Nino Galloni: The Encyclical Is Wrong

“Today, as before last centuries’ democracies, scarcity — a real one in the past, an artificial one currently — suggested an unfair distribution of resources and of income because only the rich would make investments necessary to the survival of the entire society; with democratic regimes, instead, which were dropped about 30 years ago, a general growth was pushed, which improved the lower classes, promoted the middle class and satisfied the affluent.

“The same goes, in the Encyclical, for perspective of strategic resources, first of all water: It does not call for developing desalination capacities, capturing water from glaciers, or for a different regime for the Nile River (only a few among many examples), by exploiting current technological capacities of humanity, but it only calls for accepting a fairer distribution of resources.

“True, technological progress has not given an answer on defending biodiversity … but since the Congo Basin is mentioned, this allows us maybe to deepen our reasoning. The Congolese, despite wars, genocide, sicknesses and misery, have grown in number: Consequently, it was their poverty, multiplied by the number, to determine the elimination of almost all the local fauna. If the population grows in misery, determines catastrophic effects on the environment and on biodiversity that can be avoided only by increasing the intensity of the energy flux and technological development. A small community can survive on a certain territory by cutting wood and chasing animals, until the number jeopardizes the balance.

“As the population grows, the model must be changed: The energy flux must be intensified, productive techniques must be modified; it is useless to reduce individual consumption of resources if the population grows; we need to reduce the amount of resources per unity of product: exactly what technology, i.e. human intelligence, is able to guarantee.