It is quite fitting that L'Osservatore Romano came out today with this front-page editorial by its 'resident economist', who is now also the president of the Vatican internal bank IOR.
Gotti Tedeschi gives an incisive critique of the fashionably ecocentric and effectively anti-human orientation of all the bleeding hearts gathered in Copenhagen, whose decisions and actions are guided by nihilist ideology, and therefore willfully insensitive to objective reality, and ultimately, counter-productive to the pragmatic common good, for all their breast-beating sanctimony.
It is also a necessary antidote to the liberal MSM who have unthinkingly interpreted the Pope's message for the World Day of Peace as an endorsement of the 'Copenhagen consciousness' when it is anything but!
The uncertainties in Copenhagen:
Who are we saving the environment for?
by Ettore Gotti Tedeschi
Translated from the
12/17/09 issue of
The environment and global climate are subjects that deserve less banal considerations than those that are being disseminated these days, even by scologists.
Nihilist thinking, with its rejection of every objective value and truth, causes the most serious damage when applied to economics. Just think of the disastrous consequences of the Malthusian prejudice according to which it is population growth that causes poverty.
One can also think of the bad results produced by utilitarian doctrines which, by getting rid of ethical values in the economy, have generated the collapse of the economic structure itself.
Think further of the so-called moral autonomy of economics, which, in promoting relativism, has arrived at the criterion that only something tangible can be a value, thus spreading an excessively consumeristic and materialistic attitude.
But nihilist thinking is producing even much graver damages regarding the environment. First, it sought to convince man that he is only an intelligent animal, but that he has the possibility to do everything without any rules, pushing selfishness to the maximum in the exclusive quest for power.
Then it tried to extinguish the belief that human life has a sense that itself gives sense to man's actions.
And
now it would presume to resolve global climate problems - about which great confusion reigns - through denatalization [less children] and de-industrialization, rather than through the promotion of values that restore the individual to his original dignity.
The conference on climate change in Copenhagen is confirming this course, provoking more opposition than solutions.
Opposition not only between demonstrators and the police, but between rich nations and poor nations, between scientists and politicians, between different power blocs.
It is thus not only ever more difficult to imagine a solution but even to understand what the real problem is.
In fact,
there is no strategic vision of the problem, precisely because of the widespread nihilism that has come to
theorize the absence of value in human life compared to the presumed centrality of 'nature' - the ecocentrism denounced by Benedict XVI - which man is only capable of damaging.
But ignoring reality will not resolve environmental questions, just as it will not regulate the global economy.
Thus in Copenhagen, they are seeking vague agreements on noxious gas emissions, without regard to ethical premises and shared scientific considerations.
Nihilist thinking is in danger of transforming the globalization process - which is actually positive for poorer countries - into a disorder cauwsed by
homo ecomomicus, who is responsible for all environmental evils and therefore a candidate for self-elimination.
Blaise Pascal wrote: "It is true that there are natural laws, but corrupt reasoning has corrupted everything".
It seems to have corrupted even the capacity to objectively evaluate the value of the global economy, of the technologized market, and of economic freedom.
These are just means. But in the hands of an intelligent but selfish animal, they can generate the effects of abuse, including damage to the environment.
It is well and good that environmentalists call for better and greater attention to nature. But they would do better to read Caritas in veritate.
Then they would understand why - and above all, for whom - the encironment should be respected.
Can't resist tossing in this little item about Copenhagen!
Blizzard dumps snow on Copenhagen
as leaders battle warming
By Christian Wienberg
Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.
“Temperatures will stay low at least the next three days,” Henning Gisseloe, an official at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, said today by telephone, forecasting more snow in coming days. “There’s a good chance of a white Christmas.”
Delegates from 193 countries have been in Copenhagen since Dec. 7 to discuss how to fund global greenhouse gas emission cuts. U.S. President Barack Obama will arrive before the summit is scheduled to end tomorrow.
Denmark has a maritime climate and milder winters than its Scandinavian neighbors. It hasn’t had a white Christmas for 14 years, under the DMI’s definition, and only had seven last century. Temperatures today fell as low as minus 4 Celsius (25 Fahrenheit).
DMI defines a white Christmas as 90 percent of the country being covered by at least 2 centimeters of snow on the afternoon of Dec. 24.
Denmark isn't the only place in th world where there are winter anomalies - snow in Australia even, where summer is about to start! Shouldn't global warming fanatics take these as signs from Providence to remind them to cast a more dispassionate objective eye on facts before insisting on an ideology that it now appears has relied too much on questionable, posssibly manipulated data? At least acknowledge that 'the science is not settled' on the issue, far from it - and therefore, to be less Draconian about measures to be instituted, even at great disequilibrating cost to everyone, rich and poor, that may ultimately prove to be misguided, wasteful expense!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/12/2009 22:18]