Charles Pierce: Pope Francis Drops the Hammer on Climate Change.

[MBS]

Pierce knows his Jesuits : )

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a35796/the-greening-of-the-vatican/

Give the man this. He didn't miss anyone. In the 184 pages of Laudato Si, Papa Francesco has called them all out—the climate deniers, the plutocrats who stand behind them, the system of extraction and consumption from which the latter profit, the political leaders who bow before them and refuse to confront the very real crisis, and anyone else who marinates in apathy while the crisis first overwhelms the poorest of the poor, as most crises usually do.

He wrote: "The idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology ... is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth's goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry at every limit."
. . .And he wrote: "We need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that the problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals."
The encyclical would seem to be the essence of the man and of his papacy. He begins his letter with a lovely invocation to the spirit of the man whose name he chose to bear, Francis of Assisi. "Praise be to you, my Lord." In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. . . But the argument that he marshals comes purely from his identity as a Jesuit—learned, unflinching, broadly intellectual and very closely reasoned. This is the argument of a man of science, a man of the wider world. It is not an argument from cloister. It is an argument from the broad green fields and the limitless sky. He cites previous popes, going all the way back to good Pope John and Pacem In Terris. He cites the thoughts of other religious leaders around the world. His analysis of the current crisis is precise and empirical. . .
His analysis of the current crisis is sweeping, and his assessment of its interconnected effects encyclopedic.

. . . Even as the quality of available water is constantly diminishing, in some places there is a growing tendency, despite its scarcity, to privatize this resource, turning it into a commodity subject to the laws of the market. Yet access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights.
His analysis of the current crisis is straighforward, and it brooks no distractions. He is dismissive of Band-Aid semi-solutions like cap-and-trade. He has looked the monster in the eye more bravely than most world leaders and he has not blinked.
. . .Here we see how environmental deterioration and human and ethical degradation are closely linked. Many people will deny doing anything wrong because distractions constantly dull our consciousness of just how limited and finite our world really is. As a result, "whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule."
(A "deified market"? Holy hell, Krugman may convert immediately.)

This is the most important public document of the past 20 years. You can see all of them behind it, all the churchmen who followed their faith into science. You can see Mendel and his pea plants, and Lemaitre, pondering the origins of the universe, and Father Teilhard, finding God at the point of his pick. That is the company Papa Francesco has chosen to keep. That is the tradition he has come to honor. That is the place from which he has issued this remarkable pastoral warning. This is why, as we always say, you do not fk with The Society because the Society will fk your shit up. And he ends, remarkably, but very much in the spirit of Francis, with a poem and a prayer. . .

More at the url,