Vegan Sustainability Magazine - Autumn 2015

We might start to identify the direct effect of
choices and show their effect on our natural environments.
Perhaps our spiritual traditions can offer
guidance in how we make a form of ‘heart connection’.
The religions of the East seem to have the
necessary philosophy of inter-connectedness, but
Abrahamic faiths lag behind.
At least it would appear that the Catholic
Church is moving in the right direction with Pope
Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si which has so
angered U.S. conservatives. Francis draws on
the legacy of his namesake St. Francis saying:
“Francis helps us to see that an integral ecology
calls for openness to categories which transcend
the language of mathematics and biology, and
take us to the heart of what it is to be human.
Just as happens when we fall in love with someone,
whenever he would gaze at the sun, the
moon or the smallest of animals, he burst into
song, drawing all other creatures into his praise.
He communed with all creation, even preaching
to the flowers, inviting them “to praise the Lord,
just as if they were endowed with reason.””
The recollection of these sentiments is encouraging,
but the relationship that the encyclical envisions
between humans and nature at large remains
essentially hierarchical with humans atop the food
chain—a view St. Francis might well have disagreed
with. The merit of mass conversion to
plant-based diets is given no consideration, and
there is no mention of the impact of livestock
save for the limp statement as to the origins of climate
change that: “Another determining factor has
been an increase in changed uses of the soil, principally
deforestation for agricultural purposes.” The
omerta continues but at least there is acknowledgement
that: “If present trends continue, this century
may well witness extraordinary climate change and
an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with
serious consequences for all of us.”
Is it fair to compare the climate change sceptic
to a Nazi fellow traveller in 1930s Germany? Hesitantly,
I believe it is as the consequences of their
views have the potential to cause similar loss of
life, and their convictions appear to have the intellectual
credibility of the racial sciences that validated
Nazism which also had a veneer of objective
data. There are obvious reasons why climate
change scepticism appeals to certain interest groups
but there are also many people, like ordinary Germans
in the 1930s, swept by a tide of misinformation
that affirms their prejudices and lifestyle
choices, and then there are ideologue cranks. As
Pope Francis seems to understand, it behoves the
righteous to carry the fight for the sake of the natural
world and future generations of human beings. I
resolved to be better prepared next time I encountered
the dangerously contrarian views of a climate
change sceptic.
St. Francis feeding the birds
Frank Armstrong is a freelance writer.
He can be contacted via Twitter or email: frankarmstrong2@yahoo.com)
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