Continuing from the Introduction to Laudato Si by Naomi Oreskes:
The environment is one of those goods that cannot be adequately safeguarded or promoted by market forces.”
(Location 167)
Carbon markets have been widely advocated as the solution to climate change, but the pope has grave concerns here as well. The strategy of buying and selling “carbon credits” can lead to a new form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to provide … the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors.
(Location 173)
N.B. I'd refine the Pope's comments here. I believe that he's talking about a cap-and-trade regime, which has been tried in Europe (and perhaps elsewhere) with little to say for it. The other way to approach this problem, not mentioned above, is a price on carbon and then to pay our the proceeds from the price paid as dividends. This scheme recognizes that dumping carbon into the atmosphere has a cost and that cost is recognized (at least to some extent) by its price. The price (or "fee") collected by the government will then be paid as a "dividend" to individuals on a per capita basis, which would aid lower-and middle-income individuals and families.
[A] great deal of environmental wreckage has been inflicted by multinational corporations operating in developing nations in ways that would not be acceptable in the developed world. When these companies cease their operations, frequently they leave substantial damage in their wake, damage that is not an accident or oversight but the consequence of an ideology in which “ ‘whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.’
(Location 183)
Thus the pope’s two themes are in fact one: our failure to care for creation is the result of a world-view that defines everything in consumerist terms and looks for solutions solely in things that can be bought and sold. The market economy and the culture of consumption are locked in a dance of death, leading to spiritual impoverishment for those who control it, material impoverishment for those who don’t, and environmental impoverishment across the globe.
(Location 204)
THE ALTERNATIVE: AN INTEGRAL ECOLOGY
Some may shrug and say that environmental damage is the price of progress, but the pope refuses to accept that conclusion as rational. On the contrary, viewed dispassionately, it comes to look a bit insane. “The markets, which immediately benefit from sales, stimulate ever greater demand. An outsider looking at our world would be amazed at such behaviour, which at times appears self-destructive.” The pope does not go so far as to label the technological paradigm religion, but his use of the phrase “deified market” certainly suggests that thought. Loc 208.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program:
“The principle of accumulation based on inequality was a vital part of the pre-war order of Society and of progress as we then understood it,” Keynes wrote. “This principle depended on unstable psychological conditions, which it may be impossible to recreate. It was not natural for a population, of whom so few enjoyed the comforts of life, to accumulate so hugely. The war has disclosed the possibility of consumption to all and the vanity of abstinence to many.”
Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.
Kierkegaard knew that the incompatibility of modern science with traditional beliefs does not lie in any specific scientific findings, all of which can be integrated into religious systems and absorbed by religious beliefs for the reason that they will never be able to answer the questions which religion raises. He knew that this incompatibility lay, rather, in the conflict between a spirit of doubt and distrust which ultimately can trust only what it has made itself, and the traditional unquestioning confidence in what has been given and appears in its true being to man’s reason and senses.
“Compellence” is more like “offense.” Forcible offense is taking something, occupying a place, or disarming an enemy or a territory, by some direct action that the enemy is unable to block. “Compellence” is inducing his withdrawal, or his acquiescence, or his collaboration by an action that threatens to hurt, often one that could not forcibly accomplish its aim but that, nevertheless, can hurt enough to induce compliance.
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