As you all know by now, I’ll occasionally simply re-post something that someone else wrote either because they wrote it better than I, or because it’s a message that we all could benefit from, or both. In this case, in this posting today by Bill McKibben - famed humanitarian and environmentalist leader - about Pope Francis, it’s both.
Bill’s writing was largely about Pope Francis’ commitment to the climate change, but he also addressed the overwhelming need for a greater level of humanity to one another. If you read my post yesterday about Mark and Phillis Codman, yeah, you already know about humanity and the lack of it. And if you’ve been reading my posts for a while that seek to give you information and the history of how harmful – and inhumane – America’s Thing With Race is to you, me, and all of America, then you’re already familiar with all of that. Clearly, we have an administration that seems to revel in inhumanity, especially towards humans who are tinted brown.
Anway, Bill’s post is a worthy read. But first, a story. Talking about the Pope and the Vatican reminds me of a trip to Rome I took many years ago, 1973 or 4. I was living in San Juan and my girlfriend at the time, Ruthann, and I traveled to Europe – Switzerland to ski and Rome to do whatever the Romans do when they are in Rome. Drink wine and drive like maniacs seemed to mostly cover it.
We decided to check out Saint Peter’s Basilica – the gigantic church of the Vatican. There was absolutely nobody else there, so we just wandered around. There was no security and nothing was locked. What I most recall are a bunch of doors that were really short, like Hobbit doors. Maybe 5 feet tall that were entrances and exits for what were basically tunnels. We followed them and the regular hallways all over Saint Peter’s. We could have popped in to the Pope sitting on the throne.
Anway, just one of those long-ago memories where I can’t help but marvel at and shows how much the world has changed. That was before the Pope needed to ride around in a specially built and bullet-proof Pope-mobile.
On to Bill’s post, and be sure to tune in to his recommendation at the end; Bach’s Trio Sonata #5.
Pope Francis and the Sun
Perhaps the world's greatest environmental champion is dead
Just in case I thought one couldn’t feel more forlorn right now, the word came this morning of the death of Pope Francis. It hit me hard—not because I’m a Catholic (I’m a Methodist) but because I had always felt buoyed by his remarkable spirit. If he could bring new hope and energy to an institution as hidebound as the Vatican, there was reason for all of us to go on working on our own hidebound institutions—and if he could stand so completely in solidarity with the world’s poor and vulnerable, then it gave the rest of us something to aim for.
I thought this from the start, when he became the first pope to choose the name of Francis—that countercultural blaze of possibility in a dark time—and when he showed his mastery of the art of gesture, washing the feet of women, of prisoners, of Muslim refugees. (Only Greta Thunberg, with her school strike, has so mastered the power of gesture in modern politics).
But he brought that moral resolve to the question of climate change, making it the subject of his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si, the most important document of his papacy and arguably the most important piece of writing so far this millennium. I spent several weeks living with that book-length epistle in order to write about it for the New York Review of Books, and though I briefly met the man himself in Rome, it is that encounter with his mind that really lives with me. Laudato Si is a truly remarkable document—yes, it exists as a response to the climate crisis (and it was absolutely crucial in the lead-up to the Paris climate talks, consolidating elite opinion behind the idea that some kind of deal was required). But it uses the climate crisis to talk in broad and powerful terms about modernity.
The ecological problems we face are not, in their origin, technological, says Francis. Instead, “a certain way of understanding human life and activity has gone awry, to the serious detriment of the world around us.” He is no Luddite (“who can deny the beauty of an aircraft or a skyscraper?”) but he insists that we have succumbed to a “technocratic paradigm,” which leads us to believe that “every increase in power means ‘an increase of “progress” itself’…as if reality, goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such.” This paradigm “exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object.” Men and women, he writes, have from the start
intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand.
In our world, however, “human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational.” With the great power that technology has afforded us, it’s become
easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit.
The deterioration of the environment, he says, is just one sign of this “reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life.”
I think Francis’s project for the earth—a recovery of fellow feeling, with a special attention to the poor—is the only thing that can save us over time. But it will take time—obviously for the moment we’ve chosen the opposite path, as exemplified by the fact that J.D. Vance, scourge of the refugee, darkened his last day on earth.
In the meantime, Francis was very much a pragmatist, and one advised by excellent scientists and engineers. As a result, he had a clear technological preference: the rapid spread of solar power everywhere. He favored it because it was clean, and because it was liberating—the best short-term hope of bringing power to those without it, and leaving that power in their hands, not the hands of some oligarch somewhere.
As a result, he followed up Laudato Si with a letter last summer, Fratello Sole, which reminds everyone that the climate crisis is powered by fossil fuel, and which goes on to say
There is a need to make a transition to a sustainable development model that reduces greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, setting the goal of climate neutrality. Mankind has the technological means to deal with this environmental transformation and its pernicious ethical, social, economic and political consequences, and, among these, solar energy plays a key role.
As a result, he ordered the Vatican to begin construction of a field of solar panels on land it owned near Rome—an agrivoltaic project that would produce not just food but enough solar power to entirely power the city-state that is the Vatican. It is designed, in his words, to provide “the complete energy sustenance of Vatican City State.” That is to say, this will soon be the first nation powered entirely by the sun.
The level of emotion—of love—in this decision is notable. The pope named “Laudato Si” (“Praised be”) after the first two words of his namesake’s Canticle to the Sun, and Fratello Sole was even more closely tied—those are the words that the first Francis used to address Brother Sun. I reprint the opening of the Canticle here, in homage to both men, and to their sense of humble communion with the glorious world around us.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made,
And first my lord Brother Sun,
Who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.
How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
The world is a poorer place this morning. But far richer for his having lived.
In other energy and climate news (not much, because this newsletter follows fast on the last one):
+Steve Chapple has an important interview with Ralph Keeling, whose father Dave set up the instrument on Mauna Loa that monitors co2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Ralph, on the faculty of Scripps Oceanographic, helps keep up that work, and also oversees a variety of other atmospheric monitoring projects. There’s no one alive better positioned to understand the risks that come with the slashing in government funding for climate science
I guess I'd also say that, you know, the US really has led in this in the past, and what's basically underpinned our prosperity and our stature in the world in the last few decades is the US investment in science in general and our investment in the climate, the science of climate and weather and environmental change puts us also in the forefront of understanding these things. So we have been leaders. We're a magnet for talent or have been and that's that's served us well.
+The cement industry puts a lot of carbon into the air. There are ways to fix that…all of which just got harder thanks to Trump.
The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association also got word earlier this year that it lost its EPA funding. The association was planning to use its $9.6 million grant to help concrete producers develop “environmental product declarations” so government agencies and other customers could identify which products have a low-carbon footprint.
The grant would have boosted demand for low-carbon products, Lemay said. But the Trump administration’s EPA canceled it along with 48 others.
“That just means that we're not going to have the benefit of the federal government accelerating our progress,” Lemay said. “That would have helped. Clearly.”
+We need something beautiful, and here it is. Listen to Bach’s Trio Sonata #5 for organ, set against 60 photos from astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who just returned from their extended stay on the ISS. Such thanks to the people at Earth Music Theater for this ongoing work—this is literally what we’re fighting for, folks.
If it wouldn’t be a financial strain, taking out a modestly priced and voluntary subscription would strengthen this community
Beautiful tribute to someone who cared about our environment. Further grief over the slashing of environmental protections to line already bulging pockets. We WILL fight and diminish the Clown King of Chaos and his courtiers.
May it be so.
Another home run, Wayne. I am by no means religious, but I have admired Pope Francis since the day he was “elected”. I always saw him as a people person, someone not burdened with the pomp and circumstance of the trappings of being Pope. He genuinely cared about the poor, the homeless, the hungry, the victims of racism, homophobia, misogyny, and the victims of violence of every kind. He sought to right wrongs, and expose truths, regardless of their dark circumstances. May his memory be a blessing.