Peak oiler? Not Catholic? You should still stand with the pope on climate
I get it, you believe in peak oil. So do I, despite gas at $2.50 a gallon. But peak oil is no excuse for either you or me to just sit around waiting for the final oil crash to make the climate problem moot by bringing down industrial civilization.
Even if you’re the world’s biggest doomer, you have to admit that the timing is too uncertain — will the über-crash come in five months or five decades? Nobody knows for sure.
So far, the puppet masters of the world economy have been pretty good at keeping the party going longer than anybody had a right to expect. Who’s to say that oil wars, extreme energy production and various accounting tricks can’t keep mass consumerism running in many places into the middle of the century or beyond?
So don’t hold your breath waiting for collapse. Instead, leave your cynicism behind and let Pope Francis inspire you to finally get serious about climate, a problem that we know is already here and whose future consequences will be unthinkable — unless the world seriously changes its ways, oil crash or not.
A blessing of papal awesomeness
And if you do care about climate change, then what’s not to like in the pope’s encyclical that came out this week?
OK, well, maybe he could have been better about recognizing overpopulation as part of the climate problem. But he’s right that it’s hypocritical for rich countries to use climate as an excuse to pressure poor ones about population. All poor countries put together have done almost nothing to warm the atmosphere compared to the real culprits, the rich nations of North America and Europe.
– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/06/not-catholic-you-can-still-stand-with-the-pope-on-climate/#sthash.roDZr6r3.dpuf
