Pope Francis wants to roll back progress. Is the world ready?

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. On environmentalists, and on the Pope for siding with them

'First Things' is a right wing religious journal. This piece for the Washington Post is similar to what the website is leading with at the moment, written by its editor:

THE RETURN OF CATHOLIC ANTI-MODERNISM

Commentators are sure to make the false claim that Pope Francis has aligned the Church with modern science. They’ll say this because he endorses climate change. But that’s a superficial reading of Laudato Si. In this encyclical, Francis expresses strikingly anti-scientific, anti-technological, and anti-progressive sentiments. In fact, this is perhaps the most anti-modern encyclical since the Syllabus of Errors, Pius IX’s haughty 1864 dismissal of the conceits of the modern era.
...
Of course, God is exactly what modernity has forgotten, which means that it too is “not acceptable”—exactly Pius IX’s conclusion. The Syllabus of Errors is exquisitely succinct. Laudato Si is verbose. But in a roundabout way Francis makes his own case against the modern world.

One of the signal achievements of modernity has been the development of a scientific culture. It is now global in scope. In all likelihood it will serve as the unifying worldview that will undergird any future global consensus. At one point Francis calls for “one plan for the whole world.” If this comes to pass, the scientists and technocrats will formulate and administer it. The authoritarian consensus about global warming that actively suppressed dissent, as Climategate revealed, is a case in point.

Although he endorses the consensus view about global warming, in what may be an internal contradiction Francis describes “the scientific and experimental method” itself as part of the problem. It “is already a technique of possession, mastery, and transformation.” There’s not the slightest suggestion in Laudato Si that the modern scientist contemplates or savors the truths of nature. Science disenchants, measures, dissects, and otherwise prepares the world for us to dominate and control.

http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/06/the-return-of-catholic-anti-modernism

Another article at First Things on global warming:

THE TRUTH ABOUT GREENHOUSE GASES

The object of the Author in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes,” wrote Charles Mackay in the preface to the first edition of his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds . I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. The “climate crusade” is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types”even children’s crusades”all based on contested science and dubious claims.

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/06/the-truth-about-greenhouse-gases

And off he goes, with lots of talk of how an increase in CO2 couldn't possibly be a problem, and invocations of '1984' because the overwhelming majority of climate scientists say he's wrong.

This is part of the right wing plan to support the fossil fuel industry. They're saying that Francis is asking people to give up progress, and calling it "fascinating". This is like the bureaucrat's use of terms like 'brave' in 'Yes, Minister' to put off people considering change. Since their approach to their right wing evangelism is to say religion is good, they can't come right out at say "shut up, Francis, you'll lose us money, who do you think you are?" They're going with "oh, that Francis, he's so naive, thinking we can turn back progress".