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Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action

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Re: Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action

#51

Post by ArchStanton »

input_sh wrote: post #38
mercy_dude wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> half of which group votes Republican (i.e., against reforms designed to prevent or slow climate change). That’s a very cynical statement. Goes to show why both sides will never meet in the middle of the road with thinking that way. Voting republicans doesn’t mean I am against climate change reforms. The issue at hand is how practically we deal with it and reduce demands on fossil fuel and transition to clean energy…

> Policies touted by a lot of left leaning politicians aren’t practical and many of them know it but they say it anyway. Your point stands, Democrat solutions addressing climate change are definitely pretty bad. That being said, at least they have some climate change policies they're pushing for right now instead of kicking the can down the road. Can you honestly say the same about Republicans?

Considering that the US share of greenhouse gases is fairly small (15% of world total), has decreased quite a lot over time, and becomes harder on the margin, I'd say it's mostly just slinging words for political power at this point.

My own take is that you can avoid ecological devastation only through population reduction and in the short term by not up-leveling the Third World via mass immigration and industrialization.

Re: Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action

#52

Post by akudha »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #26
unknown_apostle wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Btw, the Catholic Church is not against birth control because it wants to fill up the planet with people. The Church is obliged to teach that sex is supposed to be about a man and a woman taking part in God's ecstatic act of creation, a selfless act of love. Sex without being open to life is porn: without the act of self giving and preparedness to receive children, you are left with a corrupted, self-directed form of…

> Sex without being open to life is porn: without the act of self giving and preparedness to receive children, you are left with a corrupted, self-directed form of pleasure. Nope. I've had 3 kids. I have emotionally and rationally concluded that having another child is inappropriate; it is a form of excess and inbalance. So, I want to have sex for love now. Really, you are going to tell me that, by stopping at 3, I a…

Religion has always been and will always be a very effective way to control the masses. It is much cheaper and easier than armies and bombs.

Can you get large groups of people to do stupid stuff like don't have sex before marriage, don't swear etc, by any method? The only way, is religion. We can read religious texts and take some good things from them, but following everything a religion (any religion) says blindly is just dumb. Most the time, religious texts are interpreted for convenience and petty agenda anyway, not necessarily for truth.

Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r-e2NDSTuE

Re: Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action

#53

Post by neither_color »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #41
neither_color wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thus we live in a contemporary world of non-religious people seeking out value (look at the current obsession in Silicon Valley with Stoicism, mindfulness, pyschadelics, etc). But Silicon Valley also tells their people that they can't use those methods to find an actual belief system of values. It's like, definitely always look for meaning and value in the universe, we like that. But, don't find it and a be bold abou…

> you might as well be religious. Totally. I'm excited about efforts to buy old churches to repurpose them to serve the spiritual and cultural needs like you list. It's like, rationally speaking, we need spiritual wellbeing, but don't need the baggage of the world religions.

That’s been tried before, during the French Revolution. It didn’t go so well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Reason

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason

Re: Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action

#54

Post by ArchStanton »

cletus wrote: post #42

Hot take: it doesn't matter who comes out in favour of stronger action on climate change. The only way we'll get significant change is when it becomes economic to do so. The world population or even a significant percentage of it won't change their behaviour altruistically even for a minor inconvenience and risk. New coal plants aren't built (mostly) and old ones are closing not because of altruism or a genuine conce…

>New coal plants aren't built

The US isn't the world.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants

Re: Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action

#55

Post by tomComb »

cletus wrote: post #42

Hot take: it doesn't matter who comes out in favour of stronger action on climate change. The only way we'll get significant change is when it becomes economic to do so. The world population or even a significant percentage of it won't change their behaviour altruistically even for a minor inconvenience and risk. New coal plants aren't built (mostly) and old ones are closing not because of altruism or a genuine conce…

But we can take some action to make it economic to do so.

For consumers, putting a price on carbon can make it simple and economic for them to chose greener options

And for corporations, the EU has been working on various schemes to price carbon for EU companies and to put a corresponding penalty on companies from other countries that don't (to avoid disadvantaging their companies).

Re: Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action

#56

Post by throw3849 »

cletus wrote: post #42

Hot take: it doesn't matter who comes out in favour of stronger action on climate change. The only way we'll get significant change is when it becomes economic to do so. The world population or even a significant percentage of it won't change their behaviour altruistically even for a minor inconvenience and risk. New coal plants aren't built (mostly) and old ones are closing not because of altruism or a genuine conce…

Or electricity price raises so much people will stop using it. There is already CO2 tax, polution tax. My country even collects TV license fee from electricity.

Rebuilding grid for solar and EVs requires major overhaul. That is not happening. In EU prices are already up by 50% and grid is becoming more unstable. When Germany switches off its remaining nuclear and coal power plants, it will sky rockets.

People will build off-grid solars to avoid fees, and government will make off-grid illegal or tax it severely.

Re: Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action

#57

Post by tpm »

laurent92 wrote: post #46
roenxi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is rather cynical but also rather accurate to note that people like being warm in winter, and the Catholic Church is not going to make environmentalism their core mission. They already have a core mission, it involves human souls. The environmentalists have faced stiff resistance in my life time not because anyone likes coal or oil, but because there were no alternatives. It isn't like the Catholics have ever had…

Also, the Pope was not a scientist in my registers. Maybe it’s a match because climate change involves more “belief” than science, and they’re both about ideology adherence? Maybe the ideological match is that this pope seems very fond of the idea that every human is equal, to the point one should not be measured by how much they work or how peaceful they are. And therefore, countries which have already implemented g…

Climate change involves more belief than science?

Re: Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action

#58

Post by nexuist »

cletus wrote: post #42

Hot take: it doesn't matter who comes out in favour of stronger action on climate change. The only way we'll get significant change is when it becomes economic to do so. The world population or even a significant percentage of it won't change their behaviour altruistically even for a minor inconvenience and risk. New coal plants aren't built (mostly) and old ones are closing not because of altruism or a genuine conce…

> But what drove solar adoption over the last decade is the plunging price of panels

...which was heavily subsidized by the Obama administration plowing billions of taxpayer dollars into solar R&D. We could end the reliance on gasoline tomorrow by removing subsidies on ethanol and putting them into EVs, but it's politically unfeasible. Although I totally agree with you that economic change must precede any big change in energy.

Re: Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action

#59

Post by geofft »

laurent92 wrote: post #46
roenxi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is rather cynical but also rather accurate to note that people like being warm in winter, and the Catholic Church is not going to make environmentalism their core mission. They already have a core mission, it involves human souls. The environmentalists have faced stiff resistance in my life time not because anyone likes coal or oil, but because there were no alternatives. It isn't like the Catholics have ever had…

Also, the Pope was not a scientist in my registers. Maybe it’s a match because climate change involves more “belief” than science, and they’re both about ideology adherence? Maybe the ideological match is that this pope seems very fond of the idea that every human is equal, to the point one should not be measured by how much they work or how peaceful they are. And therefore, countries which have already implemented g…

By "the current progressist ideology," are you referring to the ideology of, as the saying goes, "Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic" people? Or is this an ideology held by farmers in India or chemical plant workers in Lebanon or automotive plant workers in the Philippines?

If the former, I would say the Western man holds a pretty powerful place in this Pope's ideology.

Re: Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action

#60

Post by spodek »

Four words from the Pope could have the greatest effect per effort of any act on our environmental problems: "You can use contraception."

It won't solve all problems, but it will help a lot.

There is plenty of scripture he could call on to justify it. One, for example, is that the prophecy of having as many descendants as grains of sand on the beach couldn't have meant all at once, because we wouldn't all fit. Decreasing the chance of that many descendants undermines the prophecy.

Italy's low birth rate means Catholics are using birth control anyway, so people have figured it out.

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