Seven or more “sinners” arrive at the Vatican to make their confessions
AMONG radical environmentalists, it has often been said that carbon trading and carbon offsets (which allow emitters of greenhouse gases to “redeem” their sins by countervailing actions) are comparable to the medieval practice of selling indulgences. In those days, believers were encouraged to improve their prospects in the after-life through a monetary transaction with the Church. Reaction against this practice helped to inspire the Protestant Reformation.
The parallel is not perfect. Buying indulgences had few earthly consequences, besides making the Church richer. Whereas carbon markets, if they work as they are supposed to, could have the effect of helping to save the planet. In both cases, however, critics feel that moral integrity is compromised.
In any case, visitors converging on the Vatican today are unlikely to be given a free pass as easily as the fee-paying transgressors of the Middle Ages. Chief executives of leading oil companies are due to meet Pope Francis, whose green encyclical, “Laudato Si”, calls for a swift end to the burning of fossil fuels. (The document also expresses scepticism about carbon markets.)
One participating company has described the encounter, arranged by America’s Notre Dame university, as “an opportunity to discuss climate change and the opportunities in the energy transition…” That might be a hopeful description of the meeting, or a euphemism.
Among the Vatican’s “reception committee” for the oil bosses will be Jeffrey Sachs, an American development economist and anti-poverty campaigner. Also a professor at Columbia University and director of its Earth Institute, he has worked closely with the Vatican and other Christian confessions to help them formulate policies on climate change and development.
In recent times, his pronouncements on energy have grown more and more radical. He has said that anyone who owns a share of the fossil-fuel industry, including small investors, should be bracing for the likelihood of being held responsible for the natural disasters that are expected to grow more frequent in an over-heating world.
Mr Sachs warmed up for his session with the oil chiefs with an impassioned peroration delivered yesterday on the Greek island of Spetses, at a diverse gathering of environmental scientists, theologians and activists convened by the senior hierarch of the Orthodox church, Patriarch Bartholomew I.
After quoting from Aristotle, the professor said the interplay of corporate and financial interests with political power had created a global marketplace similar to that unruly bazaar in the Jerusalem temple, the one that prompted Jesus Christ to overturn the traders’ stalls and take up a makeshift whip to drive them out.
Before any flagellations, metaphorical or otherwise, take place at the Vatican, Pope Francis might consider a story from the recent history of the Greek Orthodox church. Around 50 years ago, on the sacred island of Patmos, a revered monk used to tell farmers who came to confess their sins that they should make amends by planting trees. That is one reason why the island’s denuded landscape, which inspired the Christian story of the Apocalypse, today enjoys a decent covering of green.