The Vatican held a second conference on energy, Energy Transition and Care for our Common Home, on June 9, 2018. Invited attendees were executives of the “main companies in the oil and natural gas sectors, and other energy related businesses.” Pope Francis’s speech at the conference is here. The following quotes are taken from the speech. I close with a few comments.
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The Catholic Church’s view of the world’s energy security needs
“This massive movement of information, persons and things requires an immense supply of energy. Today, more than ever before, vast areas of our life depend on energy.”
“Clearly, we are challenged to find ways of ensuring the immense supply of energy required to meet the needs of all, while at the same time developing means of using natural resources that avoid creating environmental imbalances resulting in deterioration and pollution gravely harmful to our human family, both now and in the future.
“Air quality, sea levels, adequate fresh water reserves, climate control and the balance of delicate ecosystems – all are necessarily affected by the ways that human beings satisfy their `thirst’ for energy, often, sad to say, with grave disparities.”
“The need for greater and more readily available supplies of energy to operate machinery cannot be met at the cost of polluting the air we breathe. The need to expand spaces for human activities cannot be met in ways that would seriously endanger our own existence or that of other living species on earth.”
“The energy question has become one of the principal challenges, in theory and in practice, facing the international community. The way we meet this challenge will determine our overall quality of life and the real possibility either of resolving conflicts in different areas of our world or, on account of grave environmental imbalances and lack of access to energy, providing them with new fuel to destroy social stability and human lives.
“Hence the need to devise a long-term global strategy able to provide energy security and, by laying down precise commitments to meet the problem of climate change, to encourage economic stability, public health, the protection of the environment and integral human development.
“In my Encyclical Laudato Si’, I appealed to all persons of good will (cf. Nos. 3; 62-64) for the care of our common home, and specifically for an “energy transition” (No. 165) aimed at averting disastrous climate changes that could compromise the well-being and future of the human family and our common home. In this regard, it is important that serious efforts be made to transition to a greater use of energy sources that are highly efficient while producing low levels of pollution.
“This is a challenge of epochal proportions. At the same time, it is an immense opportunity to encourage efforts to ensure fuller access to energy by less developed countries, especially in outlying areas, as well as to diversify energy sources and promote the sustainable development of renewable forms of energy.”
“Political decisions, social responsibility on the part of the business community and criteria governing investments – all these must be guided by the pursuit of the long-term common good and concrete solidarity between generations.”
“There are also ethical reasons for moving towards global energy transition with a sense of urgency. … The transition to accessible and clean energy is a duty that we owe towards millions of our brothers and sisters around the world, poorer countries and generations yet to come.”
“An interdependent world is calling us to devise and implement a long-term common project that invests today in order to build for tomorrow. Air and water do not obey different laws according to the countries they traverse; pollutants do not act differently depending on geographical locations: they follow the same rules everywhere. Environmental and energy problems now have a global impact and extent. Consequently, they call for global responses, to be sought with patience and dialogue and to be pursued rationally and perseveringly.”
‘“The problem is that we still lack the culture needed to confront this crisis. We lack leadership capable of striking out on new paths in meeting the needs of the present with concern for all and without prejudice towards coming generations” (Laudato Si’, 53).’
In the speech, Pope Francis refers to his Encyclical Laudato Si’ on the need for “energy transition”. The pertinent part of the letter is:
“165. We know that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels – especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas – needs to be progressively replaced without delay. Until greater progress is made in developing widely accessible sources of renewable energy, it is legitimate to choose the less harmful alternative or to find short-term solutions. But the international community has still not reached adequate agreements about the responsibility for paying the costs of this energy transition. In recent decades, environmental issues have given rise to considerable public debate and have elicited a variety of committed and generous civic responses. Politics and business have been slow to react in a way commensurate with the urgency of the challenges facing our world. Although the post-industrial period may well be remembered as one of the most irresponsible in history, nonetheless there is reason to hope that humanity at the dawn of the twenty-first century will be remembered for having generously shouldered its grave responsibilities.”
One area of the speech where I disagree is with the reference to the following also contained in the same letter:
“106. The basic problem goes even deeper: it is the way that humanity has taken up technology and its development according to an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm. This paradigm exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object. This subject makes every effort to establish the scientific and experimental method, which in itself is already a technique of possession, mastery and transformation. It is as if the subject were to find itself in the presence of something formless, completely open to manipulation. Men and women have constantly intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand. Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things, attempting to extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us. Human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational. This has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit. It is the false notion that “an infinite quantity of energy and resources are available, that it is possible to renew them quickly, and that the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural order can be easily absorbed”.[PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 462.]
Closing comments
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
With a spacefaring industrial revolution, humanity’s needs for energy and the other natural resources, required for worldwide prosperity, can be gathered from extraterrestrial sources throughout the central solar system. This is how conflict over limited terrestrial resources, particularly energy, can be averted while enabling the sustainable development needs of the world to be met. GEO space solar power will be the progressive engineering solution that the Catholic Church seeks. This solution has not yet made its way into the Catholic Church’s thinking. When it does, it will be a game-changer.
Mike Snead is a professional engineer and Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). He is president of the Spacefaring Institute™ (spacefaringinstitute.net) and writes this Spacefaring America blog. He has formed the LinkedIn group Space Solar Power to advocate for space-based sustainable energy and the coming American spacefaring industrial revolution. He can be reached through the contact form or through LinkedIn. His technical papers are available here.