Media pollution

Pope Benedict asked the Copenhagen summit on climate change to consider another way the air gets dirtied, and we’re all familiar with it.

…the pope said that pollution of society’s moral environment is as dangerous to the human person as pollution of the natural environment.

The pontiff said, “Hearts harden and thoughts darken” with a daily diet of the news media in which “evil is recounted, repeated, amplified, accustoming us to the most horrible things, making us become insensitive and, in some way, intoxicating us, because the negative is not fully disposed of and accumulates day after day.”

It’s corrupting the environment and threatening humanity. Just like other problems with the climate, this one is tough to tackle. What can be done?

Well, this problem is different. 

Counter to the anti-population emphasis that often characterizes environmentalist theories, the pope said that man is the “apex of God’s creation” and must be protected…

“Not only the natural but also the social environment – the habitat we fashion for ourselves – has its scars; wounds indicating that something is amiss,” he said…

“In order to protect nature, it is not enough to intervene with economic incentives or deterrents,” he wrote. “The decisive issue is the overall moral tenor of society.”

“If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology.”

It’s not only moral, but logical. Man needs to be protected before man-made global warming can be seriously considered.