It is not surprising that The Australian should be leading the local pushback on Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical Laudato Si. This remarkable document is almost a line by line rejection of the neo-liberal agenda of the Murdoch press.
Paul Kelly’s frenzied opinion article accused the pope of being an 'environmental populist', 'economic ideologue', 'quasi-Marxist', of employing 'hysterical' language, and of 'profound intellectual ignorance', all by the second paragraph.
Of course anyone familiar with Catholic Social Teaching would know that the pope’s message was deeply embedded in that tradition and should not have been at all surprised. After all, the pope is a Catholic.
What is surprising is that a Catholic priest should be joining the chorus against the encyclical. Fr James Grant, an adjunct fellow of the Institute for Public Affairs (IPA), has written a piece entitled 'It’s unchristian to oppose coal generated power' (The Australian, July 10), suggesting that the pope’s concern for the poor would be better placed promoting the advantages of cheap coal generated electricity.
The pope on the other hand singled out coal as a major contributor to climate change: 'technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels – especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas – needs to be progressively replaced without delay.'
Grant appears to be a colourful character. A convert to Catholicism from Anglican ministry, one of his achievements was the establishment of 'Chaplains without borders.' While the name echoes 'Doctors without borders' (Médecins sans Frontières), a humanitarian organisation dedicated to bringing medical services to those most in need, 'Chaplains without borders' provides spiritual services for 'range of organisations from corporations, such as banks or central offices, to semi-corporate organisations, like shopping centres or football clubs.' While many of these areas are undoubtedly spiritual wastelands, it is less clear why those in these groups cannot simply access spiritual services in their local churches.
Grant’s initial foray against the encyclical was an IPA press statement, released even before the contents of the document were known, seeking to reassure Catholics that the pope’s message was not binding Catholic teaching. Technically there is some truth to this, but it is a strange understanding of loyalty to the pope to seek to defuse his message even before it was made public. His more recent contribution to The Australian is right out of the briefing notes supplied by the coal industry in its global public relations efforts to shore up its waning reputation.
In strains we’ve regularly heard from the coal industry, we’re told coal is the best way of bringing people out of poverty by providing them with the electricity necessary for improving their way of life. Coal is by far the cheapest way to generate electricity to free them from the burdens of poverty.
One might be able to maintain such a position as long was one doesn’t take some of the following into account: the $1.5 billion per day of subsidies given globally to the fossil fuel industry (according to the International Energy Agency); the aesthetic cost of scarred landscapes in otherwise pristine conditions; the political cost of corruption in the granting of coal licenses as evidenced in ICAC hearings; the capital cost of centralised power distribution networks lacking in poor countries; the medical cost of mining, distributing and burning coal, through injuries and respiratory diseases; the social cost of climate change caused by coal burning, especially from rising sea levels on coast regions (a point especially noted by Pope Francis). This is why when fossil fuel companies do in fact seek to provide an energy supply to the world’s poor, they often opt for solar. BHP Billiton uses solar panels to help with energy poverty in Southern Pakistan, while Adani Mining provides solar-powered streetlights to villages in India. Solar power is getting cheaper by the day, set to hit $1 per kilowatt hour, it is decentralised and non-polluting. Why would we not want to use it to the utmost?
Of course the real issue here is climate change. Either one accepts what Pope Francis has called the 'very solid scientific consensus' on human induced climate change, or one does not. If one does not, cheap coal may be the answer; if not then what cheap coal gives with one hand, it takes with the other twice or three times over. Cheap coal, in fact, costs the earth.
We all know that climate change is contested, but those who oppose the 'very solid consensus' are regularly exposed as scientific outliers, eccentrics, or people with compromising links to the fossil fuel industry. Fr Grant and the IPA do not appear to hold any scientific expertise, and are colourful perhaps, but not eccentric. The question then is what is the source of the IPA’s funding? Undoubtedly IPA personnel would hold the same opinions anyway, but someone is paying handsomely to have those opinions trumpeted over the media onto an unsuspecting public.
Neil Ormerod is Professor of Theology at Australian Catholic University, a member of ACU's Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry and a Fellow of the Australian Catholic Theological Association.