Rational climate change response requires moral focus

Do we treat the environment as a public good in which we all share? Does our pattern of resource use allow others to achieve adequate health and wellbeing? Does it pressure others, particularly the poor, to adopt environmentally damaging economic practices? These questions are derived from the work of US Jesuit Fr John Coleman, who has proposed ten commandments for environmentally responsible living. We inhabit a culture where scientists propose previously unthinkable outcomes that can now be achieved. These include modifying food, changing the direction of river flows, and adjusting the genetic makeup of human beings. The assumption is that if it can be done, it should be done. In our world, such rationality has achieved a great deal. Energy resources have been harnessed, and labour saving devices have been developed. We have vaccines, which enable us to use nature against itself to preserve life. The list is indefinite, but frightening. I'm not proposing the abandonment of reason. I’m simply suggesting that its use should be clearly focused, in a way in which the hippocratic oath, for example, might challenge doctors in ambiguous circumstances.

The exercise of rationality occurs in a universe where human relationships, and values, provide the context of its application. Disastrous, albeit unintended, consequences are a distinct possibility. The only sustainable way forward is to put rational activity firmly in the context of moral values. Ethical reflection in general, and Catholic social teaching in particular, is moving rapidly to find ways of harnessing ethical reflection to aid human flourishing and the enhancement of our environment. This is our hope for the survival of ecological entities such as the Murray-Darling River system. Many are well aware of the Catholic Church’s advocacy of the Common Good as the object and desired outcome of social economic and political life. This was reinforced during the Pontificate of John Paul II with an emphasis on human solidarity as a way of proceeding in attempts to take care of the planet.

Christian believers are asked to foster the balanced preservation of the world as a healthy growing organism. The proper response of grateful receivers of God’s gifts is to care for the gifts. This is called stewardship, and it recognises that we are not passive subjects of the devastation being wrought by climate change. We have the capacity to make a difference.

LINK: Jesuit Lenten Seminars Climate Change MP3 downloads