Thank you very much Fr. Austriaco for your thoughtful reply. Your analogy is compelling, but I am still troubled by the dubious science on which much of the Encyclical is based. There are some eminent scientists (I don’t include myself) who are very skeptical of the pronouncements of those advocating AGW–Frederick Seitz, former President of the National Academy of Sciences; Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT; Freeman Dyson, Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), amongst many others. And in any case, truth in science is not determined by majority vote.
What does trouble me very much is that Pope Francis’s proposed intervention to help the poor will not, I believe, be effective. It will depend, if I read the Encyclical correctly, on supra-government agencies and bureaucratic controls. Andrew Montford has written a very compelling article about how efforts to minimize carbon footprints have, in fact, harmed the poor: [The Unintended Consequences of Climate Change Policy][1]. One example of this is the higher food prices caused by diversion of corn from food supplies to ethanol as a fuel additive. Bjorn Lomberg, a Danish economist and statistician, who believes that AGW is real, still would have economic resources used to build up water supplies, health resources, agricultural training and improvements for third world countries, rather than be used up in efforts to minimize CO2 production.
I have read the Encyclical in full three times, and I do find much that is laudatory (pun intended). I’m writing a blog about the whole–what I consider very good and what I consider troubling. But I intend, whatever other’s opinions might be, to follow St. Thomas Aquinas in his injunction about following one’s conscience:
“Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.” St. Thomas Aquinas. III Quodlibet 27."
I realize that one must seek the truth and reflect in order to set one’s conscience; your reply has been very helpful in doing that.
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[1]: Unintended Consequences of Climate Change Policy - The Global Warming Policy Foundation