A SOLUTION FOR POVERTY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

They have made it a mournful waste,                                                                                               desolate it lies before me,                                                                                                                 desolate, all the land                                                                                                                                     because no one takes it to heart.  (Jeremiah 12:11)

The industrial revolution has provided great wealth for the world, but poverty prevails and the world is being destroyed by the production of artificial wealth. Can the apocalyptic threats of poverty and climate change be transformed?

World War II seems to present capitalism as the answer.  Fascism and communism were obvious failures.  The Capitalist answer to poverty is development.(desarrollo)  Gustavo Gutierrez predicted that Capitalism wouldn’t work in his 1973 book, “A Theology of Liberation.”  Adam Smith’s liberalism with the ‘invisible hand’ didn’t work; nor did Milton Friedman’s neo-liberalism which was a disaster.  “They [social scientists] have reached the conclusion that the dynamics of world economics leads simultaneously to the creation of greater wealth for the few and greater poverty for the many.”  (A Theology of Liberation, p. 25)

Massive migration across the United States’ southern border is an example of how development (desarrollo) doesn’t work to combat poverty.  Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said recently,  “The people don’t abandon their towns because they want to, but rather out of necessity.” 

“U.N. report finds world isn’t curbing global warming.” (USA Today Network, “Way Off Track,” September 9, 2023, p. 1NN)  Poverty and destruction of the earth are related.  The poor are suffering the most in the move toward global destruction causing climate change.  Solutions abound and there is no one answer, but what is the criteria?  How do we decide on an immediate action that is individual and political?  What do we do - options, political and personal options, are available.  What is the criteria for choice?

Are we listening to our children?

Gustavo Gutierrez was influential in the historic meeting of Latin American bishops in Medellin, producing the Medellin document of 1968. They agreed with Gutierrez that solutions must be judged in so far as they move the poor from poverty.  This is referred to as the “preferential option for the Poor.”  Theologian Matthew Fox suggests a preferential (non-violent) option for the children. This is a universally accepted criterion.  Who can object to loving children?

        

Bas-relief in Saint Benedict the Moor Catholic Church, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The current horror in Israel and Palestine reminds us of “A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.” (Matthew 12:18)

Jesus in the Temple with the Elders - Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI

Are we looking for what Jeremiah predicts or will we take the moral imperative of action?

I looked at the earth, and it was waste and void; at the heavens, and their light had gone out!

I looked at the mountains, and they were trembling, and all the hills were crumbling!

I looked and behold, there was no man; even the birds of the air had flown away!

I looked and behold, the garden land was a dessert, with all its cities destroyed before the Lord, before his blazing wrath.    (Jeremiah 4:23-26)