Thursday, June 18, 2015

Desecration of my home: Pope Francis' encyclical on Environment

Introduction
Our home is a beautiful home that God created and intended to be a clean and liveable. We have exploited this home and desecrated the home with our selfish consumerist motives. We have inflicted violence on our own home members, i.e. other living creatures who are part of our lives. They groan with pain and we have not listened to their groaning. The earth we live, the air that we breathe, and the water we drink is a free gift from God. We have make use of them for our upkeep and not for our greed. Our ecosystem plays a significant role in our lives, for it keep a balance among the living creatures including human beings.

Desecration of our home
Our nature has to be treated like our home. We like to keep our home spruce and whatever is foreign to our home is cleansed. This way our family can remain healthy and happy. Nature is somewhat more than our own home; our homes can be fixed if something went wrong, but our nature cannot be fixed. Our nature is irreplaceable with its natural complications and beauty.
“Following a period of irrational confidence in progress and human abilities, some sectors of society are now adopting a more critical approach. We see increasing sensitivity to the environment and the need to protect nature, along with a growing concern, both genuine and distressing”.
Pollution is a major issue in every nation. We have a ‘throwaway culture’ that impacts our nature. Sometimes one might very well think that pollution would not affect us but it does affect the human beings in the longer run. Pollution can not only impact in poor health but it might contribute to the premature deaths and eventually contribute negatively towards human births. Our naïve understanding of throwaway culture is going to see our own demise. For example recycling can help control waste and garbage in the planet.

Is my home filthy?
There is ignorance on the part of the people when one thinks that if one person pollutes the atmosphere, what does that matter? It is an uninformed and misrepresented understanding of how we use our natural resources. Climate change and global warming can happen even if my car is carbon clean. Carbon dioxide contributes harmfully to climate change. Our planet might become a run down house, and not in living conditions. One might enjoy sitting in an air-conditioned room, but the other part of one’s air conditioning might be emitting heat and other gases which are detrimental to the nature. Hence, we might end up enjoying ourselves for a moment but we might have to feel the brunt in the longer run.
Poor countries have been on the receiving end in the climate change. Poorer countries sustain through agriculture. They are part of the ecosystem. For example, farming, fishing and forestry, and if this we manoeuvre this ecosystem, the sustenance of these poor people will in jeopardy. They will go hungry as it is already happening around the globe. Let us keep our home filth-free and liveable for our children.

Waters of life and death
We have been exploiting the nature with upmost vengeance, even to the extent of making this planet’s water poisonous. Water has been wasted and polluted so badly, it would be affect the water creature and would affect fishing. We have seen dirty and poisonous water is being diverted to our rivers and oceans, thinking that is not our own. The river and ocean is vast that it would not matter if we divert dirty water to it.
Fresh drinking water is a major issue and it must draw our attention before we go into red level. Polluted water can cause ecosystem to change drastically and cause health hazards. Have we ever experienced real shortage of water? It occurs to us when we have to economize water in our homes. Why do wait that to happen? Why not control before we go to red level? Let us stop wasting water and think of the people who crave for clean drinking water.

Human need for diverse natural resources
 It is significant to note the “life cycle” that we are part of. Every creature need every creature. As human being we need other species of creatures and other species of nature. “The loss of forests and woodlands entails the loss of species which may constitute extremely important resources in the future, not only for food but also for curing disease and other uses.”
It is a misconception that we do not need the nature and its beings. It is not fair to think that whenever I need I use and abuse the nature and its living beings for my benefit. So long as it benefits me, I use or even abuse. In this case we can see our own demise because we need each for our survival. We are already into red level when we take into account the extinction of the mammals and birds. This causes an imbalance in the ecosystem posing a serious danger to us. Most often our nature is exploited for our own selfish needs and further for our greed, in other words for our selfish commercial motives.
We need to safeguard our planet and its living creatures or else they will cause an imbalance in the ‘life cycle.’ It is important to note the work done by the environmentalist and other organisations to deploy measures to upkeep the natural beings. We have to keep our ecosystem up and running; first of all we need to understand our ecosystem, which works in conglomeration with others.

Mental Pollution
We are in an information world. This world has made us aware of our own existence as human person through technological advancements. This existence is proved only through information that is provided by the so-called Internet world. There is a mental pollution-taking place in our world. There is a breakdown of real and ideal society that our forefathers would have expected to see. We live in a virtual world; a world of Internet and a world social media.
Most times we might become well equipped to face the world if we have had enough data about anything, this is good in itself. But we know that dangers of hunting the data online. We have lost the interpersonal connection with each other. We should be concerned that, alongside the exciting possibilities offered by these media, a deep and melancholic dissatisfaction with interpersonal relations, or a harmful sense of isolation, can also arise.

Cry of the poor
There is an imbalance in the nature cause by our selfish motives. This is affected among the poor people. Over exploitation of the nature can cause not replaceable wipe away of resources which will in the end affect everyone us but most certainly poorest of the poor. For example, imbalance in the ecosystem can cause the fishes to extinct which will cause the poor fishermen to go bankrupt. Process of building urban cities can push the rural boundaries to the fringes and eventually rural beauty might turn into a wonderful coloured clad city. Hence, causing the real rural beauty to vanish in the thin air. “We have 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.”
Food is an integral part of our nature. We need food for our sustenance. There is an inequality in food distribution. Gandhi said, “We have enough for our need not enough for our greed.” Hence, there is a consumerist approach to food, namely, when I don’t want food, I just dash in the bin. “We know that approximately a third of all food produced is discarded, and whenever food is thrown out it is as if it were stolen from the table of the poor.”

Conclusion
We as Church may not be able give our opinions alone, but needs to engage in dialogue with other experts to enhance our own home, the nature. Our home is in serious danger. There is someone trying to destroy our home without even our knowing. “If we scan the regions of our planet, we immediately see that humanity has disappointed God’s expectation.” We as Church and other organisational entities must scan every possible regions to stop abusing our nature and desecrating our home and home of many living creatures. 

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