Laudato Si Crash Course

“The sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters.” (3)

The Dark Side of Human Freedom

Without approaching nature with awe and wonder, we stop speaking the language of the earth, and thus we are unable to set limits on our immediate needs and potential from exploitation. When humans are at the center of the world, they demand “absolute priority to immediate convenience and all else becomes relative.” (90)

“The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air, and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste is along with the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.” (3)

The Earth reflects the state of our souls. When there is darkness or indifference present within us, it is reflected in the health of our environment.

How We’ve Hurt Our Planet (And Our People)

The earth naturally heats and cools. This can be due to volcanic activity and other natural processes. The problem comes when humans get involved and speed up the cycle with lots of toxins and CO2 emissions.

In recent decades, we have built up greenhouse gases in our atmosphere caused by compounds released by human activity, and they block the escape of heat from the sunlight. So it’s getting hot. A couple of degrees may not seem like a big deal, but our bodies explain this process pretty well. When you have the difference between a 98.6-degree temperature and a 100-degree temperature, you know something is wrong with your body. The Earth is developing a fever, and if we don’t let it rest, it’s gonna go downhill quickly. Warming affects the carbon cycle, affecting the availability of drinking water, energy and agricultural production in warmer regions, and extinction of biodiversity.

The melting of polar ice caps and the decomposition of frozen organic material can cause dangerous releases of methane gas and increase carbon dioxide emissions. And as carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, it can increase the acidification of the oceans, which compromises the health of marine life. Good functioning ecosystems require all the little guys - the plankton and the algae and insects and creepy crawlies we think we’d be okay without. But when ecosystems are off balance and the little guys start dying off, the big guys don’t have anything to eat. The food chain gets thrown way off.

Our waste isn’t biodegradable - it’s toxic, and radioactive, from homes and businesses, construction, and demolition sites. “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” (17) Detergents and chemical household products commonly used all over the world end up in all the rivers, lakes, and seas.

Water pollution affects the poor who cannot afford to buy bottled water. A rise in sea level leaves impoverished coastal populations with nowhere else to go. Plus, a quarter of the world’s population lives in coastal regions, containing many megacities and heavily populated areas. A rise in sea level means trouble for them, too. Uncontrolled fishing means the depletion of certain species. Depletion of fishing reserves hurts small fishing communities without the means to replace those resources. Coral reefs are not looking good, and they are home to millions of species. But many of the world’s reefs are either barren or in constant decline, mostly due to pollution. Worldwide acute water shortage may happen in the coming decades (it doesn’t mean less water, it’s just that the water isn’t drinkable), and greater scarcity of water will lead to an increased cost of food. And food is already expensive enough.

Highways and dams and urban development break up ecosystems. That prevents animal populations from being able to migrate and roam freely. So then they go extinct. Pope Francis suggests biological corridors as a possible solution.

Forests get cut down and sometimes replaced by new trees, but “the replacement of virgin forests with plantations of trees, usually monocultures, is rarely adequately analyzed. This can seriously compromise biodiversity which the new species being introduced does not accommodate.” (29) It’s best to leave them as they are. “We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves.” (26)

The Politics

Unfortunately, much of the world’s pollution is caused by forces and corporations much bigger than ourselves. We can skip the straw at Starbucks or re-use our glass jars and bottles, and yes, it does help. And there is value in being modest and kind to the Earth. It becomes a personal and spiritual act of kindness within ourselves. But the big waste problems often come from the big guys dumping industrial waste or not placing limits on the massive pollution their factories release into the atmosphere. So how do we address this?

Pope Francis says we have an urgent need to develop policies to reduce carbon emissions and develop sources of renewable energy. We need an increase in funding to supply fresh drinking water and sanitary services to the poor. He encourages more research into how ecosystems work so we know how to better sustain and replenish them to undo some of the damage we have already caused.

He also puts accountability back into the hands of the ones responsible. He says each government needs to carry out its “proper and inalienable responsibility to preserve its country’s environment and natural resources without capitulating to spurious local or international interests.” (29) In other words, it is not the job of your neighbor to take care of your backyard. Everyone is responsible for their own country. Countries can’t just push it off and make it someone else’s problem.

Speaking to politicians and the wealthy, Pope Francis speaks of a “superficial rhetoric, sporadic acts of philanthropy and perfunctory expressions of concern for the environment, whereas any genuine attempts by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance.” (40) So you can’t just slap a “save the turtles” sticker on your car and call it a day. “We can be silent witnesses to terrible injustices if we think that we can obtain significant benefits by making the rest of humanity, present and future, pay the extremely high costs of environmental deterioration.” (27)

On the Protection of the Development of Human Life

Protecting creation goes far beyond helping the planet itself. Pope Francis calls out the hypocrisy of people who fight for the protection of the environment but are silent or even opposed to the protection of human life beginning at conception. In this instance, he is specifically speaking on scientific experimentation on human embryos.

“It is troubling that, when some ecological movements defend the integrity of the environment, rightly demanding that certain limits be imposed on scientific research, they sometimes fail to apply those same principles to human life. There is a tendency to justify transgressing all boundaries when experimentation is carried out on living human embryos. We forget that the inalienable worth of a human being transcends his or her degree of development.” (101)

Looking Forward

We inhabit a fragile world entrusted to us to care for intelligently and delicately. It challenges us to think creatively and devise new ways of doing things and simultaneously limiting our own power.

“People no longer seem to believe in a happy future,” he says, and if there is one thing we must hold onto tighter than anything else, it is hope. We need to slow down, shift our focus, and reapproach the tending to our planet in a loving, holy, more thoughtful way. “Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.” (41) We are here to be the caretakers of the garden. And it starts within ourselves. “A sense of deep communion with the rest of nature cannot be real if our hearts lack tenderness, compassion, and concern for our fellow human beings.” Caring for the planet begins in our hearts. Because it isn’t just about the mountains or the oceans or the rainforests or the animals. It’s also about the Body of Christ - our poor brothers and sisters living amid the consequences of the things we’ve thrown away. To be mindful of the rest of our family means to be mindful of how we consume within our own homes. In a world of wasteful consumption, as Catholics, we are called to live holistically. Yes, it’s the harder thing. And it’s countercultural. But as Catholics, don’t we always do the harder thing? And haven’t we always been counter-cultural? It’s kind of our thing.

If you want to read the encyclical for yourself, it’s available for free on the Vatican’s website (Vatican.va) (Just google Laudato Si. There’s a PDF version available as well.) I’d reccomend checking it out because his vernacular is much more educated and beautiful than mine.

If you’d like to learn more about the current state of our planet, the United Nations releases an annual report, also available online. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations’ body for assessing the science related to climate change. You can visit their website at www.ipcc.ch