If you think the green movement is harmless and consistent with your faith

[Rahn]

… you need to read this:

thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/green-sex-tips-460410?link=rel&dom=yah_shop&src=syn&con=slide&mag=tdg

I quote:
**Sin: Ditching Birth Control **

Climate change is the last thing you want to think about in the heat of the moment. But if you forget (or choose not to use) birth control, you’re risking more than an itchy, embarrassing STD. Babies are adorable, but all those gurgling genetic replicas can be major carbon sins. Each one of those “extra” children adds 9,441 metric tons of carbon to the planet.

If babies are considered “major carbon sins”, how long will it be until the elderly, or those who oppose climate change, will be, too?

 

[Rock_Happy]

… you need to read this:

thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/green-sex-tips-460410?link=rel&dom=yah_shop&src=syn&con=slide&mag=tdg

I quote:
**Sin: Ditching Birth Control **

Climate change is the last thing you want to think about in the heat of the moment. But if you forget (or choose not to use) birth control, you’re risking more than an itchy, embarrassing STD. Babies are adorable, but all those gurgling genetic replicas can be major carbon sins. Each one of those “extra” children adds 9,441 metric tons of carbon to the planet.

If babies are considered “major carbon sins”, how long will it be until the elderly, or those who oppose climate change, will be, too?

Well, it is a very practical view. One of our serious problems is overpopulation. Some think that is the most serious problem we face on Earth.

This, of course, is not the Catholic view, which is more spiritual than practical. The more practical action is not always the most moral.

 

[theistgal]

Well, it is a very practical view. One of our serious problems is overpopulation. Some think that is the most serious problem we face on Earth.

Proof?

 

[Rock_Happy]

Proof?

sub Saharan africa. the rapidly declining standard of living in the US due to competition for an increasing number of jobs, from asia, india, and soon africa. the rapid depletion of the potable water supply (stay tuned for the crisis to come). the acidification of the oceans… the list is actually very long.

the counterweight is technology. many problems such as this have solutions which we can’t anticipate. i am an optimist. but one troubling thing about population growth is that it is exponential.

my point was not to pick fight with the Luddites and ostriches, but rather to point out that the religious and the secular perspective are separate in this.

 

[Rahn]

my point was not to pick fight with the Luddites and ostriches, but rather to point out that the religious and the secular perspective are separate in this.

I freely acknowledge this is a secular source. But, doesn’t it frighten you that human life is so devalued, even in secular circles?

Today (in the article), the way to avoid commiting a carbon sin is to use a biogredable condom and put it in the rubbish… tomorrow, will it be forced abortion? or execution of the old, infermed, crippled, mentally handicapped?

People are not carbon sins, they are God’s highest creation.

 

[NewsTheMan]

One of our serious problems is overpopulation. Some think that is the most serious problem we face on Earth.

No it isn’t. Our serious problem is greed, selfishness, unwillingness to help the poor, bad stewardship and a general lack of foresight.

In terms of population growth, our problem isn’t being made better by promoting lots of sex. Promote abstinence and safe, good marriages. Numbers will stabilize, I can assure you.

The more practical action is not always the most moral.

1. I find Jews annoying
2. I don’t like to be annoyed
3. It would be impractical for me to be annoyed all my life
4. It would be practical to get rid of them
5. Taking a life is immoral
6. However, the more practical action is not always the most moral

• Thus, I should be allowed to exterminate Jews.

Hmmmm.

Proof?

There is none

sub Saharan africa. the rapidly declining standard of living in the US due to competition for an increasing number of jobs, from asia, india, and soon africa. the rapid depletion of the potable water supply (stay tuned for the crisis to come). the acidification of the oceans… the list is actually very long…

None of this is proof, it’s your speculation added with a bit of confirmation bias. Correlation =/= causation.

 

[chris62]

The Australian Greens Party, currently in bed with the Australian Labor Party because voters couldn’t quite come to terms with an athiest living in sin ruling the country, is detestable.
They are pushing for euthanasia, gay marriage, legal drug use, abortions, denying funding for Catholic schools and who knows what else.
At the last election when I went to vote, the Labor Party man came up to me with a How To Vote ticket and I said: Thanks very much.
A Liberal Party gave me a ticket and I said: Thanks very much.
The Christian Democrats gave me a ticket and I said: Thanks very much.
The Greens gave me a ticket and I said: Does it come with a syringe?

The Labor Party, because of the Greens, will lose the next election, IMHO.

 

[Rock_Happy]

No it isn’t. Our serious problem is greed, selfishness, unwillingness to help the poor, bad stewardship and a general lack of foresight.

In terms of population growth, our problem isn’t being made better by promoting lots of sex. Promote abstinence and safe, good marriages. Numbers will stabilize, I can assure you.

1. I find Jews annoying
2. I don’t like to be annoyed
3. It would be impractical for me to be annoyed all my life
4. It would be practical to get rid of them
5. Taking a life is immoral
6. However, the more practical action is not always the most moral

• Thus, I should be allowed to exterminate Jews.

Hmmmm.

There is none

None of this is proof, it’s your speculation added with a bit of confirmation bias. Correlation =/= causation.

hehe,… you assure us that “numbers will stabilize.” yet you criticize others for speculating. very amusing.

 

[John21652]

sub Saharan africa. the rapidly declining standard of living in the US due to competition for an increasing number of jobs, from asia, india, and soon africa. the rapid depletion of the potable water supply (stay tuned for the crisis to come). the acidification of the oceans… the list is actually very long.

the counterweight is technology. many problems such as this have solutions which we can’t anticipate. i am an optimist. but one troubling thing about population growth is that it is exponential.

my point was not to pick fight with the Luddites and ostriches, but rather to point out that the religious and the secular perspective are separate in this.

Rock Happy, you have got your knickers in a knot over nothing.

Read this Wall Street Journal article "What comes after Europe". Greeness everywhere in Europe and the end result, so the article tells us, is that -

In 1965, government spending as a percentage of GDP averaged 28% in Western Europe. Today it hovers just under 50%. In 1965, the fertility rate in Germany was a healthy 2.5 children per mother. Today it is a catastrophic 1.35. During the postwar years, annual GDP growth in Europe averaged 5.5%. After 1973, it rarely exceeded 2.3%. In 1973, Europeans worked 102 hours for every 100 worked by an American. By 2004 they worked just 82 hours for every 100 American ones.

Europe is slowing down. Less babies and less work.

We’ll all be saved!

 

[Nate13]

Yeah I’m really confused. The question is not how on Earth are we going to stop people from having so many babies anymore, but how on Earth on we going to get people to want to have any babies at all? We have now almost perfected the science in how to prevent babies from happening and Europe is leading the way in showing how to execute that knowledge. In a practical sense as Rock Happy referred to, there is really no personal reason why we want to have kids. Everyone wants the human race to continue forward, but fewer people want to raise the 3 kids necessary to make that happen. Fewer and fewer people are seeing kids as the fulfillment of life and more and more as their duty to life if anything. Rock Happy is right when he questions your belief that numbers will stabilize. The birth rate went right past 2.1, and down towards 1.4 in many European countries and continues downward right now on a steady track. The green movement hopes to achieve similar results in developing countries by offering food for birth prevention/sterilization. Last time I checked charity didn’t have an “if statement” attached to it.

 

[Rahn]

Yeah I’m really confused. The question is not how on Earth are we going to stop people from having so many babies anymore, but how on Earth on we going to get people to want to have any babies at all? We have now almost perfected the science in how to prevent babies from happening and Europe is leading the way in showing how to execute that knowledge. In a practical sense as Rock Happy referred to, there is really no personal reason why we want to have kids. Everyone wants the human race to continue forward, but fewer people want to raise the 3 kids necessary to make that happen. Fewer and fewer people are seeing kids as the fulfillment of life and more and more as their duty to life if anything. Rock Happy is right when he questions your belief that numbers will stabilize. The birth rate went right past 2.1, and down towards 1.4 in many European countries and continues downward right now on a steady track. The green movement hopes to achieve similar results in developing countries by offering food for birth prevention/sterilization. Last time I checked charity didn’t have an “if statement” attached to it.

If you strip a way all of the rhetoric, what is at the heart of the green movement is the philosophy that man controls God’s creation. Witness what we call it: “climate control”. It’s the same as abortion: we get to decide when children are born, we decide what is good and what is a “sin” for the environment, etc. It all started in Genesis 3, and it’s going on today, and this is just the latest form.

We are not God.
We do not decide when babies get born.
The environment is God’s creation and it will stand despite our feeble attempts to kill it or save it.

We need to spend the time and money that we do now on “climate control” on getting closer to our God and proclaiming His word. And, when you see articles like this one, they are a clear harbinger of how far this has gone, and how much work we have to do.

 

[Rock_Happy]

Rock Happy, you have got your knickers in a knot over nothing.

Read this Wall Street Journal article "What comes after Europe". Greeness everywhere in Europe and the end result, so the article tells us, is that -

Europe is slowing down. Less babies and less work.

We’ll all be saved!

Sure, the industrialized world is seeing an decline in population. Not so in the more populous parts of the world.

I have no idea what the impact will be.

Technology will play a role.

There are not enough jobs for most of the world, and living is tough. Starvation and disease are playing a large role right now. Parts of Africa have an average life expectancy in the low 40’s.

A lot of people around here seem to think that they can predict things with certainty, which in my opinion there are just too many variables, and too little information to predict.

My point was that some people think that population growth is our most pressing problem. I know this to be true, because I had one of them as a neighbor who worked in international relations at the UN on the topic.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Well, it is a very practical view. One of our serious problems is overpopulation. Some think that is the most serious problem we face on Earth.

This, of course, is not the Catholic view, which is more spiritual than practical. The more practical action is not always the most moral.

The planet is NOT overpopulated by any means whatsoever. We could fit every person living into an area the size of Texas, in dwellings that are larger than most in the third or even second world countries today. And we could FEED every person living easily and have leftovers and to spare. . .it isn’t the food that we’re lacking, it is distribution. Unfortunately, there are countries where when famine strikes, aid is sent out, and the members of the government or military (often both) take all the food for themselves. So it isn’t that the food isn’t there, it’s a question of individual and/or societal forces which unfairly take and unfairly distribute.

 

[Rock_Happy]

The planet is NOT overpopulated by any means whatsoever. We could fit every person living into an area the size of Texas, in dwellings that are larger than most in the third or even second world countries today. And we could FEED every person living easily and have leftovers and to spare. . .it isn’t the food that we’re lacking, it is distribution. Unfortunately, there are countries where when famine strikes, aid is sent out, and the members of the government or military (often both) take all the food for themselves. So it isn’t that the food isn’t there, it’s a question of individual and/or societal forces which unfairly take and unfairly distribute.

We feed our cattle enough grain to feed the entire world many times over. I just heard the number the other day. Everyone in the world could become obese on just what we feed our cows.

As I have said, technology could play a role. With current resource allocation, parts of the world are overpopulated.

Personally, I am a vegan, mainly because animal protein is clearly linked to cancer and cardiac disease. I also choose to stay lower on the food chain as toxins concentrate as you go higher up. But my choice, while having a smaller footprint than someone who eats a hundred pounds of meat in a year, does not do much to help anyone else.

I believe that our current systems are so inefficient that we may destroy society as we know it for the worst within the next fifty years, or we will transform it into something much better than it is now for the average person. But I don’t see any leaders who have the vision, interest, or ability to do that. I sometimes wonder what lies ahead. I try to be optimistic. But there are some ominous signs.

 

[theistgal]

You’re complaining to the wrong people though. It’s the Muslim countries whose populations are booming … at least twice as much as the Western countries.

 

[EasterJoy]

As evidenced by the Columbia River Pastoral Letter, the Church is deeply concerned with the moral implications of actions that have an environmental impact. That does not mean that the Church is going to automatically agree with every solution that other “green” advocates suggest.

If we never allowed ourselves to be active in any political movement that had partisans who opposed essential tenets of our faith, we’d be rendered entirely impotent. Abdicating our real duties because of barriers posed by those with similar goals but a different moral formation is not an option.

The Church has an obligation to substantially advocate for justice and peace. That doesn’t mean that we’re in bed with everything spouted by someone who purports to be advancing “peace and justice.” Rather, it is our responsibility to make certain that peace and justice are arrived at by moral means, and not by any means “deemed necessary.”

The same goes for care of God’s creation. We have a duty to advocate for a morally sound stewardship of the natural resources. We also have a duty to do this is a way that never neglects the care of the eternal in order to render the necessary care of that which should be found in good order at the Second Coming, but will not last beyond that. That others have taken up this cause without taking up our understanding of moral law is just one more aspect to the work we have cut out for us.

 

[benedictus2]

Well, it is a very practical view. One of our serious problems is overpopulation. Some think that is the most serious problem we face on Earth.

This, of course, is not the Catholic view, which is more spiritual than practical. The more practical action is not always the most moral.

Au contraire. The truly moral is also practical because we are not just matter.

God provided for us what is needed. But as Gandhi so very rightly put it, there is enough for need but never enough for greed. The modern man is usually a variant shade of Gecko and they all chant “Greed is good.”

 

[benedictus2]

I freely acknowledge this is a secular source. But, doesn’t it frighten you that human life is so devalued, even in secular circles?

Today (in the article), the way to avoid commiting a carbon sin is to use a biogredable condom and put it in the rubbish… tomorrow, will it be forced abortion? or execution of the old, infermed, crippled, mentally handicapped?

People are not carbon sins, they are God’s highest creation.

Without God everything is permissible.

 

[benedictus2]

sub Saharan africa. the rapidly declining standard of living in the US due to competition for an increasing number of jobs, from asia, india, and soon africa. the rapid depletion of the potable water supply (stay tuned for the crisis to come). the acidification of the oceans… the list is actually very long.

the counterweight is technology. many problems such as this have solutions which we can’t anticipate. i am an optimist. but one troubling thing about population growth is that it is exponential.

my point was not to pick fight with the Luddites and ostriches, but rather to point out that the religious and the secular perspective are separate in this.

But it does not have to be. If morality triumphs then we would not have such a situation. It is only and precisely because, secularism and immorality triumphs that we are in this quagmire.

Without greed, self-aggrandizement, narcissism, etc, etc, the resources that God has given us will be enough.

Here’s an example called the Light Bulb Conspiracy

This is just part 1 you will see the other 3 once you click

 

[NeesyBeth]

I think it is wrong to condemn a whole movement based on one statement on one website. I believe we are called by God to be stewards of the earth. I take that seriously. I take it to mean more than just planting a tree every once in a while. Climate change is caused by mankind’s excess. I understand the Catholic Church does not condone contraceptive birth control. I was taught, however, that there is nothing wrong with family planning, i.e. abstaining from sex during the wife’s fertile period. It’s a bit more difficult than slapping on a biodegradable condom, but not impossible. I belief in the teachings of Christ and I follow the doctrines of the Church. I also happen to believe the climate crisis is real, and primarily caused by the actions of mankind. I see nothing wrong with a movement, comprised of people of various faith systems, that is trying to organize a global effort to rectify some of the damage done. Maybe I’m horribly misguided, but that is my interpretation of this. When I see a statement on a secular site that promotes something against my belief, I recognize it was obviously written by someone of a different faith. With a grain of salt, I read the statement and try to see the logic and reasoning behind it. If it is point I agree with in principle, then I try to think of an alternative in keeping with my beliefs. I think population growth is a concern held by many people the world over. I do not know the numbers, etc. regarding global population statistics to prove or disprove it. I do know that the rural area I live in (a small desert community in California) can only support a population of a certain size due to limitations of water. I personally tend to think on a more local level. I also do not believe religion and science are mutually exclusive. I can have faith in God, and also believe what scientists the world over tell us. They provide valuable information to aide us in taking care of God’s creation. But this is just my take on the subject.