Lisa posts here Tony Blankley's comparison of Al Gore's claim that his purchase of carbon-credits excuses his high levels of energy consumption with "what the Catholic Church calls 'indulgentia a culpa et a poena'", and asks if anyone has any reactions.
I am no fan of Al Gore, agree that many self-styled environmentalists are smug hypocrites, and agree also that there is a not-insignificant strand of irrational (which, I guess, Blankley thinks is the same thing as "religious") thinking in some quarters of the environmentalist movement. Still . . . the comparison seems silly.
Al Gore's claim, if I understand it, is not that buying carbon offsets earns him forgiveness or expiation for the sin of energy consumption; his claim, instead, is that he is actually preventing, or undoing, the wrong or harm that his consumption would otherwise cause. That is, by purchasing the offset, the idea is that he avoids doing wrong at all (because he engineers things so that his net contribution to the carbon problem is reduced), not that he expresses concretely his contrition.
As for the "animistic" church - - again, I don't think highly of Gore, but I wonder how many people -- even those whose environmentalism has a "religious" vibe -- really believe that "any using or changing of the physical world (such as burning carbon) is a sin against the sacred, holistic, living world (the Gaia hypothesis)."
I've commented before on my frustration that arguments for euthanizing or aborting people with disabilities based on "quality of life" concerns typically ignore studies showing that people living with disabilities tend to rate the quality of their lives much higher than people without disabilities would expect. Samuel Bagenstos and Margo Schlager of Washington University recently posted a fascinating paper collecting some of that research and using it to argue against the awarding of hedonic damages to individuals experiencing disabling accidents, "Hedonic Damages, Hedonic Adaptation, and Disability". Here's the abstract:
This article contributes to the broad debate over "adaptive preferences" in law, economics, and political philosophy by addressing an important ongoing controversy in tort law. Hedonic damages compensate for the lost enjoyment of life that results from a tortious injury. Lawyers seeking hedonic damages in personal injury cases emphasize their clients' new status as compromised and damaged persons, and courts frequently uphold jury verdicts awarding hedonic damages to individuals who experienced disabling injuries based on a view that disability necessarily limits one's enjoyment of life. This view is consonant with a general societal understanding of disability as a tragedy and of people with disabilities as natural objects of pity. But a rich psychological literature demonstrates that disability does not inherently limit enjoyment of life to the degree that these courts suggest. Rather, people who experience disabling injuries tend to adapt to their disabilities. To be sure, the views of people with disabilities about their own quality of life are classic adaptive preferences. Accordingly, one might suggest that the legal system should disregard those views. But we argue that the legal system goes wrong by so devaluing the experience of people with disabilities. When courts award damages based on the (nondisabled person's) view that disability is tragic, they distract attention from the societal choices and stigmas that attach disadvantage to disability; they also make it harder for people with disabilities to make hedonic adjustments to their conditions. For deterrence and compensation reasons, people who experience disabling injuries should be able to recover for their physical pain; for medical expenses and the cost of assistive technology and personal assistance; for the opportunities society denies people with their conditions; and for the effects of social stigma. But they should not recover for any purported effect of disability on the enjoyment of life.
(Bagenstos is also the author of what I think is the most honest confrontation with the deeply troubling aspects of the inconsistencies of a pro-choice arguments and disability rights arguments that I have ever seen in print: "Disability, Life, Death, and Choice.")
Tony Blankley commented recently on "why the environmental movement tends to veer toward a religious, rather than a scientific, sensibility." He observes that:
the signs of religiousness are readily to be seen. Al Gore and his Hollywood coterie have almost comically manifested one aspect of their new religion in the last few weeks -- the sense of sin and the search for remission of such sin.
At the Academy Awards last month, their spokesman proudly announced that this year's show was "the first green Oscars." These vast consumers of energy -- in their 30,000-sqare-foot houses, their Gulfstream jets and even in their high-energy consumption film production process -- claimed green remission of sin by virtue of driving the last hundred yards to the Kodak Theatre in Priuses and by buying carbon credits.
Likewise, when Al Gore was revealed to be using high quantities of energy to heat and cool his large home, he claimed it was OK because he had purchased carbon offset credits. Substantively, these offsets are of dubious environmental value (see Daily Telegraph article: "Is Carbon Offsetting a Con"; BBC's "U.K. to Tackle Bogus Carbon Schemes"; Wall St. Journal's "The Political and Business Self-interest Behind Carbon Limits.")
But as, what the Catholic Church calls "indulgentia a culpa et a poena" (release from guilt and from punishment), paying carbon offset fees makes perfect religious sense. The Christian sinner pays the church for "a remission of the temporal punishment due, in God's justice, to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the church in the exercise of the powers of the keys, through the application of the superabundant merits of Christ and of the saints, and for some just and reasonable motive." (Catholic Encyclopedia)
In the animistic church, any using or changing of the physical world (such as burning carbon) is a sin against the sacred, holistic, living world (the Gaia hypothesis). But as everyone uses energy (just as every Christian sins), the neo-animist church, too, must provide for a remission of sin (and also, a handy source of profit for the carbon-offset company owners -- such as Al Gore who, according to news reports, pays his indulgences to Generation Investment Management, of which he is the chairman.)
Any thoughts on this comparison to the Church's "indulgentia a culpa et a poena"?
It should be no surprise that the National Catholic Register opposes Rudy Giuliani despite his promise to nominate judges in the mold of Alito and Roberts. But the editors make a larger point about Giuliani and the GOP's future:
The power a president exerts over his party’s character is nearly absolute. The party is changed in his image. He picks those who run it and, both directly and indirectly, those who enter it.
Thus, the Republicans in the 1980s became Reaganites. The Democrats in the 1990s took on the pragmatic Clintonite mold. Bush’s GOP is no different, as Ross Douthat points out in “It’s His Party” in the March Atlantic Monthly.
A Republican Party led by a pro-abortion politician would become a pro-abortion party. Parents know that, when we make significant exceptions to significant rules, those exceptions themselves become iron-clad rules to our children. It’s the same in a political party. A Republican Party led by Rudy Giuliani would be a party of contempt for the pro-life position, which is to say, contempt for the fundamental right on which all others depend.
Some pro-life conservatives, such as our own Steve Bainbridge, are apparently not as worried.
S. Margaret John Kelly responds as follows to Rick's observation about the universal destination of goods:
"I agree that the universal destination of goods is a difficult concept or principle, but necessary. If we want to juxtapose it to private property, we need to see that need always wins out over possession. However it is difficult to find the landscape or context in which this can be done and create a little bit of human guilt along the way. The story of Dives shows that he wasn't condemned for having wealth but for ignoring those who needed it. It was easier in that story becuase he almost had to walk over them. If we are convinced our lives are "on loan" from the Creator, it is easy to admit that we are not landlord of the Lord's universe of even owner of our own talents.
"I thought of this driving in today when I heard a story about the obscene bonuses that were given on Wall Street this year, particularly the individual who received over 50 million. That is absurd and a good example of social sin with lots of people within that system hoping they will do better next year and so complicitous in a way. Where is the leadership to stem the tide against this generation's robber barons? Egos are weak when they rely upon matter. As the Hindu wrote: 'When our hearts are empty, we fill them with things.'"
Thursday, March 8, 2007
I appreciate Rick's response to my point on reallocation of existing government funds. Just two (relatively) minor additional points: First, when I wrote that we should be able to articulate our spending priorities in terms of political accountability, I mean something more than just going through the federal budget and finding items that we would want to trade for more noble causes. I mean proactively setting out an attainable objective and contextualizing the cost in terms of the myriad trivial (but enjoyable) expenditures that make up our everyday lives. I may be naive, but I do think the public can be pushed to action when the budget numbers are given real-world bite. Second, I did not bring up the $406 billion spent on Iraq as an example of an after-the-fact audit of government spending like the second-guessing of public education budgets. To me, the Iraq war is an example of an expenditure that should have been avoided on the front end as a matter of principle -- i.e., as a violation of just war theory (no imminent threat). In this context, adhering to the wisdom of Catholic social thought would have freed up resources to pursue morally urgent matters (while leaving some money for ice cream).
I appreciate all the responses to my and Susan's initial posts on spending priorities and the needs of the "have nots." S. Margaret John Kelly invokes the "universal destination of goods" as a necessary step along the road to "global solidarity [and] justice." I have to admit, I've always found this idea a slippery one. One the one hand, "God intended the earth with everything contained in it for the use of all human beings and peoples." (Gaudium et spes). On the other, the Church's social teaching clearly affirms that private property is both a "sacred" right and an important, freedom-facilitating intermediate institution. (Rerum novarum). That said, I certainly agree with Kelly that moral transformation is required for social transformation.
Susan is right, of course -- and I did not intend to suggest otherwise -- that the facts social problems are hard and the implications of CST not always clear does not mean we can "throw up our hands and say, 'gosh this is hard.'" It does mean, though, that we shouldn't think (and I know that Susan does not think) that CST will often justify a "sheesh, this is easy, if we just remember the principle of _____" reaction to a social or policy question.
Rob notes that spending money on appropriate priorities need not require increased taxation, just re-allocation. I meant to acknowledge as much in my original post. ("I imagine we could go through the federal budget and find hundreds of billion-dollar items that we would want to trade for immunizing all children."). I agree with Rob that it now seems pretty clear that at least some of the $406 billion spent on the war so far could have been better used. (I'm confident we could say the same thing of, say, the way national, state, and local officials spend the money ostensibly directed at educating our children, or doing right by our senior citizens, or . . . ).
My friend, S. Margaret John Kelly, who is the Executive Director of our Vincentian Center, says this in response to Rick's post on Helping the Have-Nots:
"[Rick] points to a very basic reality: There will be no global solidarity or justice until there is moral transformation undergirding and permeating the social transformation. For that we will need lived affirmation of the principle of the universal destination of goods and general commitment to pursue the justice and holiness of Matthew 25.
"It is helpful to reflect on what a just and moral community and a larger society would look like as well as what we are willing to do to create one."
