What can we, as individuals, do to help preserve our environment?

We live in a time of ecological crisis – a crisis now widely believed to present a threat to all life, including human life, and to which each of us has to a greater or lesser extent contributed.  Every Pope since at least Saint John XXIII has warned us of the need to do better in caring for our planet, for the benefit of future generations as well as our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, and ourselves.  The cry has become desperate.

Citizens have worked for years to spur their governments to action.  Many governments have responded, some more promptly than others.  But while the need for action is generally accepted, opinions can vary widely when specifics are discussed.  Is enough being done, or have we, the voters, failed to communicate a clear, resolute message to our elected leaders?  In the interim can we, should we, as individuals, be making any contribution?  If so, how can we help?

Catholic principles of subsidiarity, solidarity, and responsibility  – which can trace their roots to the Parable of the Talents in the Gospel of Matthew – suggest that individuals are obliged to do everything we can, personally as well as through our governance structures, by example, exhortation and voting.

In his encyclical Laudato si’, Pope Francis said:

A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it. It is true that there are other factors (such as volcanic activity, variations in the earth’s orbit and axis, the solar cycle), yet a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity. – Laudato si’, Para. 23

 What sorts of things can we try as individuals?

Living a truly sustainable modern life is a very difficult, very complex task.  In some cases it may be impossible.  Everything we buy, use, or consume comes at some environmental cost, and it can difficult or impossible to determine how much damage any proposed action or a purchase might cause.  Purchasing anything that was not produced, formed, and acquired entirely within arm’s reach, for example, must be transported, generally multiple times.  And transportation inevitably causes environmental harm – even walking requires shoes and clothing which require cleaning and maintenance, and eventually wear out.

Battery-powered vehicles serve another example.  On balance, they are quite possibly less harmful than gasoline-powered vehicles.  Yet they too come with significant environmental costs: material for the vehicles must be mined, formed, joined, painted, and delivered, including structural parts, motors, tires, seats, and of course batteries.  Batteries typically contain hundreds of pounds of poisonous chemicals which are not easily recycled once the battery has worn out.

It must also be remembered that recycling processes – all of them – come with environmental costs, in the form of energy consumption, purification, and re-processing into new useful forms, in addition to both collection and redistribution.

The old advice of “reduce, reuse, recycle” still holds.  Reducing consumption is the surest way to contribute, reusing things which may require cleaning and/or refurbishment is second, and recycling is third – and still ahead of simple disposal.

It can also be difficult or impossible to cut through advertising and other claims of “green” or “environmentally beneficial” products.  How do we know that products with such labels really are produced, packaged, and distributed in environmentally-friendly ways?

In such circumstances, how can we possibly proceed?

• Pray for guidance, and act prudently!

  For Catholics the first step must be prayer. In particular, contemplating such complex questions, we should pray for guidance.

  Prudence is important too.  We are called by Christ both to act prudently and to try our best.  (See for example Matthew 25).  Even when we have little control, we should control what we can as wisely as we can, and pray about the rest. It’s not all up to us, we have to turn to God, too.  Remember the miracles of the loaves and fishes – Christ multiplies small devout offerings manifold.  If we do what we can, and pray, he will help.  (Matthew Chapters 14,15; Mark Chapters 6,8; Luke Chapter 9; John Chapter 6.)

• Educate yourself, and monitor new developments

  We must educate ourselves, and keep ourselves educated, keeping up with the latest and best practices and trying to choose wisely. Much attention is being given to the idea of helping individuals live in greater harmony with the earth, and tools for doing so are developing rapidly.  We have listed a few examples below.  We should pray, look for helpful tools, and try the ones that look most useful to us in our circumstances.

• Start practicing better habits
  One we’ve found the tool(s) that make sense, let’s try them out and try to live a more eco-friendly lives.
• Keep praying
  Keep praying for yourself, your family, your neighbors, your government(s), and the world. Remind the Lord of the miracles he has worked for those in need who have asked.

Sample resources

Here are some examples of online resources that may be helpful to you.  Please note:  we have not exhaustively investigated these resources, and do not endorse them for any specific purposes other than inspiration and investigation.  Please investigate before using – and let us know if you see any concerns or have any further suggestions.  For us, this is an ongoing project.  We can use your help.

• The Laudato si’ Catholic environmental movement maintains a web page with advice and links to resources to help you simplify your life and learn sobriety in the use of resources and energy.
• The Catholic University of America offers tips for reducing or eliminating the use of trash requiring landfills or incinerators.
• The Environmental Working Group offers Eat Well Guides to help you find restaurants, farms, and markets near you for locally-sourced, sustainable food products in selected American cities.
• Learn about your personal emissions footprint, and learn to live within it
  As quoted above, in calling for action to end non-sustainable activities, Pope Francis wrote in Laudato si’ that “most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity.”
  
  In recent decades, proposals have been made  for identifying each human being’s fair share of greenhouse gas production, and encouraging individuals abide by that allotment.  A 2021 report by the Hot or Cool Institute,  a not-for-profit said to be driven by principles of well-being and prosperity, fairness and justice, and living within ecological limits, and associated with the Club of Rome, the Institute for European Environmental Policy, and others, suggests that individuals should be making choices that result in no more than 2.5 tons of Carbon per person by 2030, and 0.7 tons by 2050 if the 1.5 degree cap suggested by the United Nations and most scientists is to be met.  Currently, North American emissions are closer to 13 tons per person, compared to 8.5 tons in the UK, 5 tons for China, and 3 tons for India.    No country on earth, the report states, is currently living within sustainable goals.

  To help us learn to live within our limits, several organizations are developing interactive online calculators to help us monitor our release of greenhouse gasses.  One such calculator is provided by the Nature Conservancy at https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon-footprint-calculator/
  

• Stay engaged, and vote
  Finally, we should all be staying engaged with our elected representatives, keeping ourselves informed about party policies, proposed government policies, and the performance of our governments, and voting.

Many of us in different cities around the world have noticed what appears to be a marked increase in the level of homelessness following the COVID pandemic.  Reports from multiple jurisdictions suggest we’re not wrong.  A report from Australia’s University of New South Wales  , for example, notes that homelessness is increasing while promises made during the pandemic of “building back better” are not being realized.  The Associated Press reported on December 15  that homelessness in the United States has surged a “dramatic” 12% to its highest reported levels, at least in part due to soaring rents and a decline in temporary assistance provided during the pandemic.  Increased homelessness levels were also reported in Europe, by the UK’s The Guardian.

Homelessness is said to be one of the most durable and complex problems known to humankind.  Observers have defined several different varieties , including:

• living on the streets, also known as sleeping rough or primary homelessness
• moving between temporary shelters, including houses of friends, family, and emergency accommodation, also “couch surfing” or secondary homelessness
• living in boarding houses without a private bathroom or security of tenure, or tertiary homelessness
   

Homelessness has many causes, including mental, physical, social, and spiritual health, unemployment, and the cost and availability of housing.   As with many human challenges, solutions within most cultures will require both definition of appropriate and workable goals, and a large variety of solutions.  One single solution will seldom work for everyone.

The Church includes housing among a list of human rights fundamental to the authentic development of persons, emphasizing the State’s responsibility to provide it in ways sufficient to meet that purpose.  But the Church does not look solely to the state.  Rather, given the importance of housing, the Church emphasizes the responsibility of all members and levels of society in ensuring that humans have what they need for true growth.   (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 166, 167).

The responsibility of all elements of society to provide adequate housing offers a dramatic illustration of the relationship between the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, worthy of sober reflection.

Catholics bear responsibility both as individuals and as a Church.  During the pandemic, many dioceses and parishes took direct action.  In the midst of the pandemic, the diocese of Halifax-Yarmouth in Nova Scotia, Canada responded by encouraging parishes to provide space in their churchyards, along with basic structures having both light and heating; bedding; and other necessities.  Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston in Texas implemented a Rapid Re-Housing Program, working with the Houston Housing Authority and the NGO Coalition for the Homeless to rescue people who had recently found themselves homeless by providing apartments and connections to other Catholic Charities services to set them back on the track to self-sufficiency.

And what of our individual responsibility?  Of course, we should constructively consult our elected representatives and follow the policies of candidates closely, voting for candidates we believe will support effective action.  But we can also do more.  Countless organizations dedicating to helping those without homes stress the importance of looking people in the eye and acknowledging them as human beings – even considering, if conversation is safely possible, learning their names and greeting them as we pass.  We can also consider contributing to such organizations, as volunteers and donors.

A recent set of essays published by The Economist laments the state of Western journalism, emphasizing the importance of the seemingly lost principles of truth, balance, and open discourse in politics.  Speaking with specific reference to the importance of communication pertaining to elections, the authors examine challenges faced by voters and others hoping to pull reliable news reports from a babbling sea of fragmented voices – many of which pander to their audiences in order to keep readership numbers up, sometimes to the point of ignoring facts that aren’t helpful to the positions they promote while focusing on favorable and even fabricated facts.

It requires effort to create and nurture a political culture in which people can argue constructively, with disagreement and comprise, the authors observe, citing US sources as early as Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.  The author of one essay – a former editorial-page editor of the New York Times – argues that the Times has abdicated its pledge to pursue the news “without fear or favour” along with a promise to promote intelligent discussion from all informed points of view.  Speaking from personal experience, he charges that the Times’s claims to integrity and true independence have been undermined by ideological journalists and “commercial staff” who do not believe that readers can be trusted with “potentially dangerous ideas or facts.”

The loss by society of the ability to center conversations on “a common set of facts” is a primary them of the essays.

Church Teaching

Truth is fundamental to any just form of governance. Without it, no democracy can survive. Even when – as we always should – we seek consensus, that consensus must be founded on truth.

Men and women have the specific duty to move always towards the truth, to respect it and bear responsible witness to it. Living in the truth has special significance in social relationships. In fact, when the coexistence of human beings within a community is founded on truth, it is ordered and fruitful, and it corresponds to their dignity as persons…  Modern times call for an intensive educational effort and a corresponding commitment on the part of all so that the quest for truth cannot be ascribed to the sum of different opinions, nor to one or another of these opinions.  Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 198

In other words, the Church, too acknowledges the need for a common set of facts.

Points to Ponder

• How can we, as Catholics, discharge our duty “to move always toward the truth, to respect it and bear responsible witness to it?”

It seems clear that a first step involves identifying responsible news sources: individuals and organizations who undertake to report truthfully, in a balanced way, in accordance with stated values, and who are willing to faithfully present all viewpoints within the contours of those values.

An important point in identifying such news sources is to seek out the values they purport to hold, and to confirm that their reporting is consistent with them. If these values are sufficiently consistent with the values held by other news sources, and by society itself, then the common moral base these values represent will serve as a reliable and convenient source for common sets of facts.

It is also important to support well-meaning, balanced news sources.  If sustainable support is not available, it can be very difficult to maintain professional, consistent coverage of topics citizens out to care and be informed about.  Unfortunately, it can be easier to fall back on free rants and exhortations that merely reinforce what we already believe, or what we want to believe, than to consider alternative and often challenging points of view.

With journalism – indeed, all social discourse – in this state, we cannot afford to be complacent.

• How is it possible to identify sources of news reliably reported in accordance with values consistent with Catholic values?

This can be difficult.  First, one must be familiar with Catholic social values.  But this is the easy part.

Many news sources publish or at least make reference to the values they seek to uphold on “About” pages of online resources, and in columns printed in longer documents.  It may be safest to try such sources first, checking the consistency between Catholic teaching and reported value statements, and making an effort to keep the publishers honest through commentary or other forms of feedback.

Since it can be difficult to find sources of the broad spectrum of news coverage that can be helpful to living a faithful live of civic participation, it may be necessary to start with both the best secular news sources we can identify and the broadest faithful Catholic coverage we can find, and encourage them to grow towards one another.

Examples of Catholic news sources include the following.  Unfortunately, in many cases they tend to focus on internal church news – bake sales, the bishop’s latest homily, etc. – and ignore things like the stock markets, deforestation, housing proposals, and the like.  Perhaps we can engage with these news sources and gently encourage them to broaden their perspectives without losing their faith-based values.

We at Catholic Conscience will continue working to collect listings of more-reliable sources of general, broad-based news, and to share them in future issues.

• La Croix International, French-based international news source: https://international.la-croix.com/
• National Catholic Reporter (USA), https://www.ncronline.org/mission-and-values
• OSV News (formerly Our Sunday Visitor, USA), whose values are published at https://www.osv.com/about-osv/purpose-mission-values/
• The Catholic Weekly (Australia), https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/
• CBPC News (Philippines), https://cbcpnews.net/
• The new Canadian Catholic News Service, at https://canadiancatholicnews.ca/