By Robert M. Nelson
Climate change is melting Greenland at an accelerating rate (
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Republican presidential aspirants Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Rick Santorum all describe themselves as devout Catholics and, like most Republican candidates, they argue that religion should play an expanded role in American politics and government. However, on matters related to global warming, Messrs. Bush and Rubio both agree with Mr. Santorum, stating that we should, "...leave science to the scientists."
Fortunately for these Republican candidates, Jorge Bergoglio, a chemist from Argentina, has stepped forward to address the concerns of those who think that global warming issues should be only confined to scientists. Recently, Bergoglio, analyzed the available data and produced a most remarkable treatise titled Care for Our Common Home. His book is well worth reading.
Bergoglio has an interesting past. In 1929 his family fled fascism in Mussolini's Italy and migrated to Argentina, where he was born in 1936. He is well credentialed. He attended Wilfrid Barà n de los Santos à ngeles, a school of the Salesians of Don Bosco, in Ramos Meja, Buenos Aires, and entered the technical school Escuela Tecnica Industrial #27. After graduation he began work as a chemist at Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory in Buenos Aries (to finance his education, he also worked as a bouncer in an Argentine bar).
Thanks to a most magnificent, almost lyrical writing style Bergoglio's book should be be easily understandable by the general public -- and even by politicians. His words are firm. He resolutely reflects on the general state of our environment, and particularly on the contribution of modern society to environmental degradation. He writes:
Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths." He continues, saying that society creates a -- pollution that effects everyone, caused by transport, industrial fumes, substances which contribute to the acidification of soil and water, fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and agrotoxins in general.
Seeing little hope in industrial technology as a solution, he states:
Technology, which linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create another.
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