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Zeitgeist: Custodians of the Garden
Mar. 10th, 2008 10:27 pmFirst those solar power roof tiles, now the idea that the best way to work around the disconnect between polluter and effect is to make the act of polluting a sin, my zeitgeist-fu is strong right now. The Vatican have announced a new list of deadly sins, which are mostly modern glosses on the old naughtiness, and environmental pollution is right in there. The more I think of it, the more I think it's sheer bloody genius.
It gets good visceral wrath-of-God afterlife fear into people who otherwise might not give a flying damn. People are funny like that. And those same people are going to believe that Katrina was God spanking their filthy sinful asses if they've been stenching up the place. They're *is* a connection, but it's too disconnected and statistical for most people.
Government plans and UN initiatives last for years or decades. The problem we're facing is epic in scale, brain-hurtingly vast, and messed up with double-signals like the UK Government's green-lighting of a new coal power station (ffs!). The Catholic Church knows persistence. It doesn't have water down policy to fight elections or buy support. And it doesn't have to make the tough choices, just dispense rules and sympathy. New coal? "No, it is a sin. Find another way, my child."
Because the environmental issue is, at heart, a human moral issue - and that's what these guys do.
It gets good visceral wrath-of-God afterlife fear into people who otherwise might not give a flying damn. People are funny like that. And those same people are going to believe that Katrina was God spanking their filthy sinful asses if they've been stenching up the place. They're *is* a connection, but it's too disconnected and statistical for most people.
Government plans and UN initiatives last for years or decades. The problem we're facing is epic in scale, brain-hurtingly vast, and messed up with double-signals like the UK Government's green-lighting of a new coal power station (ffs!). The Catholic Church knows persistence. It doesn't have water down policy to fight elections or buy support. And it doesn't have to make the tough choices, just dispense rules and sympathy. New coal? "No, it is a sin. Find another way, my child."
Because the environmental issue is, at heart, a human moral issue - and that's what these guys do.
