Caring for what we have

This was interesting (not unlike Big Tobacco):

After Typhoon Haiyan killed more than 6,000 people in the Philippines and damaged more than 1 million homes in 2013, Greenpeace Southeast Asia petitioned the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights to declare the world’s largest fossil fuel companies “accountable for either impairing, infringing, abusing or violating human rights” because of their contribution to climate change. Earlier this month, the commission issued its conclusions. In a damning and lucidly written report, the commission found that the world’s largest fossil fuel companies had “engaged in willful obfuscation and obstruction to prevent meaningful climate action.” The companies continue to deny climate science and try to slow a transition away from fossil fuels, the report said, driven “not by ignorance, but by greed.”

I still think it’s counter productive to put too much responsibility on companies and legislation. If I take the plane (1000 kg carbon dioxide) to Nice this summer instead of the train (65 kg carbon dioxide), I’m responsible. If I buy that new laptop, I’ve used up 250 kg carbon dioxide of my yearly (sustainable) quota of 2000 kg. I should probably change my original post, but I didn’t mean that religion was the reason behind our climate crisis, neither did I mean to adress only the american people, I simply asked whether a belief in an afterlife (all religions that do) could be one of the factors allowing us to withstand the current climate situation. Not liking it, but not panicking about it, either.

And I agree it is for far too many Christians that I know. Fortunately as will be clear from many who post here, it needn’t be.

I measure fuel efficiency in my car in months per tank. XD

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I do think that there’s a deficient form of Christianity that’s very bad in this regard. Some think that Jesus is coming back tomorrow–so why care for the earth? Some think that the earth will be burned up, but Jesus redeemed the earth, and will make all things new, not all new things. Some look to the promises made to Noah, and think there is nothing to worry about.

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

They seem to forget the terrible famines from biblical times to the present day. There was even the famous “year without a summer.”

So yes, sometimes religious beliefs can sometimes make people act irresponsibly.

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Interesting parallel with the contemporary mindset and religious violence:

“In other words, earlier critics of religious violence tended to view religious wars as an aberration and indication of the inauthenticity of a particular form of faith; but contemporary critics contend that the very particularity of religious confession is intrinsically violent and thus, not surprisingly, produces ‘real,’ political violence.”

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