BY FR. SHAY CULLEN
POPE FRANCIS told us a profound truth, “May the relationship between man and nature not be driven by greed, to manipulate and exploit, but may the divine harmony between beings and creation be conserved in the logic of respect and care.”—General audience, Vatican City, April 22, 2015.
Your primary goal is to avoid corruption and self-serving rule. To be a true leader, you have to serve others, not yourself. Many fake and failed leaders have come and gone and their exuberant empty promises were political lies. UN Secretary General António Guterres said, “Our world is blighted by war, battered by climate chaos, scarred by hate, and shamed by poverty, hunger, and inequality. Conflicts and unrest continue to rage. The war in Ukraine is devastating a country — and dragging down the global economy”.
There are the international tycoons in the global oil and gas industries that are making billions of dollars out of the global warming crisis that causes non-stop disasters. The government officials, some climate deniers, and money moguls that promote investment in the fossil fuel industries must be denied access to funds and consigned to the dark pages of history. They will be considered the destroyers of the planet. No songs will be sung for them but the good committed business leaders of conscience can be encouraged to expand renewable energy resources. Pope Francis had this say to them: “Our common home is being pillaged, laid waste and harmed with impunity. Cowardice in defending it is a grave sin.”—Speech, Santa Cruz, Bolivia, July 9, 2015.
Renewable energy resources such as wind power, solar, geo-therminal and tide resources, are easily available and a free gift of nature that generates electricity without harming the environment but benefits mankind by harnessing the free and abundantly available forces of nature. We have seen the devastation caused by typhoons in the Philippines every year- landslides, floods, powerful winds destroying infrastructure and houses of the poor, crops wiped out and continuous torrential rains. Witness the recent massive floods in Pakistan and China and Costa Rica, the forest fires raging and destroying millions of trees from Siberia in Russia through Europe as far as California, all because we burn oil, coal and gas non-stop.
This is what the Secretary General said before the opening of the UNGA recently in New York. “I have just returned from Pakistan, where I looked through a window into the future. A future of permanent and ubiquitous climate chaos on an unimaginable scale: Devastating loss of life, enormous human suffering, and massive damage to infrastructure and livelihoods. It is simply heartbreaking. No picture can convey the scope of this catastrophe,” he said.
Trees are the hope of mankind to absorb the CO2 in the atmosphere caused by burning fossil fuel, oil, coal and gas. We have to stop the destruction caused by legal and illegal logging and the bad environmental effects of mining on the lives of indigenous people.
The war of Putin against the peaceful Ukrainian people has disrupted the world energy supply and climate change plans for renewable energy have slowed down as Russia is cutting off gas to Europe. European countries are seeking new suppliers of gas and oil. They are far from being self-sufficient in energy production with renewables.
Without the dire warning of what is happening and will happen to us, we cannot act to prevent it. The world is already on fire, the nations are drowning in floods, the crops are failing and the natural world and ecology upon which many millions of people depend upon for survival are being destroyed. The dependence on coal, gas and oil has to be changed. This is the great challenge facing every government official of good conscience and moral integrity.
What more can we ordinary folk do but to clean the environment, clean up the beaches and ban plastic, buy saplings of fruit trees and plant them, clear the beaches and environment of dirt and debris. It all takes dedication to save the planet and ourselves. (preda.org)/PN
