The Hermeneutic of Continuity

Dizzy Thinks has uncovered an alarming notice from the Department of Energy and Climate Change telling us that "by 2080 the temperature for the hottest day of the year in the West Midlands could increase by a scorching 100 C" As he points out, the Brummies will no longer need a kettle to make a cup of tea so that should help out a bit with the climate. The DECC have removed a nought now but you can see the original at: Miliband predicts Birmingham population will boil to death by 2080 H/T @edwestonline at Twitter.

The Sunday Times last weekend reported on a GP who discourages families from having more than two children. (See: Green GP refuses to help women have large families .) Dr Pippa Hayes is a member of the Optimum Population Trust whose motto is "stop at two". Essentially, the OPT believes that having more children is not eco friendly. This is an old idea dressed up in green language; human beings are seen as a kind of pollution. The article does give space to an alternative assessment - that in fact large families often lead more environmentally friendly lives. To take one example, they certainly don't use air travel to the same degree because with a large family, package holidays in the sun are prohibitively expensive. The active outdoor alternatives are not only very beneficial for children but also, in fact, tend to waste fewer natural resources. The photo shows one family making the most of our current weather. The large families I know also tend to make economies of sc...

The Holy Father has neatly summed up a number of themes of interest - talking about salvation, saving the planet, gender, Humanae Vitae , that sort of stuff. He even included the rain forests! You have to take your hat off to the man: this was just part of his end of year address to the Roman Curia: Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public. In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself. It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not outdated metaphysics when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected. This has to do with f...

Thanks to The Register for this story: Oz TV advises CO2-emitting children to die early . Apparently, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's "Planet Slayer" site invites young children to take a "greenhouse gas quiz", asking them "how big a pig are you?". At the end of the quiz, the pig explodes, and ABC tells children at "what age you should die at so you don’t use more than your fair share of Earth’s resources!" Charming! In response, ABC managing director Mark Scott insisted that, ... the site was not designed to offend certain quarters of the community but to engage children in environmental issues. My question is how this squares with the Child Protection policy of ABC. Could we have access to a copy of this policy?

Some time ago, towards the end of the post Civil Partnerships and the Church. II Practice , I gave a brief summary of some of the problems that I have with CAFOD , the official overseas development and relief agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. These concerns are serious enough for me to refuse in conscience to support the agency until there is a clear change in policy. I arrange instead for money to be collected either for Aid to the Church in need or for the Pontifical Council Cor Unum . In Lent, we used to be asked to observe "Family Fast Day". Some time ago, it became "CAFOD Fast Day". Now it is called " Lent Fast Day ". Dermot O'Leary has recently been engaged by CAFOD to promote the initiative which this year focusses on climate change and "going green". O'Leary is a television presenter who has apparently been involved in a number of variants on the "Big Brother" theme, the X-Factor and a breakfast TV pro...

This letter was sent to the Tablet but not published. (I'm always happy to publish good letters that somehow do not get to be published in that forum.) Something Fishy! It was most interesting to read Michael Northcott's exhortation that "Pro-life should mean saying no to pollutants." (Clouds of Witness 1/9/07) He argues that ecological issues have been neglected by recent papal teaching on the basis that 'John Paul II believed the greatest moral challenge was...threats to pre-natal human life and efforts to restrain population growth.' But I find this does not stand up to scrutiny when scientific evidence [which many environmentalists choose to ignore] points precisely to the threat to the environment by the chemical pollutants caused by the synthetic hormones in contraceptive pills and devices. One recalls the shocking evidence of the scientists from the University of Denver Colorado in 2005 and which again was highlighted in July this year;who studied mutan...