Review: Walking God's Earth, Part II | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: First, there is no man vs. the environment. Man is a creature of the environment - what Genesis says is simply a sentiment - not the recording of an actual grant of authority. Unless that is the opening thesis, all Catholic or any other treatment on the environment is wrong headed and apt to lead to mischief. As Catholics and Christians, what we are responsible for is not this great big swirling pool of hot liquid with its very thin crust and very shallow oceans called the Earth. That part of the Earth can do splendidly with or without us. Instead, we are responsible for providing a livable environment for ourselves and for other people. With apologies to the animal rights activists, we long ago subdued the other animals - and if they want to remain in this Darwinian world, they must adapt or they will die. Cloutier and Shumpeter may have their own preferences on the scale of the human use of Earth, but they are mostly overcome by reality.
As for the pace of the Spirit, she works in our hearts about our relations with each other. We can use Cultural Theory or economics to do so, or Magisterial ethics (which seems great on the oughts but no so great on dealing with complexity - and that is what the environment is, complex. Of course, there are places we can start where everyone agrees, like environmental racism (from brownfields in occupied Latino and African American areas to areas in China where highly toxic computer waste is just dumped. In the end, of course, this becomes an argument about Capitalism - where the Acton Institute is almost assured to come in on the wrong side of the argument. The key is, poor and economically powerless people get dumps in their back yards and bad air. More prosperous people do not. The key, then, is make everyone so prosperous that no one can be exploited. With apologies to St. John Paul, sounds like socialism to me.
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