Sunday 4 January 2015

après moi, le déluge

A brotherly syndicate is apparently poised to rally its religious wing in order to subvert the Pope’s stance on environmental conservation. Business magnates that rely on cheap and dirty exploitation of Nature in order to ensure their profits don’t much care for the Pope’s message and hope to counter any reforms that might come about in policy changes, both publicly and privately.
Some conservative religious leaders have rediscovered a nascent and absolving argument that mankind ought not to presume it can alter God’s creation in any way, and that any ecological crises we witness and choose to append an anthropogenic label on is false and prideful. These rapture-ready flocks, I think, are easily led down the path of such irresponsible, selfish thinking—après moi, le déluge, “after me, [comes] the Flood” and just might adopt that sentiment of French King Louis XV of self-enrichment at the expense of others and future generations (which a lot of politicians and business leaders have honed). Many in the US already dismiss the Pope’s entreaties for charity and redistribution of wealth as communist-leanings, probably because, thanks to American exceptionalism, even the poor regard themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” and are just waiting to claw themselves to the top. I hope such attitudes don’t spread and this proxy war for the status quo is not prolonged.