Who should care for the planet?

Leonardo Boff

07/12/2009

Opinión

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A famous theologian, in his finest book, Introduction to Christianity, widened the well known metaphor of the end of the world formulated by Danish Sören Kirkegaard, that has already been mentioned in this column. He recounted the story this way: a major fire broke out in an ambulant circus, set up on the outskirts of town. The manager of the circus called the clown who was ready to go on stage and told him to go to the town to get help. The clown left immediately. He ran screaming through the main square and the streets, asking the people to come to help put out the fire. Everybody found him amusing, because they thought it was a publicity stunt to attract the public. The more he screamed for help, the more everybody laughed. So, the clown began to cry and everyone laughed even more. And the fire raced through the fields, reached the town and both the town and the circus were totally incinerated.

That theologian was Joseph Ratzinger. He is pope now, and no longer produces theology, but official doctrines. His metaphor, however, can very well be applied to the present situation of humanity, as it looks to Kirkegaard's country and its capital city, Copenhagen. The representatives of 192 nations must decide means of controlling the advancing fire. But awareness of the danger has not risen to the level of a threat of a generalized fire. Growing warmth is felt, but the majority is still indifferent, as in the time of Noah, the Biblical «clown» who warned of the imminent flood. Everybody had fun, ate and drank as if nothing would happen. And the catastrophe arrived.

But there is a difference between Noah and us. He built an arc that saved many. We are not about to build an arc to save ourselves, and nature. That would only be possible if we considerably diminished the substances that feed the warming. If it rises by two or three degrees centigrade, it could devastate all of nature and, eventually, eliminate millions of people. Building consensus is difficult and the emission targets are insufficient. We prefer to deceive ourselves, covering Mother Earth's body with band aids to make us believe in the illusion that we are curing her wounds.

Moreover, there is a difficult obstacle: there is no a world government that can act on a planetary level. Nation-states predominate, with their particular projects, that do not consider the whole. Absurdly we divide up that whole in an arbitrary manner, into continents, regions, cultures and ethnic groups. Now we know these differences have no basis. Scientific research has made clear that we all have a common origin, because all of us came from Africa.

Consequently, all of us are co-proprietors of the sole Common Home and we are all co-responsible for her health. Mother Earth belongs to all of us. We have her on loan from future generations. She has been given to us in trust, for us to take care of her.

If we look at what we are doing, we must recognize that we are betraying her. We love profit more than life, we are more interested in saving the economic-financial system than humanity and the Earth.

The words of Einstein apply to us humans as a whole: «there are only two infinites: the universe and stupidity. And I am not sure which is primary.» Yes, we live in a culture of stupidity and senselessness. Is it not stupid and insane that 500 million human beings are responsible for 50% of all the emissions of global warming gases, and that 3,400 million are responsible for only 7% but will be the principal innocent victims?

It is important to say that, more than a crisis, the warming is an irreversibility. The Earth has already warmed. We can only reduce its levels, adapt ourselves to the new situation, and mitigate its perverse effects, so that they do not become catastrophic. We must exert pressure, so that between the 7th and the 18th of December, stupidity does not prevail in Copenhagen, but caring and concern for our common destiny instead.

- Leonardo Boff, Theologian. Earthcharter Commission.

Free translation from the spanish sent by Melina Alfaro, Refugio del Rio Grande, Texas, Ee.Uu.

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/138188