Our planet is headed towards an ecological catastrophe. The delicate balance of the earth’s small and fragile biosphere, which makes it a home to millions of species and subspecies of animals and plants both aquatic and terrestrial, is dangerously threatened. All ecosystems around the world and their life supporting and generating structures: atmosphere, water, soil, and species are under severe stress.
A capitalist economy based on constant, unlimited growth is a reckless fantasy because ecosystems are not limitless. There are just so many pollinators, so many aquifers, so much fertile soil. In nature, unchecked rapid growth is the ideology of the invasive species and the cancer cell. Growth as an end in itself is ultimately self-destructive. A (globally warming) rising sea may lift all boats, as capitalists like to point out, but it may also inundate the coastline and drown the people living there. Bush Administration and Conservative governments in Canada and Australia had then rejected the Kyoto accord.
In today’s context, the opening words of Late Pope John Paul II on January 1, 1990 for the World Day of Peace is indeed moot:
In our day, there is a growing awareness that world peace is threatened not only by the arms race, regional conflicts and continued injustices among peoples and nations, but also by a lack of due respect for nature, by the plundering of natural resources and by a progressive decline in the quality of life.
The million-dollar question that comes to one’s mind is, what has the Vatican done to curb the forces that plunder the natural resources for greed and profit? The Vatican and the United States were close allies during the Cold War era. Republican President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II had campaigned shoulder to shoulder to oppose Soviet communism, especially in the pontiff's homeland of Poland, and to combat abortion.
Apart from the profiteering and greed of the capitalist world, the rapid increase of human population is also a major cause for the current ecological crises in terms of thinning ozone, global warming, over-fishing, water shortages, and peak oil. The UN strategy during the 1990s to tackle the population problem by providing women in developing countries with better access to contraception, health care and schooling, had unleashed a bitter war of words, pitting the Vatican against the United Nations and Islamic fundamentalists against the secular West. Pope John Paul II and senior Catholic officials around the world had orchestrated an all-out assault, accusing the United Nations of conspiring to sanction abortion as a means of family planning in the developing world.
While the steep rise in the world's population in the last half of the 20th century had brought calls for zero, or even negative, population growth, many conservative economists insist that there is no crisis over the Earth's ability to support the expected increase. They like to believe science will find ways to solve all problems created by rampant human population growth. Food shortages? Science will find ways to make food out of bacteria. Energy shortages? Science will find ways to turn air into energy. Water shortages? Science will find economical ways to make ocean water potable. As for crowded slums and food shortages in the developing world, they point out that couples tend to have fewer children as their incomes rise.
The conservative economists insist that the UN should concentrate on restructuring developing countries along free-market lines rather than spending money on family planning and health services. But while the general optimism of the conservatives is comforting, it conflicts with the rough consensus emerging among most demographers, scientists and policy analysts involved in population and resource research. Their view is that a high percentage of the planet's peoples are doomed to live with poverty and violence unless population growth is dramatically reduced. They say, the Earth's biosphere can only produce enough renewable resources, food, fresh water and fish; to sustain two billion people at a standard of living equal to that in Europe.
Alongside the debate on Population control, the tussle between the conservative and liberal forces continue unabated on matters including the end-of-life care and choices, abortion, the use of contraceptives (e.g. condoms), and homosexuality. Pope John Paul II drew criticism for refusing to moderate the Catholic Church's anti-condom stance in the face of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. Talking about human rights without promoting reproductive rights of women is empty rhetoric.
The Vatican (including the US Evangelicals/ Republicans) finds itself ironically allied with fundamentalist Islamist nations in its push to restrict abortion, and the rights of women to control their health. At the level of WHO, Vatican (and US Republicans) again find themselves in line with the Islamist fundamentalist states in its support of motions that would restrict global education about human sexuality, birth control and abortion.
Conservatism today broadly includes religious entities and political parties: Vatican, Taliban, Republican Party, and Conservative Party in Britain, the Liberal Party of Australia, BJP, RSS, et al. Even though most of them may appear to be at loggerheads with each other, they are also occassional allies for short-term political/survival reasons. Recently, Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State did acknowledge that the Regan Adminstration had fostered the Taliban against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. A cursory historical overview on the emancipation of women in Afghanistan reveals that they had enjoyed a brief window of reprieve in their condition, during the leftist rule by Nur Mohammed Tarriki (1978-79) with Soviet assistance. This was then undermined by the US and its allies as part of their strategy to weaken the Soviets/communism.
It helps to understand the psychology behind a conservative mindset. Research studies have indicated that death-anxiety, intolerance of ambiguity, lack of openness to experience, uncertainty avoidance, need for cognitive closure, need for personal structure, and threat of loss of position or self-esteem all contribute to the degree of one's political conservatism. The researchers suggest that political conservatives are resistant to change, justify inequality, and are motivated by reducing threats and uncertainty.
No wonder John Stuart Mill (philosopher, economist and senior official in the British-Raj) had said, "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."
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