Pope Francis in his recent address
to the UN General Assembly covered a wide range of issues
including the worrying issue of our environment. The climate is a common good, belonging to all and
meant for all. There is solid scientific evidence and consensus that we are
witnessing a disturbing warming of the climate 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.
Lara
Marlowe, correspondent with the Irish Times, Saturday, October 10, 2015 says in
her article that scientists believe after five mass extinctions that transformed
the world over the past four and a half billion years, we are now rushing
headlong into a sixth mass extinction, but this time it is us human beings are
the culprits. She draws from, the experience of Elizabeth Kolbert’s
best-selling book, The
Sixth Extinction; An
UnNaturnal History.
Elizabeth Kolbert
uses the example of how a giant asteroid collided with Earth with the force of
100 million megatonnes of TNT 66 million years ago, plunging the planet into
cold and darkness, wiping out three-quarters of all species, including the
dinosaurs. That cataclysm event was not explained ‘til 1980 by Walter Alvarez,
a geologist, and his father, Luis, a physicist.
Each one of
us is called to recognise 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. If present trends continue, our country, planet earth
may well witness extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction
of ecosystems.
I may need
an “ecological conversion” so that the effects of my encounter with my creator God
become evident in my relationship with the world around me. Living out my call
to be a protector of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of care for my
common home; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of my Christian
experience.
(If you wish
to know more about the life and work of the Presentation Brothers, please feel
free to shoot me an email at your convenience;
vocation@presentationbrothers.org)
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