A Right to be Wrong

I am a Pope Francis fan but I think he is wrong about climate change. I am not in the camp of those who think he should be quiet about it though. He has every right to say what he thinks and to speak with the authority the church has given him. If he thinks the earth is on a path toward catastrophic global warming and that man is the cause, as he does, then he has not only the right but the obligation to speak up and to advocate for urgent action to counter the trend. I just think he has the science wrong. There is no question the climate is changing. The earth is certainly a warmer place than it was a hundred years ago. But there are some very large questions about man's contribution to that warming. The alarmist argument is based on a series of extremely complex computer models that have proven consistently incapable of predicting actual conditions, not least the pause in warming we have seen over the last few years. One pseudo scientist after another has been caught jiggering data to produce a desired result, Michael Mann's infamous hockey stick graph has been thoroughly debunked. Had he been right we would all be toast by now. Any argument based on half truths, wild exaggerations, and outright fabrications, as the global warming scare is, should make skeptics of us all. Pope Francis' encyclical, Laudato Si', is a treatise on the seventh and last of Seven Themes of Catholic Social Teaching, Care for God's Creation. Unlike most Papal Encyclicals, it is addressed to everyone regardless of faith. It is a call to arms, a plea for us all to wake up and do something about some very real threats to our common home. It is a quite lengthy document and covers a lot of ground, very little of it having to do with climate change. But choosing to come down squarely on one side of perhaps the single most controversial issue in the environmental debate will likely take the wind out of much of what he has to say. That is unfortunate because he has some very serious things to say. Starting with the notion that the environment includes people, a point missing in much of the discussion. Another is that any proposed solution must include a primary focus on its impact on the poor, an issue often glossed over. Another still is the need for interdisciplinary approaches, difficult to do in today's increasing specialization but no less necessary. God's creation is extremely complex and interconnected. When micro organisms suffer our food supply can be threatened. The smallest creature has it's place and it's own dignity. Man's dominion over the earth does not give him the right to despoil it, it gives him the obligation to cultivate it, beginning with his relationships with other people. I don't have to agree with everything in Laudato Si' to see the seriousness of it all. Francis finds a lot wrong in the world and dwells on it, too much so in my judgement. It makes it a pessimistic document. I wish he had taken more note of the very real progress we have made, like the billions who have lifted themselves out of poverty in recent decades. Surely that is a good thing even if the progress has been uneven. How did it happen? How can we make more of it happen? How can we redress the wrongs that have come with it? All of that said, Laudato Si' is a powerful document from a man with extraordinary intellect. He is spot on with his central point. This is our common home. We need to take care of it.