This coming November, the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Science is holding a workshop intended to figure out how to indoctrinate your children in the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs]. This comes on the heels of the Vatican nuncio to the United Nations announcing “verbatim” support for the SDGs, and after Catholic Relief Services president Dr. Carolyn Woo echoed Pope Francis’ call for support for the SDGs as well.
So, what are the Sustainable Development Goals?
They’re a United Nations plan for the creation of a global socialist utopia thinly disguised as a poverty reduction program. In short, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are the first step in achieving several of the goals laid out in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. In truth, these goals are Communist goals, through and through. Here’s a snapshot of how specific portions of the SDGs line up with identified Communist goals:
Sustainable Development Goals:
Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
Communists have always used the plight of the poor as justification for the implementation of their nefarious schemes
Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
Plank 7 of the Communist Manifesto calls for a top-down approach to industry and agriculture
Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
A 1938 issue of a Communist publication concluded that “only through the final victory of world socialism can the vast stores of available scientific knowledge really be put to work for the full benefit of humanity. ‘Socialized medicine’ is a meaningless phrase except in a socialized society.”
Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
Plank 10 of the Communist Manifesto is “free education for all children in public schools.”
Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
Communism has pushed for working women since the beginning of the Revolution in Russia.
Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
Plank 8 of the Communist Manifesto: Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Plank 9 of the Communist Manifesto: Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
This is an echo of Karl Marx’s mandate, “From each according to his ability to each according to his needs.”
Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
This is pure global governance orchestrated by an entity with authority above national sovereignty.
This summary is not intended to be exhaustive, but should provide enough information to alarm even the most lukewarm of patriots and faithful Christians. But the Catholic Church, which has issued full and unqualified condemnations of Communism and Socialism should have nothing to do with the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals … and yet, “Catholic” social justice organizations and its leaders have hijacked key positions in the Vatican and are using their influence and authority to fast-track programs to get the faithful to fully support and work for the implementation of the SDGs. This is extremely dangerous and must be forcefully resisted by all faithful Catholics. What follows is a general overview of some of the more egregious of the SDGs in their audacious push for global Communist governance.
Michael Hichborn is the president of the Lepanto Insitute. Formerly, Michael spent nearly eight years as American Life League’s Director of the Defend the Faith project. He has researched and produced countless articles and reports on the funding of abortion, birth control, homosexuality and Marxism by Catholic Relief Servies and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). Michael holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Christendom College in Political Science and Economics and a Master’s degree in Education from American Intercontinental University. Michael lives in Virginia with his wife, Alyssa, and their five children.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/revolution-raised-fists-e1591197764507.jpg358640Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2015-08-04 06:19:142015-08-12 09:44:33Why Is the Vatican Pushing Communist Goals? by Michael Hichborn
Ayn Rand wrote, “The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other – until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology.”
On Monday, Pope Francis, the Bishop Of Rome, addressed Catholic followers regarding the dire importance of exhibiting religious tolerance. During his hour-long speech, a smiling Pope Francis was quoted telling the Vatican’s guests that the Koran, and the spiritual teachings contained therein, are just as valid as the Holy Bible.
As a Catholic it pains me to read words like this when daily I see the persecution of Christians and Jews by the followers of Mohammed. The Catholic Church is retreating and Islam is gaining. At some point Islam will become the official ideology of the Vatican, the Islamic State promises so.
Rather than go into a long litany of reasons why the Holy Bible is different than the Quran, not the least of which is the Koran does not recognize that Jesus was crucified, died and then rose from the dead to forgive our sins. For it is the Holy Trinity which is the foundation of Catholicism and the Holy Catholic Church.
And kill them [the non-believers] wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al- Haram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.
And if they cease, then indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.
Fight them until there is no [more] fitnah and [until] worship is [acknowledged to be] for Allah . But if they cease, then there is to be no aggression except against the oppressors.
Jews, Sikh, Christians, Hindus, Kurds, Buddhist, Ezidis, and anyone else who is not a Muslim is to be slaughtered if they do not embrace Islam.
Show me in the Holy Bible where it says that anyone who does not accept Jesus is to be slaughtered. One cannot.
When Pope Francis stated, “Authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence”, Robert Spencer wrote:
No one would even be interested in this question were it not for the abundant evidence to the contrary: the daily record of jihad violence carried out by Muslims who point to Islam and the Qur’an to justify their actions, including many who are burning churches and terrorizing Christians in Nigeria, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere. It is because of them that Pope Francis, David Cameron and others feel compelled to insist that, contrary to what we see happening every day, Islam is really peaceful. The question is whether they are doing the victims of jihad any real service by insisting this.
For if Pope Francis were to admit that Islam is a violent religion, that admission would imply the necessity of addressing Islamic intolerance of Christians.
The last thing that Pope Francis and certain world leaders want to do is to further enrage Fitnaphobes (i.e. the Muslim community). This is a false and dangerous position, as it ignores the social disease (existential threat) of Fitnaphobia, the known Islamic wolves at the gates of the Vatican.
Pope Francis is an Islamic apologist and Fitnaphobic.
Islam cannot be stopped unless and until Muslims, citizens, political and national security leaders at every level begin to profile and identify Fitnaphobic individuals, organizations and nation states.
When religious tolerance becomes a one way street, then the Vatican will fall to the Islamic Caliphate.
EDITORS NOTE: To learn more about why Muslims slaughter visit www.Fitnaphobia.com.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/pope-reads-kuran.jpeg375639Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2015-07-24 14:56:362015-10-12 15:47:26His Absurdness Pope Francis: Koran and Holy Bible are the Same!
Throughout the history of the Soviet Union (1922-1991), Soviet authorities suppressed and persecuted various forms of Christianity to different extents depending on the particular era. Soviet policy, based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, made atheism the official doctrine of the Soviet Union.
Marxism-Leninism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and the elimination of religious beliefs.
The Soviet state was committed to the destruction of religion, and destroyed churches, mosques and temples, ridiculed, harassed, incarcerated and executed religious leaders, flooded the schools and media with atheistic teachings, and generally promoted atheism as the truth that society should accept. The total number of Christian victims of Soviet state atheist policies, has been estimated to range between 12-20 million.
The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales , presented the pope Francisco a carved wooden crucifix on the hammer and sickle , symbol of communism, during a meeting the two held Wednesday night at Government House and was televised .
The size contained the image of Christ crucified on the handle of the hammer, footage showed state television .
Morales is defined as socialist and represents a regional trend known as’ Socialism of the XXI Century “, which also profess the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador.
The response of Pope Francis was not at all positive. After quite puzzled look, the pontiff told Evo Morales that “this is not right”.
An amoral psychopath and paranoid with a gangster’s mentality, Stalin eliminated anyone and everyone who was a threat to his power – including (and especially) former allies. He had absolutely no regard for the sanctity of human life.
But how many people is he responsible for killing?
In February 1989, two years before the fall of the Soviet Union, a research paper by Georgian historian Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev published in the weekly tabloid Argumenti i Fakti estimated that the death toll directly attributable to Stalin’s rule amounted to some 20 million lives (on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War), for a total tally of 40 million.
”It’s important that they published it, although the numbers themselves are horrible,” Medvedev told the New York Times at the time.
Perhaps Pope Francis should have refused this gift, for what is symbolizes – the deaths of tens of millions of Christians under Communist rule.
EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of Evo Morales giving Pope Francis Christ crucified on the hammer and sickle is courtesy of AFP.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/pope-with-hammer-sickle-cross.jpg355630Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2015-07-09 16:52:052015-07-09 16:53:09This Is Not Right: Socialist President of Bolivia gives Pope Hammer & Sickle Cross
Pope Francis has sparked another debate with controversial remarks at the Third Vatican Council. He says, the concept of hell where people burn eternally cannot be Christian–it goes against the concept of a loving and compassionate God.
That idea is being challenged by other Bible scholars, not just the pope.
When God told Adam that if he ate of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” that he would “surely die” (Genesis 2:17) He did not mean live forever in torment. This idea is an invention of the devil to paint God as a devil.
God says He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. It’s a biblical concept that God does not destroy and that we destroy ourselves by the choices we make. How important it is to choose wisely.
The word “hell” is found 54 times in the King James Bible. It translated from the Hebrew word “she’ol” meaning the grave 31 times, and from the Greek word “hades,” also meaning the grave 10 times. The Greek word gehenna is the source for 12 uses of hell and the word means a place of burning (only 12 out of 54 places in the Bible).
The Bible teaches that the wicked will be burned up and leave them “neither root nor branch,” Malachi 4:1. God says, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked,” Ezekiel 33:11.
That was before churchmen got into the act by promising to pray people out of hell or purgatory (no such word in the Bible) for money. Poor translation of Revelation makes people think the fire is forever when it is the consequences (death) that lasts for ever.
The idea of a conscious existence between death and the resurrection was held by many in Christ’s day. He knew this and framed His parable to teach truth related to their preconceived opinions–that no man is valued for his possessions–all that we have belongs to us only as lent by the Lord. A misuse of these gifts places us below the poorest and most afflicted man who loves and serves God.
Christ desires us to understand that it is impossible for men to secure the salvation of the soul after death.
“The living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything,” Ecclesiastes 9:5. The belief in consciousness after death sets us up for deception by evil spirits that can personate departed love ones–like the evil spirit personated Samuel, brought up by the witch of Endor at Saul’s request.
EDITORS NOTE: Dr. Ruhling is a physician whose special interest in retirement is Bible prophecy, especially the wedding parables, and he offers more information at his website: http://TheBridegroomComes.com
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Vatican-Pope_Francis-e1386448076552.jpg338600Dr. Richard Ruhling, MDhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Richard Ruhling, MD2015-07-05 07:29:262015-07-05 08:50:26Pope Right: Hell Not Forever, Incompatible with a Loving God! Where Did We Get that Idea?
Pope Francis recently released a new encyclical. Portions of it deal with environmentalism, global warming, and climate change. Naturally, this has prompted controversy.
It’s noteworthy that Francis didn’t merely make a passing comment on global warming during this or that sermon, but that he issued a papal encyclical on the matter. Encyclicals are much more formal and significant than remarks made during mass. They are letters written by a pope and sent to bishops all around the world. In turn, the bishops are meant to disseminate the encyclical’s ideas to all the priests and churches in their jurisdiction, so that the pope’s teaching reaches every church-attending Catholic.
All this leads to the following question: Where is Pope Francis’ encyclical concerning the rampant persecution that Christians—including many Catholics—are experiencing around the world in general, the Islamic world in particular?
To be sure, the pope has acknowledged it. On April 21, during mass held at Casa Santa Marta, Francis said that today’s church is a “church of martyrs.” He even referenced several of the recent attacks on Christians by Muslims (without of course mentioned the latter’s religious identity).
The pope is acquainted with the reality of Christian persecution around the world. So why isn’t he issuing an encyclical about it? Such an encyclical would be very useful.
The pope could instruct bishops to acknowledge the truth about Christian persecution and to have this news spread to every Catholic church. Perhaps a weekly prayer for the persecuted church could be institutionalized—keeping the plight of those hapless Christians in the spotlight, so Western Catholics and others always remember them, talk about them, and, perhaps most importantly, understand why they are being persecuted.
Whatever the effects of such an encyclical—and one can only surmise positive ones—at the very least, the pope would be addressing a topic entrusted to his care and requiring his attention.
As recent as 1958, Pope Pius XII issued an encyclical that addressed the persecution of Christians. A portion follows:
We are aware—to the great sorrow of Our fatherly heart—that the Catholic Church, in both its Latin and Oriental rites, is beset in many lands by such persecutions that the clergy and faithful … are confronted with this dilemma: to give up public profession and propagation of their faith, or to suffer penalties, even very serious ones.
[…]
Missionaries who have left their homes and dear native lands and suffered many serious discomforts in order to bring the light and the strength of the gospel to others, have been driven from many regions as menaces and evil-doers…
Note that Pius does not mention the burning and bombing of churches, or the abduction, rape, enslavement, and slaughter of Christians. The reason is that Christians living outside the West in 1958 rarely experienced such persecution. In other words, today’s global persecution of Christians is exponentially worse than in 1958. Pius complained about how Christianity was being contained, not allowed to spread and win over converts…
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/POPE-FRANCIS-facebook-e1435395890664.jpg370640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2015-06-27 05:06:182015-06-27 05:06:18Where’s the Pope’s Encyclical on Christian Persecution? by Raymond Ibrahim
There is no “State of Palestine” at this time. This is part of the ongoing pressure upon Israel to create one. Creating one will be a great victory for the global jihad force, as a “State of Palestine” will inevitably be a new jihad base for renewed attacks against what remains of Israel. Events will unfold just as they did when the Israelis withdrew from Gaza: while the international media hailed a new era of peace, the “Palestinians” gutted installations and prepared for jihad.
This recognition could end up being as large a blot on the Catholic Church’s record as the Inquisition and the many Catholic clerics all over Europe who went along with the Nazi program against Jews during World War II. The “Palestinians” make no secret on official PA TV of the fact that they share that same genocidal antisemitic bloodlust. This recognition only validates that bloodlust, and enables it.
As this recognition is given, Christians are being persecuted by Islamic jihadists all over the Middle East — Islamic jihadists with the same supremacist ideology as that which motivates the “Palestinians.” In response to this persecution, the bishops of the Catholic Church pursue a “dialogue” with Muslim leaders that makes everyone involved feel good about themselves, but doesn’t do a single thing to alleviate that persecution. And the bishops in the U.S. actively move to silence those who dare speak out about the true nature and magnitude of that persecution, and to prevent them from being heard in Catholic settings. Now, with this recognition, the Church is actively aligning itself with the jihad force, and demonstrating the great lesson of our age, that terrorism works: murder enough people and issue enough genocidal threats, and the whole world will cower at your feet.
The Vatican, by recognizing the genocidal jihad entity that is or will be the “State of Palestine,” is creating a huge moral dilemma for those Catholics who believe that Israel, as being on the front lines of the global jihad, ought to be supported, and that jihad terror, as represented by the “Palestinians” as well as by the persecutors of Christians, ought to be opposed. This is a political decision that has nothing to do with the substance of the faith, but these Church policies are heading the faithful toward a disaster of which they are largely ignorant and for which, thanks to their bishops, they are completely unprepared. Do those who see this disaster coming still have a place in Francis’ progressive, ever-so-modern Catholic Church?
“Vatican signs treaty recognizing State of Palestine,” Times of Israel, June 26, 2015:
The Vatican on Friday signed a historic accord with Palestine, two years after officially recognizing it as a state, in a move criticized by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
The accord, a treaty covering the life and activity of the Church in Palestine, was the first since the Vatican recognized the Palestinian state in February 2013. The step was agreed in principle last month and condemned by Israel as a setback for the peace process.
The Foreign Ministry said Friday in response that it “regrets” the Vatican’s decision to sign the “one-sided” text.
“This hasty step damages the prospects for advancing a peace agreement, and harms the international effort to convince the PA to return to direct negotiations with Israel,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“We also regret the one-sided texts in the agreement which ignore the historic rights of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel and to the places holy to Judaism in Jerusalem. Israel cannot accept the unilateral determinations in the agreement which do not take into account Israel’s essential interests and the special historic status of the Jewish people in Jerusalem,” the statement added.
“The Palestinians continue to act unilaterally which distances us from any chance of holding direct dialogue,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely.
“I regret that the Vatican decided to participate in a step that blatantly ignores the history of the Jewish people in Israel and Jerusalem. Any attempt by the Palestinians, or any other actor to undermine our historic right to Jerusalem and our country will met by staunch opposition by us,” she said.
The treaty makes clear that the Holy See has switched its diplomatic relations from the Palestinian Liberation Organization to the State of Palestine.
The Vatican had welcomed the decision by the UN General Assembly in 2012 to recognize a Palestinian state. But the treaty is the first legal document negotiated between the Holy See and the Palestinian state and constitutes an official recognition.
“Yes, it’s a recognition that the state exists,” said Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi last month.
Israeli officials criticized the Vatican announcement in May.
“We’re disappointed by the decision taken by the Holy See. We believe that such a decision is not conducive to bringing the Palestinians back to the negotiating table,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon told The Times of Israel at the time.
“Israel will study the agreement and consider its next steps accordingly,” a brief statement from the ministry said.
The text of the treaty deals with essential aspects of the life and activity of the Catholic Church in Palestine, a Vatican statement said in May.
“Both parties agreed that the work of the Commission on the text of the Agreement has been concluded, and that the agreement will be submitted to the respective authorities for approval ahead of setting a date in the near future for the signing,” it noted.
The Vatican has been referring unofficially to the state of Palestine for at least a year.
During Pope Francis’ 2014 visit to the Holy Land, the Vatican’s official program referred to Abbas as the president of the “state of Palestine.” In the Vatican’s latest yearbook, the Palestinian ambassador to the Holy See is listed as representing “Palestine (state of).”
The Vatican’s foreign minister, Monsignor Antoine Camilleri, acknowledged the change in status, given that the treaty was initially inked with the PLO and is now being finalized with the “state of Palestine.” But he said the shift was simply in line with the Holy See’s position.
The Holy See clearly tried to underplay the development, suggesting that its 2012 press statement welcoming the UN vote constituted its first official recognition. Nowhere in that statement does the Vatican say it recognizes the state of Palestine, and the Holy See couldn’t vote for the UN resolution because it doesn’t have voting rights at the General Assembly.
The 2012 UN vote recognized Palestine as a non-member observer state, made up of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
The Palestinians celebrated the vote as a milestone in their quest for international recognition. Most countries in Africa, Asia and South America have individually recognized Palestine. In Western Europe, Sweden took the step last year, while several parliaments have approved non-binding motions urging recognition….
Paganism as a distinct and separate religion may perhaps be said to have died, although, driven out of the cities, it found refuge in the countryside, where it lingered long — and whence, indeed, its very name is derived. In a very real sense, however, it never died at all. It was only transformed and absorbed into Christianity. – James Westfall Thompson, An Introduction to Medieval Europe
In 2003, science-fiction writer Michael Crichton warned a San Francisco audience about the sacralization of the environment. Drawing an analogy between religion and environmentalism, Crichton said:
There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all.
We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
This analogy between religion and environmentalism is no longer a mere analogy.
Pope Francis, the highest authority in the Catholic Church — to whom many faithful look for spiritual guidance — has now fused church doctrine with environmental doctrine.
Let’s consider pieces of his recently released Encyclical Letter. One is reminded of a history in which the ideas of paganism (including the worship of nature) were incorporated into the growing medieval Church.
Excerpts from Pope Francis are shown in italics.
This sister protests the evil that we provoke, because of the irresponsible use and of the abuse of the goods that God has placed in her. We grew up thinking that we were its owners and rulers, allowed to plunder it.
Notice how Pope Francis turns the earth into a person. Sister. Mother. This kind of anthropomorphic trope is designed to make you think that, by virtue of driving your car, you’re also smacking your sibling. We’ve gone from “dominion over the animals and crawling things” to “plundering” our sister.
The violence that exists in the human heart wounded by sin is also manifested in the symptoms of the disease we feel in soil, water, air and in the living things. Therefore, among the most abandoned and ill treated poor we find our oppressed and devastated Earth, which “moans and suffers the pains of childbirth” [Romans 8:22].
First, if the state of the soil, water and air and living things is indeed symptomatic of our violent, sinful hearts, then the good news is that sin is on the decline. On every dimension the Pope names, the symptoms of environmental harm are getting better all the time — at least in our decadent capitalist country.
There are forms of pollution which affect people every day. The exposure to air pollutants produces a large spectrum of health effects, in particular on the most poor, and causes millions of premature deaths.
This will always be true to some degree, of course, but it’s less true than any time in human history. Pope Francis fails to acknowledge the tremendous gains humanity has made. For example, human life expectancy in the Paleolithic period (call this “Eden”) was 33 years. Life expectancy in the neolithic period was 20 years. Globally, life expectancy is now more than 68 years, and in the West, it is passing 79 years.
Yes, there is pollution, and, yes, the poor are affected by it. But the reason why the poor are affected most by air pollution is because they’re poor — and because they don’t have access to fossil fuel energy. Pope Francis never bothers to draw the connection between wealth and health because he thinks of both production and consumption as sinful. Brad Plumer writes at Vox,
About 3 billion people around the world — mostly in Africa and Asia, and mostly very poor — still cook and heat their homes by burning coal, charcoal, dung, wood, or plant residue in their homes. These homes often have poor ventilation, and the smoke can cause all sorts of respiratory diseases.
The wealthy people of the West, including Pope Francis, don’t suffer from this problem. That’s because liberal capitalist countries — i.e., those countries who “plunder” their sister earth — do not suffer from energy poverty. They do not suffer from inhaling fumes and particulate matter from burning dung becausethey are “sinful,” because they are capitalist.
See the problem? The Pope wants to have it both ways. He has confused the disease (unhealthy indoor air pollution) with the cure (cheap, clean, abundant and mass-produced energy from fossil fuels).
Add to that the pollution that affects all, caused by transportation, by industrial fumes, by the discharge of substances which contribute to the acidification of soil and water, by fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and toxic pesticides in general. The technology, which, connected to finance, claims to be the only solution to these problems, in fact is not capable of seeing the mystery of the multiple relationships which exist between things, and because of this, sometimes solves a problem by creating another.
It is strange to read admonitions from someone about the “multiple relationships that exist between things,” only to see him ignore those relationships in the same paragraph. Yes, humans often create problems by solving others, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t solve the problems. It just means we should solve the big problems and then work on the smaller ones.
Solving problems even as we discover different problems is an inherent part of the human condition. Our creativity and innovation and struggle to overcome the hand nature has dealt us is what makes us unique as a species.
Perhaps this is, for Pope Francis, some sort of Green Original Sin: “Thou shalt just deal with it.” But to the rest of us, it is the means by which we live happier, more comfortable lives here under the firmament.
The Earth, our home, seems to turn more and more into a huge garbage dump. In many places on the planet, the elderly remember with nostalgia the landscapes of the past, which now appear to be submerged in junk.
If you get your understanding of waste management and the environment from the movie Wall-E, then you might have the impression that we’re burying our sister in garbage. But as the guys over at EconPop have pointed out, land used for waste management is also governed by laws of supply and demand — which means entrepreneurs and innovators are finding better and less expensive ways to reuse, reduce, recycle, and manage our waste.
The industrial waste as well as the chemicals used in cities and fields can produce an effect of bio-accumulation in the bodies of the inhabitants of neighboring areas, which occurs even when the amount of a toxic element in a given place is low. Many times one takes action only when these produced irreversible effects on people’s health.
People, on net, are living longer and healthier than they ever have in the history of our species. What evidence does the Holy Father have that irreversible effects on people’s health rises to the level of an emergency that demands drafting in a papal encyclical? And why focus on the costs of “chemicals” without a single mention of overwhelming their human benefit? Indeed, which chemicals? This kind of sloppy thinking is rather unbecoming of someone who is (we are constantly reminded) a trained chemist.
Certain substances can have health effects, but so can failing to produce the life-enhancing goods in the first place. The answer is not to beg forgiveness for using soaps and plastics (or whatever), but to develop the institutions that prevent people and companies from imposing harmful costs onto others without taking responsibility for it.
The key is to consider the trade-offs that we will face no matter what, not to condemn and banish “impure” and unnatural substances from our lives.
These issues are intimately linked to the culture of waste, affecting so much the human beings left behind when the things turn quickly into trash.
Now we’re getting somewhere. This is where Pope Francis would like to add consumerism to production on the list of environmentally deadly sins.
Let us realize, for example, that most of the paper that is produced is thrown away and not recycled.
Heaven forfend! So would Pope Francis have us burn fossil fuels to go around and collect processed pulp? Is he unaware that demand for paper is what drivesthe supply of new trees? We aren’t running out of trees because we throw away paper. The Pope’s plan sounds like it could have been hatched in Berkeley, California, instead of Vatican City. And yet worlds have collided.
Mandatory recycling, by definition, takes material that would not be recycled voluntarily, diverts it from the waste stream, and handles it several times before using it again in a way that wastes resources.
The only explanation for this behavior that I can think of is a religious ceremony, a sacrifice of resources as a form of worship. I have no problem if people want to do that. As religions go, it is fairly benign. Butrequiring that religious sacrifice of resources is a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.
Well, Professor Munger, this is the Pope we’re talking about.
We find it hard to admit that the operation of natural ecosystems is exemplary: plants synthesize nutrients that feed the herbivores; these in turn feed the carnivores, which provide a lot of organic waste, which give rise to a new generation of plants. In contrast, the industrial system, at the end of its cycle of production and consumption, has not developed the ability to absorb and reuse waste and slag.
Where is the evidence for this? These are matters of faith, indeed. All this time I thought the industrial system did have the ability to absorb and reuse waste: It’s called the system of prices, property, and profit/loss. The problem is not that such a “recycling” system doesn’t exist, it’s that corruption and government distorts the system of property, prices and profit/loss so that our economic ecosystem doesn’t operate as it should.
Indeed, when you have the Pope suggesting we burn gas to save glass, you have to wonder why the industrial system is so messed up. A system that “requires us to limit the use of non-renewable resources, to moderate consumption, to maximize the efficiency of the exploitation, to reuse and to recycle,” is called the market. And where it doesn’t exist is where you’ll find the worst instances of corruption and environmental degradation.
Then, of course, there’s climate change. In the interests of brevity I won’t quote the whole thing. But here’s the punchline, which might have been plucked straight from the IPCC Summary for Policymakers:
Climate change is a global problem with serious environmental, social, economic, distribution and policy implications, and make up one of the main current challenges for humanity. The heaviest impacts will probably fall in the coming decades upon developing countries.
Meanwhile, the biggest benefits of burning more carbon-based fossil fuels will accrue the poorest billions on earth. The Pope should mention that if he really has their interests at heart or in mind.
But many symptoms indicate that these effects could get worse if we continue the current patterns of production and consumption.
“Patterns of production and consumption”? This is a euphemism for wealth creation. What is wealth except production and consumption of resources to further human need and desire?
His suggested cure for our dangerous patterns of wealth creation, of course, is good ole demand-side management. Wiser, more enlightened minds (like his, he hopes) will let you know which light bulbs to buy, what sort of car to drive, and which insolvent solar company they’ll “invest” your money in. You can even buy papal indulgences in the form of carbon credits. As the late Alexander Cockburn wrote,
The modern trade is as fantastical as the medieval one. … Devoid of any sustaining scientific basis, carbon trafficking is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed, just like the old indulgences, though at least the latter produced beautiful monuments.
But the most important thing to realize here is that the “current” patterns of production and consumption are never current. The earthquakes of innovation and gales of creative destruction blow through any such observed patterns. The price system, with its lightning-quick information distribution mechanism is far, far superior to any elites or energy cronies. And technological innovation, though we can’t predict just how, will likely someday take us as far away from today’s energy status quo, just as we have moved away from tallow, whale oil, and horse-drawn carriages.
The Pope disagrees with our rose-tinted techno-optimism, saying “some maintain at all costs the myth of progress and say that the ecological problems will be solved simply by new technical applications.”
The Pope sits on his golden throne and looks over the vast expanse of time and space — from hunter-gatherers running mammoths off cliffs to Americans running Teslas off electric power, from the USA in 1776 and 2015, from England before and after the Industrial Revolution, from Hong Kong and Hiroshima in 1945 to their glorious present — and sneers: progress is a myth, environmental problems can’t be fixed through innovation, production is destroying the earth, consumption is original sin.
Innovation is the wellspring of all progress. Policies to stop or undo innovation in energy, chemistry, industry, farming, and genetics are a way to put humanity in a bell jar, at best. At worst they will put some of us in the dark and others in early graves. They are truly fatal conceits.
And yet, the Pope has faith in policymakers to know just which year we should have gotten off the train of innovation. William F. Buckley famously said conservatives “stand athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!’” Greens are similar, except they’re yelling “Go back!”
Therefore it has become urgent and compelling to develop policies so that in the coming years the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases is reduced drastically, for instance by replacing fossil fuels and by developing renewable energy sources.
I reflect again on the notion that this effort might be just another way of the Church embracing and extending a competitor religion. Then again, Pope Francis so often shows that he is a true and faithful green planner. In an unholy alliance with those who see the strategic benefit in absorbing environmentalism, the Holy Father has found the perfect way to restore the power of the Church over politics, economics, culture, and the state to its former glory.
Max Borders is the editor of the Freeman and director of content for FEE. He is also cofounder of the event experience Voice & Exit and author of Superwealth: Why we should stop worrying about the gap between rich and poor.
Daniel Bier is the editor of Anything Peaceful. He writes on issues relating to science, civil liberties, and economic freedom.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/vatican-e1434989477829.jpg317640Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2015-06-22 12:16:232015-06-22 12:20:39The New Paganism? The Case against Pope Francis’s Green Encyclical by Max Borders
Which is the Antichrist — the Pope or the coming 12th Imam (Mahdi) of Islam? Pat Robertson seems to be questioning the historic Protestant view of the papacy as the Antichrist power, impressed with the work of Joel Richardson a “Mid East Beast.”
Before we throw the baby out with the bath water, let’s consider an update to C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, which was about the devil’s strategies to deceive us. The devil has something for everyone and in the modern version, Christians can easily see how militant Islam is anti-Christ.
It’s too easy to forget Dave Hunt’s A Woman Rides the Beast. His title from Revelation 17 explained the harlot (not the bride of Christ) who is involved with kings and governments, a wealthy church decked with gold and precious stones, wearing scarlet, the color of cardinals, and sitting on seven hills (Rome). She is a persecuting church, “drunken with the blood of saints” and a mother church—mother of harlots who are unfaithful—they no longer protest what their founders protested.
This harlot is also “the Mother of Abominations.” Converted Jesuit priest, Alberto Rivera shows how Rome strategized to mentor young Muhammed by Catholic Khadija which explains the common thread of Mary and Fatima to both religions. (Mother of Abominations)
But while Islam made war on Jews and Evangelical Christians in the Holy Land as planned, they failed to give Jerusalem to the Pope, hence the Crusades to get it back from infidels and a bitter hatred of Islam for “Christians” and a perfect setup of them as “Antichrist.”
The only book that Christ recommended when asked about the end of the world shows that the U.S. will stomp Iran as the 2nd horn on a Muslim ram in Daniel 8:20 in a vision that’s “at the time of the end,” (Dan 8:17. After that, the pope will be able to move to Jerusalem (Dan 11:45) and govern the holy places and receive homage.
Then come the real Antichrist as the Pope introduces ‘Jesus’ to the world when Satan comes to impersonate Him. Hence there are two Antichrists. One adamantly opposed to Christianity, and the other, in place of the true Christ. The Vatican already worships Lucifer (the name of the fallen angel who became Satan and was thrown out of heaven for his rebellion against God). Isaiah 14:12-14; Rev 12:7-9.
Satan so deceived the angels that if God had wiped out the devil without demon stration [sic] to show his principles, then all the other beings would have served God from fear rather than love, which is the basis of God’s government and the wise laws which He has made.
So our world became a battlefield to reveal who God and Satan are—and what their principles are. At the cross, love and hate were fully exposed, meaning that Satan would lose. But billions of people still have no clue in spite of the Bible being a best-seller. “So send I you,” says Christ to us in the end-time.
It will climax when Satan “Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” 2 Thess 2:4. This is what the pope has done for centuries, claiming the title of deity, “Lord God the Pope,” etc.
In the end-times, Satan will fill the bill with all power and signs and lying wonders, ” 2 Thessalonians 2:9. His claim to be Christ will deceive “nearly the very elect,” Matt 24:23,24.
But when we are not deceived and choose not to give him homage, it will be like the three Hebrews in Daniel 3. But as the “Son of God” was with them (Dan 3:25), He will come for us on the white horse to end Armageddon intended to annihilate God’s remnant.
Muhammad and Islam, the result of Vatican strategy?
Is the Vatican worshiping Lucifer and not the Son of God? Watch this video:
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/antichrist-e1434882099776.jpg427640Dr. Richard Ruhling, MDhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Richard Ruhling, MD2015-06-21 06:24:402015-06-21 06:26:20Two Antichrists? How C.S. Lewis Helps Pat Robertson and Joel Richardson on the ‘Horns of a Beast Dilemma’
Today the Vatican released a highly anticipated Papal encyclical containing a carefully worded prediction of the imminent destruction of Earth’s environment at the hands of wealthy countries and individuals. Titled “Laudato Si,” (“Be Praised”), the new encyclical leaves little doubt that its author, Pope Francis, is attempting to bridge the widening gap between the boring and preachy Epistle of Jude and the still popular and hardcore Book of Revelation, while also courting a younger, progressive generation of Mother Earth worshippers by adding a cool new “Horseman of Global Warming” to the existing Doomsday scenario, bringing the total number of Horsemen of the Apocalypse to five.
Prior to the release, a senior Vatican official explained the purpose of the encyclical as a good faith effort by the Pope to demonize unbridled capitalism as the sole threat to our common planet, thus endearing himself and the Church he shepherds to the largely untapped progressive community. “If this encyclical receives the popular support it deserves, it may well find its way into the Canon of Scripture, and possibly into movie theaters worldwide,” the source told the press on condition of anonymity, explaining that “stealing the Holy Father’s thunder” is an excommunicable offense.
“It may seem odd to suggest that St. John, author of the Book of Revelation, shared a common failing with the early prophets of Climate Change, but it’s true. In his eagerness to steer readers to God, John wrote as though it was essential that people immediately embrace holy living so as to avoid the fast-approaching horrors of Armageddon. Likewise, until recently, the harbingers of carbon-based annihilation demanded drastic lifestyle changes among the world’s consumers to prevent climate cataclysm,” said the insider of an increasingly enlightened and once again relevant Catholic institution.
“Their mutual mistake was the specificity of predictions and deadlines for action, which have all passed without any noticeable impact. New York remains above water and natural disasters have not increased, while the seven seals remain unbroken and the stars are still attached to the firmament,” the Vatican source said.
And yet we shouldn’t lose hope: “The infallible Vicar of Christ won’t repeat those mistakes. His encyclical skillfully combines compelling, Revelationesque doomsday scenarios with a generous use of tempering vagaries such as ‘may’ and ‘potential.'”
Even though none of the earlier predictions have materialized, there is still reason for optimism, as Revelation and Climate Change Science both continue to be wildly popular among the respective groups of believers.
“The encyclical capitalizes on that popularity while serving as a long overdue segue between the present time, where nothing of note is happening, and the apocalyptic events which may still be decades away,” said the Vatican official, ending the anonymous statement with a prediction that the eventual Hollywood screenplay may potentially feature a snappier, dire-sounding title.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The Peoples Cube.
With probably trillions in gold, Pope Francis has a good idea about sharing the wealth. Would he be willing to set a good example and say, “Follow me”?
If you Google “gold to the Vatican,” the first page of 7,080,000 results includes numerous links to $170 million in gold from Nazi Germany taken from the teeth of Jewish people gassed to death.
There are also 55,000 results for “gold to the Vatican” in videos with some of the same points in the below YouTube video. On the 2nd page of “gold to the Vatican” is a link to an article re: the Philippines as the “wealthiest nation on earth” and an explanation of “why the Diaz Last Will allotted 15% or around 90,000 metric tons of gold to the Vatican.” This is just the tip of the iceberg.
International Monetary Fund Whisteblower Karen Hudes says some of our tax dollars go to the UK by treaty and then to the Vatican Bank, raising huge questions — How can this be (@7:30 minutes)?
New World gold acquisition may have started with Cortez and the conquest of the Aztecs. I have seen cathedrals in Latin America with much gold. And it confirms the Bible’s reference to a woman in Revelation 17 that some Protestants interpret as the Vatican. She’s described as involved with kings and politics, arrayed in purple and scarlet and decked with gold, precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, Rev 17:2,4. Sounds like wealth, and sitting on seven hills [Rome], Rev 17:9,
So why would Pope Francis ask the only historically Protestant nation to help when he’s had the resources of Inter-America and South America at his command for centuries?
How does Pope Francis explain their poverty when Catholicism has dominated them? In the early 1960’s I spent a summer in Colombia and Venezuela when a third of the people couldn’t read or write –a sharp contrast to men like Jefferson, Madison, Adams and Lincoln who had no benefit of our great public schools of today. Maybe they were (God forbid) homeschooled!
Shouldn’t we start asking questions before we jump into a socialist pot to share what we have with everyone else? Maybe the first question would be how much wealth does the Vatican have? Can we inspect it like we would like to inspect Iran’s nuclear developments?
Catholic means universal, and we have a congress that is catholic—not Roman Catholic, but (little c) catholic–universal that wants to go along to get along and so very few with the guts to stand for what’s right, even at the risk of personal loss.
And maybe that explains how the Supreme Court works with a majority of Catholic justices favoring Obamacare that will surely ruin America, if same sex marriage doesn’t do it first with their approval. Is Protestantism dead? If we don’t speak out now, we must forever hold our peace. Freedom of press is nearly gone, but 7,080,000 results for “gold to the Vatican” deserves a bigger picture of how we got here from the Catholic World–
“There is, ere long, to be a state religion in this country, and that state religion is to be the Roman Catholic.”
1st. The Roman Catholic is to wield his vote for the purpose of securing Catholic ascendancy in this country.
2nd. All legislation must be governed by the will of God, unerringly indicated by the pope.
3rd. EDUCATION must be controlled by Catholic Authorities, and under education the opinions of the individual and the utterances of the press are included, and many opinions are to be forbidden by the secular arm, under the authority of the Church, even to war and bloodshed.”
EDITORS NOTE: Dr. Richard Ruhling is a physician whose interest in retirement includes a concern for where we are going in America. He offers more information at his website: http://ChooseABetterDestiny.com.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/GoldVatican-e1434708937566.jpg321567Dr. Richard Ruhling, MDhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Richard Ruhling, MD2015-06-19 06:16:582015-06-19 07:38:41Helping Pope Francis to Help the Poor
Pope Francis: ‘We believers cannot fail to ask God for a positive outcome to the present discussions, so that future generations will not have to suffer the effects of our ill-advised delays.’
Climate Depot’s Marc Morano comment: “No matter how nuanced and faithful to Catholic teachings this encyclical attempts to be, this passage where the Pope urges Catholics to ‘ask God for a positive outcome’ to the current UN global warming treaty process, will overpower every other message. The Pope is clearly endorsing a specific UN political climate treaty and essentially declaring he is on a mission from God to support a UN climate treaty. He even conjures up the comical concept of climate ‘tipping points’.”
169. “As far as the protection of biodiversity and issues related to desertification are concerned, progress has been far less significant. With regard to climate change, the advances have been regrettably few. Reducing greenhouse gases requires honesty, courage and responsibility, above all on the part of those countries which are more powerful and pollute the most. The Conference of the United Nations on Sustainable Development, “Rio+20” (Rio de Janeiro 2012), issued a wide-ranging but ineffectual outcome document. International negotiations cannot make significant progress due to positions taken by countries which place their national interests above the global common good. Those who will have to suffer the consequences of what we are trying to hide will not forget this failure of conscience and responsibility. Even as this Encyclical was being prepared, the debate was intensifying. We believers cannot fail to ask God for a positive outcome to the present discussions, so that future generations will not have to suffer the effects of our ill-advised delays.”
Morano: ‘The pope appears to be jumping on the bandwagon just as the evidence to weaken on man-made global warming…On all of these metrics, the case is weakening… It’s one thing for the Pope to have a scientific view that people can disagree on, but it’s completely another thing to time an encyclical and tie it in with a UN global warming treaty. The confusion is going to be Catholic Americans will ask themselves: ‘Hey do i have to support a UN political treaty on global warming? If I don’t , am I not a good catholic?’ It’s sowing confusion. But on the other hand, only 2% of this encyclical appears to be on climate. There are lot of other issues in it. The people touting the Pope’s view on climate are ignoring all of the other issues, life issues, overpopulation, that the Pope is against. The media loves it because he sounds a lot like Al Gore in this encyclical.’
Climate Skeptics Respond to Papal Encyclical: Climate Depot’s Marc Morano: “The Vatican’s partnering with the United Nations climate agenda is nothing short of an unholy alliance. The papal encyclical, no matter how nuanced it may read, will simply be used as a tool to support UN global warming ‘solutions’ that are at odds with most Catholic teachings on issues such as abortion, contraception, overpopulation, and helping the poor nations develop. The Vatican appears to be taking an unprecedented step by seemingly endorsing a specific UN climate treaty.
“Despite the media’s portrayal, this is ultimately not a climate change encyclical, as only 2% of the encyclical deals with climate at all. It is about much more than that, and the irony is that the people who are lauding the pope’s position on climate disagree with just about everything else he stands for. Climate activists who take the time to read the entire encyclical will learn about Catholic teaching on a host of moral issues that they probably have never been willing to listen to before.
“The climate activists are no doubt getting a PR boost from the pope’s entry into the climate debate. But ultimately, the pope’s views on climate science will do little to alter the opinions of Catholics about global warming. As a Catholic, it is my hope that the pope does not take the next step and essentially lobby for a UN climate treaty.”
Pew Poll: Less than half of US Catholics believe climate change is mostly man-made – The survey by the Pew Research Center found 71 percent of U.S. Catholics believed the planet was getting warmer, but less than half, or 47 percent, attributed global warming to human causes. About 48 percent viewed it as a very serious problem. The numbers are similar to the U.S. population overall – 68 percent believe warming is happening, 45 percent say it is caused by humans, and 46 percent see it as a very serious problem.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Pope-Francis-Climate-Change1-e1434652834318.jpg360640Marc Moranohttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMarc Morano2015-06-18 14:40:532015-06-18 14:42:09Pope turns lobbyist?! Urges prayers for passage of UN climate treaty!
Pope Francis’s new encyclical on the environment (Laudato Sii) warns of the coming environmental catastrophe (“unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequences for all of us”). It’s the latest entry in a long literary tradition of environmental doomsday warnings.
In contrast, Matt Ridley, bestselling author of Genome, The Agile Gene, and The Rational Optimist, who also received the 2012 Julian Simon Memorial Award from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, says this outlook has proven wrong time again. This is the full text of his acceptance speech. Video is embedded below.
It is also 40 years since The Limits to Growth and 50 years since Silent Spring, plenty long enough to reflect on whether the world has conformed to Malthusian pessimism or Simonian optimism.
Before I go on, I want to remind you just how viciously Simon was attacked for saying that he thought the bad news was being exaggerated and the good news downplayed.
Verbally at least Simon’s treatment was every bit as rough as Martin Luther’s. Simon was called an imbecile, a moron, silly, ignorant, a flat-earther, a member of the far right, a Marxist.
“Could the editors have found someone to review Simon’s manuscript who had to take off his shoes to count to 20?” said Paul Ehrlich.
Erhlich together with John Holdren then launched a blistering critique, accusing Simon of lying about electricity prices having fallen. It turned out they were basing their criticism on a typo in a table, as Simon discovered by calling the table’s author. To which Ehrlich replied: “what scientist would phone the author of a standard source to make sure there were no typos in a series of numbers?”
Answer: one who likes to get his facts right.
Yet for all the invective, his critics have never laid a glove on Julian Simon then or later. I cannot think of a single significant fact, data point or even prediction where he was eventually proved badly wrong. There may be a few trivia that went wrong, but the big things are all right. Read that 1980 article again today and you will see what I mean.
I want to draw a few lessons from Julian Simon’s battle with the Malthusian minotaur, and from my own foolhardy decision to follow in his footsteps – and those of Bjorn Lomborg, Ron Bailey, Indur Goklany, Ian Murray, Myron Ebell and others – into the labyrinth a couple of decades later.
Consider the words of the publisher’s summary of The Limits to Growth: “Will this be the world that your grandchildren will thank you for? A world where industrial production has sunk to zero. Where population has suffered a catastrophic decline. Where the air, sea, and land are polluted beyond redemption. Where civilization is a distant memory. This is the world that the computer forecasts.”
Again and again Simon was right and his critics were wrong.
Would it not be nice if just one of those people who called him names piped up and admitted it? We optimists have won every intellectual argument and yet we have made no difference at all. My daughter’s textbooks trot out the same old Malthusian dirge as mine did.
What makes it so hard to get the message across?
I think it boils down to five adjectives: ahistorical, finite, static, vested and complacent. The eco-pessimist view ignores history, misunderstands finiteness, thinks statically, has a vested interest in doom and is complacent about innovation.
People have very short memories. They are not just ignoring, but unaware of, the poor track record of eco-pessimists. For me, the fact that each of the scares I mentioned above was taken very seriously at the time, attracting the solemn endorsement of the great and the good, should prompt real skepticism about global warming claims today.
That’s what motivated me to start asking to see the actual evidence about climate change. When I did so I could not find one piece of data – as opposed to a model – that shows either unprecedented change or change is that is anywhere close to causing real harm.
Yet when I made this point to a climate scientist recently, he promptly and cheerily said that “the fact that people have been wrong before does not make them wrong this time,” as if this somehow settled the matter for good.
Second, it is enormously hard for people to grasp Simon’s argument that “Incredible as it may seem at first, the term ‘finite’ is not only inappropriate but downright misleading in the context of natural resources.”
He went on: “Because we find new lodes, invent better production methods and discover new substitutes, the ultimate constraint upon our capacity to enjoy unlimited raw materials at acceptable prices is knowledge.” This is a profoundly counterintuitive point.
Yet was there ever a better demonstration of this truth than the shale gas revolution? Shale gas was always there; but what made it a resource, as opposed to not a resource, was knowledge – the practical know-how developed by George Mitchell in Texas. This has transformed the energy picture of the world.
Besides, as I have noted elsewhere, it’s the renewable – infinite – resources that have a habit of running out: whales, white pine forests, buffalo. It’s a startling fact, but no non-renewable resource has yet come close to exhaustion, whereas lots of renewable ones have.
And by the way, have you noticed something about fossil fuels – we are the only creatures that use them. What this means is that when you use oil, coal or gas, you are not competing with other species. When you use timber, or crops or tide, or hydro or even wind, you are.
There is absolutely no doubt that the world’s policy of encouraging the use of bio-energy, whether in the form of timber or ethanol, is bad for wildlife – it competes with wildlife for land, or wood or food.
Imagine a world in which we relied on crops and wood for all our energy and then along comes somebody and says here’s this stuff underground that we can use instead, so we don’t have to steal the biosphere’s lunch.
Imagine no more. That’s precisely what did happen in the industrial revolution.
Third, the Malthusian view is fundamentally static. Julian Simon’s view is fundamentally dynamic. Again and again when I argue with greens I find that they simply do not grasp the reflexive nature of the world, the way in which prices cause the substitution of resources or the dynamic properties of ecosystems – the word equilibrium has no place in ecology.
Take malaria. The eco-pessimists insisted until recently that malaria must get worse in a warming 21st century world. But, as Paul Reiter kept telling them to no avail, this is nonsense. Malaria disappeared from North America, Russia and Europe and retreated dramatically in South America, Asia and Africa in the twentieth century even as the world warmed.
That’s not because the world got less congenial to mosquitoes. It’s because we moved indoors and drained the swamps and used DDT and malaria medications and so on. Human beings are a moving target. They adapt.
But, my fourth point, another reason Simon’s argument fell on stony ground is that so many people had and have a vested interest in doom. Though they hate to admit it, the environmental movement and the scientific community are vigorous, healthy, competitive, cut-throat, free markets in which corporate leviathans compete for donations, grants, subsidies and publicity. The best way of getting all three is to sound the alarm. If it bleeds it leads. Good news is no news.
Imagine how much money you would get if you put out an advert saying: “we now think climate change will be mild and slow, none the less please donate”. The sums concerned are truly staggering. Greenpeace and WWF, the General Motors and Exxon of the green movement, between them raise and spend a billion dollars a year globally. WWF spends $68m alone on educational propaganda. Frankly, Julian, Bjorn, Ron, Indur, Ian, Myron and I are spitting in the wind.
Yet, fifth, ironically, a further problem is complacency. The eco-pessimists are the Panglossians these days, for it is they who think the world will be fine without developing new technologies. Let’s not adopt GM food – let’s stick with pesticides.
Was there ever a more complacent doctrine than the precautionary principle: don’t try anything new until you are sure it is safe? As if the world were perfect. It is we eco-optimists, ironically, who are acutely aware of how miserable this world still is and how much better we could make it – indeed how precariously dependent we are on still inventing ever more new technologies.
I had a good example of this recently debating a climate alarmist. He insisted that the risk from increasing carbon dioxide was acute and that therefore we needed to drastically cut our emissions by 90 percent or so. In vain did I try to point out that drastically cutting emissions by 90% might do more harm to the poor and the rain forest than anything the emissions themselves might do. That we are taking chemotherapy for a cold, putting a tourniquet round our neck to stop a nosebleed.
My old employer, the Economist, is fond of a version of Pascal’s wager – namely that however small the risk of catastrophic climate change, the impact could be so huge that almost any cost is worth bearing to avert it. I have been trying to persuade them that the very same logic applies to emissions reduction.
However small is the risk that emissions reduction will lead to planetary devastation, almost any price is worth paying to prevent that, including the tiny risk that carbon emissions will destabilize the climate. Just look at Haiti to understand that getting rid of fossil fuels is a huge environmental risk.
That’s what I mean by complacency: complacently assuming that we can decarbonize the economy without severe ecological harm, complacently assuming that we can shut down world trade without starving the poor, that we can grow organic crops for seven billion people without destroying the rain forest.
Having paid homage to Julian Simon’s ideas, let me end by disagreeing with him on one thing. At least I think I am disagreeing with him, but I may be wrong.
He made the argument, which was extraordinary and repulsive to me when I first heard it as a young and orthodox eco-pessimist, that the more people in the world, the more invention. That people were brains as well as mouths, solutions as well as problems. Or as somebody once put it: why is the birth of a baby a cause for concern, while the birth of a calf is a cause for hope?
Now there is a version of this argument that – for some peculiar reason – is very popular among academics, namely that the more people there are, the greater the chance that one of them will be a genius, a scientific or technological Messiah.
Occasionally, Julian Simon sounds like he is in this camp. And if he were here today, — and by Zeus, I wish he were – I would try to persuade him that this is not the point, that what counts is not how many people there are but how well they are communicating. I would tell him about the new evidence from Paleolithic Tasmania, from Mesolithic Europe from the Neolithic Pacific, and from the internet today, that it’s trade and exchange that breeds innovation, through the meeting and mating of ideas.
That the lonely inspired genius is a myth, promulgated by Nobel prizes and the patent system. This means that stupid people are just as important as clever ones; that the collective intelligence that gives us incredible improvements in living standards depends on people’s ideas meeting and mating, more than on how many people there are. That’s why a little country like Athens or Genoa or Holland can suddenly lead the world. That’s why mobile telephony and the internet has no inventor, not even Al Gore.
Not surprisingly, academics don’t like this argument. They just can’t get their pointy heads around the idea that ordinary people drive innovation just by exchanging and specializing. I am sure Julian Simon got it, but I feel he was still flirting with the outlier theory instead.
The great human adventure has barely begun. The greenest thing we can do is innovate. The most sustainable thing we can do is change. The only limit is knowledge. Thank you Julian Simon for these insights.
Anything Peaceful is FEE’s new online ideas marketplace, hosting original and aggregate content from across the Web.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/smoke-stacks-with-skulls-e1434553147172.jpg317640Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2015-06-17 10:59:182015-06-17 10:59:18Against Eco-pessimism: Half a Century of False Bad News by Matt Ridley
Canonization in the Roman Catholic Church has already become a charade, with recently deceased popes whose records are likely to be viewed by history quite differently from how they are now rushed to sainthood the way Roman Emperors used to be deified right after their deaths (no matter what rogues they had been in life), but this is even worse: it’s a validation of anti-Semitism, and indirectly of the jihad against Israel, at a time when the Pope should be declaring his solidarity with Israel as the nation bearing the brunt of the jihad that has devastated Christian communities across the Middle East.
The Catholic Church formally rejected anti-Semitism in all its forms at the Second Vatican Council. Why is it going in the other direction now?
No doubt Francis believes that to speak frankly about the jihad against Christians and Jews would be to harm the “dialogue.”
The Catholic Church hierarchy is following a disastrous and ultimately un-Christian line of weakness, willful blindness and submission in the face of evil; many Christians will die as a result.
“Pope Francis said to back sainthood for anti-Semitic priest,” Jerusalem Post, June 5, 2015 (thanks to David):
Leon Dehon, whose beatification was delayed in 2005 following the death of Pope John Paul II, founded the Priests of the Sacred Heart order.
Pope Francis on Friday went on record as supporting the candidacy for sainthood of a French priest who is alleged to have espoused anti-Semitic views, the AFP news agency reported.
Leon Dehon, whose beatification was delayed in 2005 following the death of Pope John Paul II, founded the Priests of the Sacred Heart order.
According to AFP, although he had been declared venerable by John Paul II, his path to sainthood hit a snag when Pope Benedict XVI ordered a commission to probe Dehon’s alleged anti-Semitism.
Despite questions about Dehon’s past, Pope Francis on Friday was quoted by media outlets as saying that he wished for the beatification process to “end well” and that the late priest should be judged within the context of the times in which he lived.
Dehon is reported to have called the Talmud a “manual of the bandit, corruptor, social destroyer” and anti-Semitism as a “sign of hope.”
He also believed that Jews were “thirsty for gold” and that “lust for money is a racial instinct in them.”
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Pope-Francis-e1433755624218.jpeg370640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2015-06-08 05:27:252015-06-16 10:50:47Pope Francis said to back sainthood for anti-Semitic priest
Today we try something a little different as we go back to our “radio-only” days, before we started producing a regular TV show.
So listen as we take some “calls” from our (make-believe) audience and enjoy the ride. Of course, we have to address the nonsensical decision of the Vatican to recognize “Palestine” as a “State,” and just what state may that be?
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/pope-francis-abu-amazen-e1432207789447.jpg374640Defend The Borderhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDefend The Border2015-05-21 07:31:302015-05-21 07:35:27Did Pope Francis call Abu Mazen an ‘Angel of Peace’?
In a recent Daily Caller article, Michael Bastach took note of “25 Years of predicting The Global Warming ‘Tipping Point’.” This is the message that the Earth is warming rapidly and, if we don’t abandon the use of fossil fuels for power, it will arrive to wreak destruction on the human race and all life on the planet.
It is astounding how many past and present world leaders are telling everyone this despite the total lack of any real science, nor any actual warming—the Earth has been in a natural cooling cycle since 1997!
At the heart of the global warming—now called climate change—“crisis” has been the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that has been issuing apocalyptic predictions since its inception in 1988. None of its predictions have come true. How could they, based as they are on the false science of computer models, not that based on observable climate events and trends?
To this day our own government through its meteorological agencies has been caught manipulating the data gathered over the years to conform with the “warming” scenario. The worst has been the Environmental Protection Agency which is engaged in an effort to shut down coal-fired utilities and access to every other energy source on which we depend to power the nation.
Despite this national and international effort, mostly likely based on the liberal ideology that there are too many humans on the plant and dramatic ways must be found to reduce that number. In the past these anti-humanity advocates could depend on famine, disease and wars to kill off millions, but in the modern world that has become less of a threat.
One libertarian think tank, the Heartland Institute, has been leading the battle against the global warming/climate change hoax for a decade. As a Heartland policy advisor I have had a front row seat. In June, Heartland will sponsor the Tenth International Conference on Climate Change bringing together some of the world’s leading scientists to recommend that it is time for Congress to “take a fresh look at climate science”, “explore better science-based policies for energy and the environment”, and, bluntly stated, to “start over on the question of global warming?”
It did not surprise me to learn that Heartland had dispatched staff to Rome when the Pope announced he too was joining the “climate change” advocates despite its lack of any basis in science. The group garnered tons of international media coverage by simply presenting the truth. You can find out more about them here. It didn’t take long for Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University professor and ‘special advisor” to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, to write a commentary condemning global warming “deniers” that appeared on a Catholic website called Pewsitter.
Sachs took particular aim at The Heartland Institute and, despite not attending its Rome press conference or any of the presentations the experts provided, did not hesitate to identify Heartland as having been supported for years by the Koch brothers, known for the support of conservative groups and causes.
Joseph Bast, Heartland president, does not let such cheap shots pass by. “The Heartland Instituter has received just $25,000 from a single organization, a charitable foundation affiliated with the Koch brothers during the past 15 years. Our annual budget is approximately $7 million. Even that small gift was earmarked for our work on health care reform, not global warming. Why does Sachs mention the ‘Koch brothers’ unless his intention is to smear an independent organization by falsely implying a much larger or somehow Improper level of support from some singularly unpopular billionaires?”
Bast got to the heart of the war being perpetrated by the either misinformed or deliberately lying world leaders of the climate change hoax. “The dishonesty of Sachs’ reference to The Heartland Institute would be startling, coming from a person of Sachs’ stature, if this sort of misrepresentation of facts weren’t so common in the debate over climate change. President Obama sets the tone. Comparing global warming realists to members of the ‘flat earth society’ and rather ominously calling on his supporters to ‘hold climate change denier’s feet to the fire.’”
“Sachs has had a long and distinguished career as an academic and in various government agencies,” said Bast, “but on this issue he is letter his liberal ideology cloud his judgement. His short essay reveals a disturbing lack of knowledge about climate science and compassion toward the billions of people in the world who will be harmed by the UN’s plans to make energy more expensive and less reliable.”
“Sachs ends his essay with a call on people of all faiths to ‘fulfill our moral responsibilities to humanity nd the future of Earth.’ That responsibility starts with truth-telling. Sachs and his colleagues on the left haven’t reach the starting line yet.”
It doesn’t matter if it is the Pope, the President of the United States, or the UN Secretary General if the assertion that the Earth is warming when it is not or that coal, oil and natural gas must be abandoned to “save the Earth.” Whether from ignorance or a dark hidden agenda, the whole of the global warming/climate change is aimed at harming billions, many of whom need the power that this hoax would deny to everyone.
EDITORS NOTE: The feature image is of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with His Holiness Pope Francis, with CEB members. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/587998-Pope-e1431283324348.jpg427640Alan Carubahttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAlan Caruba2015-05-10 14:44:062015-05-10 14:44:06How Can So Many World Leaders Be So Wrong?
ABOUT MICHAEL HICHBORN
