Dear God,
You might just be lurking out there, reading every blog in existence, after all. It seems you have answered my post of July 5th. It's been in the news that the corporate headquarters of the Catholic church, Vatican City, is making itself carbon neutral. There is some disagreement as to whether the trees that will be planted will actually offset the carbon required for heating offices and palatial residences, lighting St. Peters Basilica, powering the pope mobile, and everything else that goes on in the holy city. Planting trees to offset carbon is not an exact science. But then again, religion isn't too fond of exact sciences, so maybe it fits.
I guess, like all the other heads of the world's large corporations, the pope is seeing the necessity of going after the socially conscious consumer. Or maybe he's just figured out that Catholics also need a ecosystem to survive in. About time too, given that this religion harbors the belief that humanity has been appointed, by God (that'd be you), to manage and care for the rest of the natural world. Which begs the question: what have they been doing all this time? Perhaps next time you appoint a caretaker for nature, Greenpeace might be a better choice than the Church that forbids birth control, ensuring we will never have population control on an already overpopulated planet.
But while I'm feeling a little buzzed by the possibility you might be listening to me, I must point out that the Holy See are becoming carbon neutral through no effort of their own. Their carbon neutrality is a donation. A Hungarian company, called Klimfa, are going to do the offsetting. It was their idea. The Vatican just accepted the donation, which will offset their carbon for this year only, and it doesn't cover air travel, which is highly polluting.
So the richest church in the world is not spending a cent to protect creation. On top of that, some guy at the Vatican's Council for Culture, a certain Monsignor Melchor Sánchez de Toca Alameda, said that offsetting carbon is similar to doing penance: "One can emit less CO2 by not using heating and not driving a car or one can do penance by intervening to offset emissions, in this case by planting trees." The idea of repeatedly going ahead and doing whatever you want, even when you know it's wrong, and then feeling guilty afterward, repenting, is nothing new in Catholicism. This might work for mortal sins (I wouldn't know) but it doesn't exactly work in terms of conservation. It kind of implies that it's okay to punch a few more holes in the ozone layer, and, say, wipe out the rest of the polars and pandas, as long as you feel bad enough about it afterwards to pay someone to plant a few trees. Oops. Just caused The End of the World doing doughnuts in my private jet. Sorry about that. Here's some money.
The church is also sponsoring flights for people to visit holy sites. So much faster than catching the train, you see. But again, not quite getting the whole reducing-carbon thing. And they won't support a carbon tax because it might be a burden on poor countries, though they are quite content to burden the same poor countries by not allowing the Catholics who live in them to control the number of children they have so they might stand a chance of working their way out of poverty.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think they're really getting this at all.
Is this one of those "be careful what you wish for" scenarios you tricky deities like to inflict on us mere mortals when we ask for things? Or is this whole climate change crisis just a warm up for Armageddon?
Yours,
Sydney
PS Also, the Church says it will not listen to "catastrophists" who claim that climate change will cause changes to the planet that will affect all life, but isn't this a little hypocritical? Doesn't this religion believe that all life on earth will just end one day because you'll decide to end it? Wouldn't that a bit of catastrophy to most of us? By this logic, we ought not to listen to the Church either.
