Invitation

In this Encyclical I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.  (3)

All of us can cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation, each according to his or her own culture, experience, involvements and talents. (14)

 Spiritual Nature of Care for the Earth

 Rather than a problem to be solved, the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise. (12)

 The mystic experiences the intimate connection between God and all beings, and thus feels that “all things are God.” (234)

 The State of Our Common Home

 If present trends continue, this century may well witness extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequences for all of us.  (24)

 This sister [the earth] now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her.  We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. (2)

 Francis’ Vision: An Interconnected, Integrated World

 …human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbor and with the earth itself (66). …everything is interconnected and that genuine care for our lives and our relationships with nature is inseparable from fraternity, justice and faithfulness to others. (70)

We need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family.  There are no frontiers or barriers, political or social, behind which we can hide, still less is there room for the globalization of indifference. (52)

 Every effort to protect and improve our world entails profound changes in “lifestyles, models of production and consumption and the established structures of power which today govern societies.” (5)

 Care for the Poor

The deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most vulnerable people on the planet: “Both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest.”  (48)

A true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. (49)

Contributing Factors to the Ecological Crisis

Consumerism

These problems are closely linked to a throwaway culture which affects the excluded just as it quickly reduces things to rubbish. (22)  The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. (21)

When human beings place themselves at the centre, they give absolute priority to immediate convenience, and all else becomes relative. (122)

Economics

…the idea of infinite or unlimited growth…is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of earth’s goods. . . The technocratic paradigm also tends to dominate economic and political life.  The economy accepts every advance in technology with the view to profit without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings. (106)

A true “ecological debt” exists, particularly between the global north and south. (51) The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them, yet this is not the case where ecological debt is concerned…The developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their consump-tion of non-renewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programmes of sustainable development. (52)

Technology

Technology, which linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others. (20) 

 …when technology disregards the great ethical principles, it ends up considering any practice whatsoever as licit…a technology severed from ethics will not easily be able to limit its own power. (136)

The myopia of power politics delays the inclusion of a farsighted environmental agenda within the overall agenda of governments. (178) 

Needed Actions

Every effort to protect and improve our world entails profound changes in lifestyles, models of production and consumption and the established structures of power which today govern societies. (5)

…it is we human beings above all who need to change…A great cultural, spiritual and educational challenge stands before us and it will demand that we set out on the long path of renewal. (202)

We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it. (229)

Interdependence obliges us to think of one world with a common plan…such a consensus could lead to planning a sustainable and diversified agriculture, developing renewable and less polluting forms of energy…promoting a better management of marine and forest resources…(164)

Enforceable international agreements are urgently needed, since local authorities are not always capable of effective intervention. (173)

A change in lifestyle could bring healthy pressure to bear on those who wield political, economic and social power. (206)

Nevertheless, self-improvement on the part of individuals will not by itself remedy the extremely complex situation facing our world today…Social problems must be addressed by community networks and not simply by the sum of individual good deeds. (219)

Hope and Joy

May our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope. (244)

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