Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Why the Doctrine of Sustainability is Anti-Catholic and the Pope Should Reject It
Back in May, I noticed an article on CRISIS magazine’s website that I knew I wouldn’t have the proper time to devote to reading. It was titled, What Does “Sustainability” Really Mean?, so I added it to my menu bar for later perusal. It was worth the wait.
“Sustainability” is one of those watchwords which has found common usage across the political spectrum. On the left, it typically raises concerns about the environmental impact of humans using limited natural resources like water and fossil fuels. On the right, there’s more worry over the sustainability of a government or economic system burdened by $18 trillion of debt. Having read William M. Briggs’s excellent article hasn’t changed my mind about the latter, but it has given me pause about the concept of sustainability generally. There’s just so much we simply don’t (and can’t) know.
What are the known unknowns? Well, for starters, how much of the finite resource is currently available? Then, what will be the demand for the currently desired effect in the future (somewhat population dependent — another unknown)? Finally, will there be a replacement technology developed or some other factor which changes the rate of usage? Here’s how Briggs puts it:
The calculation is complicated. To decide if a non-renewable resource is unsustainable depends on how much of it there is, the changing rate of its use, and the number of people expected in the future. It also hinges on whether the non-renewable will remain non-renewable, that a substitute for the non-renewable will not be discovered, and that the effect caused by use of the non-renewable will always be desired. We must know all these things, else the point at which we run out of the non-renewable will be unknown. If we do not know all these things, it is wrong to claim use of a resource is “unsustainable.”
Ah, problems with limited information and an inability to predict the future duly noted. But, how does this relate to the Catholic Church, you may ask?
People. The Church’s concern is with people and their relationship to the Divine — something any fair-minded observer of the environmental sustainability movement will admit is incompatible with its goal of “minimal impact” on Pure Nature. In the New Manicheanism of environmentalism, people are the problem of evil. All would be right with Nature if it weren’t for dirty, rotten, filthy, wasteful people. Ptui!
It’s somewhat shocking then to learn that the Pontifical Academy for Science (PAS) has used the term “sustainable population” unironically. By doing so, it accepts the false premise that people and nature are separate with opposing interests, and it calls into question the PAS’s dedication to the idea of just Who Is the Author of Life. Whose side are they on anyway?!
This is where Malthus is usually invoked. But Briggs is helpful in explaining how we get Malthus wrong:
It is not that more people are encroaching upon more food sources, it is that more food leads to more people. Plentiful, cheap, and nutritious food caused, or rather allowed, the increase. Think: if there is not enough food, there cannot be an increase in population! It follows there cannot be “too many” people.
Briggs further explains there cannot be too many people in either the scientific or eschatological sense. He quotes Father Schall:
The root of the “sustainability mission,” I suspect, is the practical denial of eternal life. “Sustainability” is an alternative to lost transcendence. It is what happens when suddenly no future but the present one exists. The only “future” of mankind is an on-going planet orbiting down the ages. It always does the exact same, boring thing. This view is actually a form of despair. Our end is the preservation of the race down the ages, not personal eternal life.
“Sustainability” as it is commonly used by environmentalists is not just incompatible with the mission and ethic of the Church, it’s incompatible with the truth. Which is really a way of saying the same thing.
Pope Francis uses the word “sustainable” in its various forms over two dozen times in his environmental encyclical Laudato Si. This is a mistake. Sustainability is a false doctrine which should be rejected by the Church.
It will take me at least another six months to figure out if conservatives should also reject the idea of economic/fiscal sustainability. A little help?
Published in Environment, Religion & Philosophy
Western ChauvinistIt will take me at least another six months to figure out if conservatives should also reject the idea of economic/fiscal sustainability. A little help?
Is it the same process ? Prices change inducing new discoveries, fostering new technologies etc. Fiscal issues would be the same if they were subject to the same market forces, but they are monopolies controlled by rent seekers and can continue avoiding the daily adjustments that occur in markets. Lighting was sustainable but not whale oil. Countries that cannot print their own foreign exchange as we can, face balance of payments constraints sooner and more often. They reach a point where nobody will lend them money and as they approach that point interest rates rise and, one way or another, they adjust. We, in contrast, can print our own foreign exchange so we can continue to enrich the rent takers for much longer, getting more rigid along the way for longer. All things human subject to constant challenge become adaptable and learn to accommodate change because those that don’t learn, die, those that survive, get stronger. Government controlled economies aren’t like that they’re rigid monopolies and become brittle; only balance of payments constraints force them toward reality. We’re different. The nanny state and the Fed are allowing us to become brittle. But, we’ll adapt, that is what humans do but our free market system and representative government may not nor our global role. We can be made adaptable. Gold.
I have seen windmill fields like that, but more often these days the ones I see are mostly working.
You would be in favor of them if they were actually sustainable and were making an honest profit for the businesses involved, wouldn’t you?
As to my Don Quixote, I enjoy jousting more than the usual conservative head-butting. And as far as I know, it’s more effective.
I was just teasing you. I think leftwing conceit is insurmountable for the most part. You get an occasional convert (famous ones like Mamet), but mostly they hold the positions the do because it makes them feel so darned good about themselves! That’s pretty hard to overcome with talk of subsidies and inefficiencies.
As to the “sustainability” of wind power, it’s not really the issue is it? The issue is, “at what cost?” There’s no free lunch.
Wind energy is diffuse and unreliable. It sucks (blows?) at providing transportation energy and its contribution to the grid will always require a more steadfast backup like coal or nuclear(! If I believed in central planning, I’d have us using a lot more nuclear!). And the cost is both the unsightliness of wind farms, maintenance (sometimes those turbines are running on motors(!) because it costs more to start them from a standstill than it’s worth), and lots and lots of area! If we carpeted the interior US (which also happens to be the bread basket), we might achieve “sustainable” wind energy. Maybe.
My antipathy toward wind energy isn’t political — it’s physics and aesthetics.
Wind turbines in the Columbia Gorge are inefficient. If there is too much wind, or if it becomes too cold they have to shut down.
They are very efficient at providing tax and ratepayer subsidies to the wind turbine manufacturers. They are also very efficient eagle killers.
You can no longer build a home in the Gorge because it would spoil the view, but you can build wind turbines because green energy is beautiful.
Doug,
Think of all the small lies and hypocrisies involved in Green Energy projects like this. It all amounts to a giant scam rip-off of the tax payers.
Of course, the best part is the really big lie of MMGW. As everything is predicated on this one huge lie it makes the rest pale into insignificance. One can only lean back and gaze in awe at the criminal mentality that continues to foster this nonsense.
Regards,
Jim
I think leftwing motives are more malign than wanting to feel good.
As to whether wind turbines are sustainable, that’s not a question conservatives would answer by sitting here at the Ricochet Central Planning Bureau and saying, “Yeah, they’re ugly, unreliable and kill eagles. Shut them down.” That’s a question to be decided by the free market. Do they work well enough to make it worth the investment without subsidies?
And I hope the Ricochet Environmental Planning Commission would look at the overall effect on the eagle population, not just on whether an eagle here or there dies at their hands.
And if they would be sustainable in a free market, I hope the Ricochet Liberty Caucus would rejoice in the fact that their locations are determined by free market choices of landowners, and not by taking land at govt gunpoint the way pseudo-conservatives take land for oil pipelines.
Sorry – late to the party. But I saw this article and thought of your post.