The Vatican’s UN Observer Archbishop Silvano Tomasi is always speaking and saying UN-type things on behalf of Christ’s Church. Why on earth does the Vatican care to inform the UN of their eager and submissive collaboration?
As the Holy See stated during the UN Climate Summit, the enjoyment of a sustainable environment is an issue of justice, respect and equity. Environmental degradation can and does adversely affect the “enjoyment of a broad range of human rights.”[1] The Human Rights Council itself has stated, “environmental damage can have negative implications, both direct and indirect, for the effective enjoyment of human rights.”[2]
Climate change must be true despite the absence of evidence because if it weren’t then they wouldn’t need the FrancisVatican to step in and lend their depleted credibility to try and attach various forms of ‘justice’ to it.
These situations must be approached from the perspective of the principle common and distributive justice. Contributive justice in the sense that all shall contribute according to their financial and technological possibilities; distributive justice, in order to provide to each country the know-how as well as the possibility to develop, to produce goods and to deliver services. Reparative justice implies that those who have benefited more from the use of natural resources, and having thus damaged the environment more, have a special duty to work for its restoration and care.
I learned yesterday that my Alma Mater is now offering a Masters degree in Social Justice. I suppose they will teach people to sub-divide social justice into billions of categories; one for every dollar’s worth of someone else’s property.
Let’s face it. Christ’s work of redemption is done. We’re all going to Heaven as long as we’re liberals, so lets’ get busy trying to make ourselves more comfortable while we’re alive. Does it seem like it’s getting hotter in here to you?
The human rights obligations relating to the environment also include substantive obligations to adopt legal and institutional frameworks that protect against environmental damage that would interfere with the enjoyment of human rights, including harm caused by private actors. As my Delegation has already stated in the intervention on Transnational Corporations, we reiterate our call to protect human rights from environmental harm. States have to strike a balance between environmental protection and other legitimate societal interests. But the balance should be reasonable and not result in unjustified and foreseeable infringements of human rights.
That’s quite specific, bringing in the human factor and all. “Wait a minute, speaking on behalf of the Church I’d like to say don’t forget to think about humans, OK, and while you’re at it be sure to increase costs and restrictions on those ‘private actors,’ whatever unfortunate creatures they turn out to be.”