The ecologist, William L. Patenaude, is a regular CWR contributor. He commends President Obama for certain aspects of the POTUS’s speech yesterday, given at Georgetown University, about dealing with climate change:
Moreover, I very much appreciate the president’s statement to the young people gathered before him that he refuses “to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing.” And I stand to applaud his words that “[a]s a president, as a father, and as an American, I’m here to say we need to act”—because we do need to act—now, profoundly, and with great wisdom.
But:
And yet I must ask: What of those “future generations” who will not be allowed their birth? What of the pro-abortion policies of the president, his administration, and a good many members of his party in Congress—as well as a few folks from the opposite side of the isle, too?
Here we consider the wisdom of the pope emeritus, who provided the words at the top of this blog: that our duties toward the environment are linked to our duties toward the human person. “It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other. Herein lies a grave contradiction in our mentality and practice today: one which demeans the person, disrupts the environment, and damages society.”
Concern over the impacts of climate change seems strange if one also accepts that the intentional killing of unborn children is acceptable and should be encouraged with tax payer funding.
And then:
As for the president’s climate-change plan, it will certainly be too much for some and not enough for others but for the Catholic ecologist it is hypocritical. Seeking to protect future generations from current policies and technologies is certainly the job of the state. But, more importantly, so is rejecting that we can eliminate members of future generations because we refuse to acknowledge their humanity.
Well said. Read the entire post on the “Catholic Ecology” blog.
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