Interviewed on Al Jazeera:
And a statement (Source: ANA-MPA):
ISTANBUL — Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew called for a legally binding international agreement to avert the overheating of the planet, in a letter addressed to the leaders of the international community in view of the UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen.
Reaching a beneficial agreement within the framework of the international negotiations in Copenhagen is not only morally imperative for the protection of the universe but a path to social and economic survival as well, he underlined.
“The action against the climate change should not be regarded as an economic burden but as a major opportunity for a healthier planet for the benefit of humanity as a whole, the underdeveloped countries in particular,” the Ecumenical Patriarch stressed.
“Profit, especially, short-term profit, should not motivate our actions more so when it downgrades our shared and God-given natural heritage,” he said.
Bartholomew underlined that “the climate change, as a threat to humanity and the planet, and the progress observed in science and technology clearly show that the only way to a low carbon economy (LCE) is the development of the renewable energy sources (RES), energy saving and no more deforestation.”
The letter of the Ecumenical Patriarch was addressed to the leaders of the United States, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, the European states and the UN Secretary General.
In a letter addressed to Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, the Ecumenical Patriarch called for bold commitments in the Copenhagen negotiations that will lead Greece as soon as possible to a low-carbon energy policy.
The patriarch’s Sept. 29 statement on Copenhagen available here.
How will Papandreou, the Socialist PM, react to this patriarchal prodding? Well, he has his own environmental and fiscal problems. Big government, anyone? From Kathimerini:
Fittingly, the Copenhagen summit coincides with yet another strike by garbage collectors in Athens, condemning citizens to live with the results of their waste and their leaders’ indifference to this, while worrying about their jobs and the economy and global warming. An important aspect of our addiction to waste is reflected in the garbage strike, in which municipal trash collectors, who enjoy permanent employment, are demanding that contract workers be hired on a permanent basis. This is a long-running racket: When the contract workers become permanent, they move on from collecting trash and so new contract workers are hired. Then everyone goes on strike until the new workers are hired permanently and new contract workers are brought on – until there are far more people needed for the job while all of them are ready to go on strike. So, even as payrolls get bigger and bigger, less work gets done. It’s no wonder that the public sector has sucked the life out of the economy.
Athens Mayor Nikitas Kaklamanis, who says the strikers have a point and is involved in a slanging match with Interior Minister Yiannis Ragousis over the issue, plans to go to Copenhagen with a delegation from the City of Athens. Leaving Athens, its garbage and its miserable residents behind should be a relief for him – and perhaps he and other Greeks will get some ideas from the Danish capital. Because what all Greek officials need to consider is that just making the effort to make your home, your city and your administration more efficient is the first and greatest step toward limiting waste and pollution. You don’t need a world summit to see that. Just look at most other cities – except Greek ones.
No taxation without representation!
Jay Richards on AEI’s Enterprise blog:
From Reuters, “Copenhagen summit carbon footprint biggest ever: report” (HT: Drudge):
The hot air itself that is being generated will raise temperatures at least two degrees.
Source: the New South Wales Synod of the Uniting Church in Australia
This blogger in Copenhagen says the “Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church” is on the scene:
Funny, there is no mention of any of this on the GOA or EP website. We just spent a whole month hearing about the Green Patriarch and even playing the green Patriarch video game and hearing about his twitter feed and now there is silence at the big show in Copenhagen.
Is the trusty GOA internet/press department asleep at the wheel?
I think they don’t want it out there either. Embarrassment is expressed in many forms.
I guess Climategate hasn’t made a dent. Given the disastrous economic consequences of the proposed policies – and the ineffectual changes they will effect – my feeling is that if he so desperately wants to demand these policies, he should pay for them. There is something fundamentally unjust about using the force of government to make people buy something they do not want, something that would be destructive to their interests. (By contrast, if it was clearly beneficial, you wouldn’t have to “demand” it or impose it – you could sell it.)
I would have thought that with the economic devastation of this way of thinking so close by (i.e., former communist states), the EP would be more sensitive to the potential costs. It reminds me of that insipid mantra of the 1960s (“love means never having to say you are sorry” – what nonsense): eco-self-righteousness means making other people say they are sorry.
Perhaps the Title of this article should have been,
“Socialism comes to Greece…again.”
Chrys, it doesn’t matter that this is all based on a lie and that 90% of all people are either antithetical or skeptical. What’s at stake here is the loss of all liberty: intellectual, ecomonic, and national. To the extent that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the EP and his minions in the US are party to this, it is to provide theological cover. Shame on them. They are not using their omorphoria as badges of liberation from sin but as shackles for those whose souls they must give an account.
” … it doesn’t matter that this is all based on a lie and that 90% of all people are either antithetical or skeptical. What’s at stake here is the loss of all liberty: intellectual, ecomonic, and national.”
This does not mean that it is going to quickly run out of fuel. Also, I have doubts about the current intellectual liberty…
“Big Bang” and monkey-to-man “evolution” are nothing but junk theories that have truly retarded science. Heliocentrism (or the current A-centrism) replaced Geocentrism but it was never proved to be the correct model or the only model. It is presented as fact in Universities and lower schools everywhere. We have assumed that science has proven that the earth goes around the sun. At list I did assume… until I found out that there are passages in the Bible explicitely indicating that the sun, or stars move AROUND the earth.
Prevailing theories held that ether formed an absolute reference frame with respect to which the rest of the universe was stationary. Heliocentrism used to assume that Earth was orbiting the Sun in a stationary ether. It would therefore follow that the ether would blow past us like a wind in an east-west direction. Michelson and Morley (1887) experiment was designed to measure the speed of light in different directions (east-west and north-south) in order to measure the speed of the ether relative to Earth. The experiment failed to measure any difference in speed. The experiment was repeated later many times and the same result was found.
Rather than admitting the possibility that the earth was stationary with respect to the ether,
scientists dispensed the ether. Michelson-Morley experiment showed that the earth was stationary (or
at lest this is a posibility). In order to avoid having to adopt this results Einstein comes up with
the postulate: “speed of light is constant in all reference frames”. Special Relativity claims that
the speed of light is the only constant in the universe, whereas mass, length, distance, and time became relative. What we have is a system of mathematical formulae which doesn’t explain much of
how things work BUT because of Relativity (its postulates), no one can prove whether the sun goes around the earth or the earth goes around the sun.
George,
An excellent and incisive quote. The EP really is the Poverty Patriarch. He is condemning the poor to an endless cycle of poverty.
Andrew, that is the hallmark of all “progressivism.” Liberals (I hate using that word because they’re not classically liberal, but there you go) hate liberty because they hate Christianity and would love to see people dependant upon them. I’m sorry that an otherwise admirable man (the current EP) has cast in his lot with these Godless people.
From the AmSpec Blog: Transgressions against Gaia
There has go to be some video of that Church service in Copenhagen out there on the internet. Any AOI readers have any luck finding any? My thought is the video is posted in a language other than English.
From Pajamas Media: