live and reason from the comfortable position of a high level of development and a quality of life well
beyond the reach of the majority of the world’s population. This lack of physical contact and
encounter, encouraged at times by the disintegration of our cities, can lead to a numbing of conscience
and to tendentious analyseswhich neglect parts of reality. At times this attitude exists side by sidewith
a “green” rhetoric. Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach
always
becomes
a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear
both the cryof the earthand the cry of the poor
.
50.
Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different,
some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate. At times, developing countries face forms of
international pressure which make economic assistance contingent on certain policies of “reproductive
health”. Yet “while it is true that an unequal distribution of the population and of available resources
creates obstacles to development and a sustainable use of the environment, it must nonetheless be
recognized that demographic growth is fully compatible with an integral and shared development”.
28
To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one
way of refusing to face the issues. It is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution,
where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a waywhich can never be universalized,
since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption. Besides, we know
that approximately a thirdof all foodproduced is discarded, and “whenever food is thrownout it is as if
it were stolen from the table of the poor”.
29
Still, attention needs to be paid to imbalances in
population density, on both national and global levels, since a rise in consumption would lead to
complex regional situations, as a result of the interplay between problems linked to environmental
pollution, transport, waste treatment, loss of resources andqualityof life.
51.
Inequity affects not only individuals but entire countries; it compels us to consider an ethics of
international relations. A true “ecological debt” exists, particularlybetween the global north and south,
connected to commercial imbalances with effects on the environment, and the disproportionate use of
natural resources by certain countries over long periods of time. The export of rawmaterials to satisfy
markets in the industrializednorth has caused harm locally, as for example inmercurypollution in gold
28
PONTIFICALCOUNCILFOR JUSTICEANDPEACE,
Compendium of theSocialDoctrine of theChurch
, 483.
29
Catechesis
(5 June2013):
Insegnamenti
1/1 (2013), 280.
