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Catholic Perspectives on Environmental Justice
and Peace
Renewing the Earth
An Invitation to Reflection and Action on Environment
in Light of Catholic Social Teaching
A Pastoral Statement of the United States Catholic
Conference
November 14, 1991
(Excerpt)
Justice and the Environment
The whole human race suffers as a result of environmental
blight, and generations yet unborn will bear the
cost for our failure to act today. But in most
countries today, including our own, it is the
poor and the powerless who most directly bear
the burden of current environmental carelessness.
Their lands and neighborhoods are more likely
to be polluted or to host toxic waste dumps, their
water to be undrinkable, their children to be
harmed. Too often, the structure of sacrifice
involved in environmental remedies seems to exact
a high price from the poor and from workers. Small
farmers, industrial workers, lumberjacks, watermen,
rubber-tappers, for example, shoulder much of
the weight of economic adjustment. Caught in a
spiral of poverty and environmental degradation,
poor people suffer acutely from the loss of soil
fertility, pollution of rivers and urban streets,
and the destruction of forest resources. Overcrowding
and unequal land distribution often force them
to overwork the soil, clear the forests, or migrate
to marginal land. Their efforts to eke out a bare
existence adds in its own way to environmental
degradation and not infrequently to disaster for
themselves and others who are equally poor. |
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Sustainable economic
policies, that is, practices that reduce current
stresses on natural systems and are consistent with
sound environmental policy in the long term, must
be put into effect. At the same time, the world
economy must come to include hundreds of millions
of poor families who live at the edge of survival.
Read the complete statement.
Peace with God the
Creator, Peace with All of Creation
Pope John Paul II
January 1, 1990
(Excerpts)
5. These biblical considerations help us to understand
better the relationship between human activity
and the whole of creation. When man turns his
back on the Creator's plan, he provokes a disorder
which has inevitable repercussions on the rest
of the created order. If man is not at peace with
God, then earth itself cannot be at peace: "Therefore
the land mourns and all who dwell in it languish,
and also the beasts of the field and the birds
of the air and even the fish of the sea are taken
away" (Hos 4:3).
12. But there is another dangerous menace which
threatens us, namely war. Unfortunately, modern
science already has the capacity to change the
environment for hostile purposes. Alterations
of this kind over the long term could have unforeseeable
and still more serious consequences.
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