Economist, professor, author and political commentator Robert Reich. (photo: Richard Morgenstein)
Pope Francis' Message on Climate Change Is Extraordinarily Important
28 June 15
ope
Frances’s message this week on global climate change is extraordinarily
important (that it comes out the same week Donald Trump declared his
candidacy exposes a human continuum extending from bombast and
narcissism to grace and humility). The Pope finds morally deficient an
economic system that degrades the environment and worsens inequality;
links environmental decline to poverty; attributes it to the growing
concentration of greenhouse gases brought on human activity; and rejects
the idea that economic growth alone can solve the problem. No Pope in
living memory has so poignantly and powerfully cast the problems of
inequality and the environment in moral terms that everyone, Catholic
and non-Catholic, can understand.
But I wish the Pope hadn’t rejected an important means
of reducing carbon in the atmosphere: putting a price on it. (See our
video on this page June 8). By broadly condemning “market forces” the
Pope suggests the answer is to give up on the market rather than
reorganize it to meet human needs. In this respect he plays into the
hands of those who see the fundamental choice as between the “market”
and the people, when the real choice is between a market system
organized for all people or one organized primarily for the rich.
No comments:
Post a Comment