A Brief Comment from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
It is a line attributed some eight centuries ago to St. Francis of Assisi, the Italian friar who understood back then (and more than many of our most pathetic political leaders do today) that the survival of we humans depends a mighty great deal on how well we respect and treat the natural world around us.
We break down and degrage the life-sustaining gifts we’ve been granted on this planet, and we are tredding down a road to hell – it really is just about as simple as that. If you shit enough poison into the atmosphere, there will be no more life-giving air to breath!
Jorge Mario Bergoglia, the Argentine cleric who rose to the head of the Catholic church and now takes his name after that great saint, released an unprecedented, 184-page encyclical t June 18th, 2015 calling for a world-wide “cultural revolution” to move away from oil, coal and other fossil fuels to head off the destructive effects of “catastrophic climate” for present and future generations.
“The pace of consumption, waste and environmeantl change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary life-style, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes,” says Pope Francis in this encyclical.
“Today, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”
Amen!
And I say that as a non-Catholic and a card-carrying atheist. But I also say it as a person who believes that this Pope is a great voice for morality and social justice in this disturbing and dangerous world we now live in, and he is one who also happens to have a deep background in economics and the sciences.
There are those, including minions in Canada’s climate change denying, tar sands government of Stephen Harper, who are already arguing that Pope Francis should not be weighing into the climate change debate because his position ‘is not science based.’
As if Prime Minister Tar Sands, who has gutted environmental research and has done everything he can to muzzle scientists in a tar sands war against science, cares about science – let alone questions around the morality of combating the climate breakdown for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
Not all is lost in Canada, however. There is an election in October of this year which every thoughtful Canadian should use to sweep every member of Harper’s Tar Sands Party out of power.
To read the entire text of the Pope’s encyclical on climatechange, click on this Washington Post link at http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/06/18/read-pope-franciss-full-document-on-climate-change/ .
(Niagara At Large now invites all of you care to share your real first and last name to respond to this post below.)
Niagara At Large 
Doug this is one of the most comprehensive and inspirational articles I truly think you have ever written and Yes I was/am aware of your distrust for the many who use religion and profit from the gullibility of the many whose only fountain of life is their bible.
John F Kennedy provoked the wrath of the minions who profess their undying love of Country yet there are many throughout the world who feel these very minions were the wielders of the sword that slew him..
Pope Francis in many instances is provoking similar minions who would think it patriotic to assassinate this Great Social voice who seems unafraid of Death or the ingrates who might inflict this sentence.
In many ways when I read your articles and your truthful expressions, yes mere words that borders on the realm of a social absolute consequence I realize you are definitely not a card carrying atheist, not a bible thump er….but a believer in a new and better place free of a Creed of Greed and mankind’s selfish indulgences basically referred to as a creed of ENTITLEMENT……..,……Now my Amen
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Well said, Doug, and well commented upon, Joseph.
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