18] Peter Bunyard, "Crossing the threshold", The Ecologist, February 2004, Page 55. [19] Jim Yardley, “China’s Economic Engine Needs Power (Lots of It). New York Times. Wwwnytimes.com/2004/03/14/weekin review. Page 1 of 2. [20] A New Earth – the Environmental Challenge, 2002 Social Justice Sunday Statement, Australian Bishops. [21] John von Radowitz, "Global Warming", The Irish Examiner, January 9,2004, page 3. [22] Wilson, E.O, 1984, Biophilia, Harvard University Press, page 122. [23] Thomas Berry, "Ethics and Ecology", Riverdale Series, unpublished paper. [24] 18 FACT FILE: THE WAY OF PEACE, Columban Mission Institute, 420 Bobbin Head Road, North Turramurra. Source: Victorian Peace Network: Fact Sheet No, I. www.vicpeace.org [25] Bob Kemper, “Bush seeks $2.4 trillion”, Chicago Tribune, February 2, 2004, page 1. [26] David Fickling, “Australia doubles defence spending in desire to become top military player”, www.guardian.co.uk/international/story> 02/05/2004. [27] Maria A. Ressa, Seeds of Terror, 2003, Free Press, New York, page 190.