Combating Climate Change: Can Lanka’s Religious Top-Order Rise To A Challenge?
Prof. Kumar David
Combating Climate Change Needs “Bold Cultural Revolution”
The end of June was a week of high theatre. First came Pope Francis’ passionate petition on behalf of the Earth, our common home, followed by US Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage (the judgement is resonating far beyond American shores) and its decision putting Obamacare beyond challenge. The week was topped off by Obama’s searing rhetoric in Charleston; relaxed eloquence of amazing self-assurance. My subject today is limited to the first of these.
If it is not sacrilegious for a hard-boiled Marxist to confess secret admiration of a Pontiff and if buttonholed in a discreet corner of a darkened room, I will own up: “This Francis is a splendid chap!” About six years ago I watched an hour long interview of Lee Kuan Yew by pre-eminent interlocutor Charlie Rose; the final question was “What do you consider the greatest concerns of the Twenty-first Century?” In a flash came the answer: “Managing Sino-American relations and dealing with Climate Change”. If the facts and the science are not new, and if the damage human activity is doing to the planet is now hardly disputed, what is it that a Papal missive can add? Answer: The influence it can bring to bear on global decisions, and secondly its moral dimensions and their consequences; I will deal with both.
*Pope Francis arrives in Sri Lanka Jan. 13. Photo courtesy: Alan Holdren / CNA.
The effects of the Encyclical will be immense if clergy and laity pursue it with commitment and courage; otherwise it will be a damp squib. Its influence is spreading; Protestant pastors and 300 rabbis in the US have declared allegiance to this call for environmental justice. If pressure is sustained, Catholic political leaders will be on notice and businessmen will no longer be able to live in two compartments. Jesus made a slip when he quipped “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Mathew22:21). This sensible advice to nurture a balanced dialectic of life has ever since Adam Smith been twisted by capitalism to mean ‘Go to church on Sunday and mumble your chants; for the rest of the week, exploit, extract surplus-value and worship mammon’. In one scorching section the Pope (not Karl Marx) equates laissez faire economists to mobsters, drug lords, organ harvesters and human traffickers for whom humanity is just another commodity to exploit.Read More
