Part I
During meals at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome in the spring semester of 1971, I was impressed by the porcelain water pitchers inscribed with lines from St. Francis’ Canticle of All Created Things: “Laudato si’, mi Signore, per sor’aqua/la quale è multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta” (“Be praised, my Lord, for sister water, who is very useful and humble and precious and chaste”). Forty-four years later, the title of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical on the environment “Laudato Si’” reminded me of those ornate Italian vessels. This shows not only how an ordinary household object can leave a lifelong impression on the undergraduate imagination, but also how the Franciscan vision inspires environmental awareness. The pope writes of his namesake, “His response to the world around him was so much more than intellectual appreciation or economic calculus, for to him each and every creature was a sister united to him by bonds of affection. That is why he felt called to care for all that exists.” (LS, no. 11)
Fresh drinking water, in fact, is our fundamental resource. Drought causes famine and mass population movement, such as the North African migration into Europe. Salt water, too, is essential: oceans absorb 30 percent of the globe’s carbon pollution. Ocean bottoms contain rare earth elements. Pollution by plastics endangers marine birds and mammals as well as fish. Overfishing, acidification and biodiversity loss threaten the marine environment (“The Fragile State of the World’s Ocean: A Transatlantic Response,” Carnegie Foundation, July 14, 2020).
Like water, air is an existential need. Hydrocarbon pollution has led to a search for alternatives to fossil fuels. Another easily pictured and therefore popular issue is wildlife protection. While non-specialists may not appreciate the importance of biodiversity and the consequences of habitat loss, anyone can understand ethical concerns about whaling, the ivory trade, smuggling of exotic animals and sale of their body parts.
Worldwide environmental concern is occasionally aroused by disasters or near-disasters like Love Canal in the 1970s, Times Beach in the 1980s, Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chornobyl in 1986. The harmful effects of pesticides were popularized by Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring,” which led to government regulation and new, environmentally friendly technologies.
Alarmism, however, only feeds skepticism. In 1968, Paul and Anne Ehrlich wrote the best-selling “Population Bomb,” which predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s because world population growth would outstrip food supply. The Ehrlichs advocated measures including artificial birth control, abortion, and sterilization. As it turned out, 1968 was the peak year for world population growth, at 2.09 percent. After that, the annual rate of increase steadily declined, reaching 1.08 percent last year. On another hot issue, scientist Michael Shellenberger recently admitted that he had made exaggerated claims about global warming (Daily Wire, June 29, 2020).
Dire predictions unfairly discredit the causes they represent. Inequitable distribution of food resources, for example, remains a serious problem. The effects of climate change on the environment are not seriously disputed. Global warming is considered a contributing factor to a variety of environmental disasters such as the fatal floods in Kerala, India, in the summer of 2019 and in western Ukraine last spring. The issue is rather the role of anthropogenic factors such as “greenhouse gases.” Some scientists, and many politicians, dispute the 2013 report of the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change, which stressed the human factor in global warming. They point to the absence of 100 percent scientific certainty. But the “precautionary principle” calls for prudent preventive action even when doubt remains. Thus, the 2016 Paris Agreement calls for action to limit the increase in the average global temperature.
Given its environmental problems, it is not surprising that Ukraine exhibited ecological consciousness even before independence. The Green World Association appeared in 1987, Dr. Yuri Shcherbak’s Green Party in 1990. But in Kyiv last November, a “Fridays for [the] Future” demonstration drew only 40 people (The Ukrainian Weekly, December 6, 2019). Yet the problems persist. In the Donbas, the Russian invasion, like most wars, has wreaked environmental havoc. Coal mines are flooded, toxic chemicals from unexploded ordnance leach into groundwater, and waste water treatment facilities are damaged (Kristina Hook and Richard Marcantonio, “War-related environmental disaster in Ukraine,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 16, 2018). Long-standing problems like pollution of the Dnipro and deforestation in the Carpathians continue unchecked. Deep-seated corruption hampers the efforts of the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Like investigative journalists and corruption fighters, environmental activists face personal danger. Nevertheless, NGOs like Ekodiya, which seeks to promote environmental education and legislation, remain active.
The effects of environmental degradation are social and economic as well as biological. It contributes to hunger and poverty. It exacerbates inequality among populations and countries. A true ecological approach, writes Pope Francis, must consider the dimension of social justice, “so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (LS no. 49). At times, however, dilemmas arise. Deforestation in the Amazon basin aggravates global warming, destroys natural habitats and stunts biodiversity. But poor farmers need wood for fuel and land for cultivation. If they are forced to leave their farms, they gravitate to urban ghettos with their attendant socio-economic and cultural pathologies. Mining companies argue that their environmentally disruptive operations boost employment and benefit the economy. In the United States, surface coal mining disfigures the Appalachians, yet retraining jobless miners in other professions is more easily advocated than accomplished.
The global scope of ecology points to the need for international legal regulation. But despite successes with hazardous waste, endangered species, the ozone layer and acid rain, international efforts to protect biodiversity, limit desertification and reduce climate change have encountered obstacles. Those who call for a global environmental authority, pointing out that transnational corporate entities are often stronger than sovereign nations, provoke fears of a dictatorial world government.
(To be continued.)
Andrew Sorokowski can be reached at [email protected].