More on MOTHER GAIA

Perhaps the best article that I have read in honor of this year’s Earth Day is Jack Cashill’s article, “Feminism is Bad for the Environment,” on Worldnetdaily.com. He notes how recent trends such as the increase of women in the workforce, and the commute that this entails (both for the mothers themselves and for their nannies!) means that there are more vehicles on the road. I found this article while perusing Feminsting.com, a very amusing hobby. He also pointed out the toll that increased divorce rates take on the environment – double the homes, double the impact. I have read about this before. Finally, Cashill, the author of “What’s the Matter with California?” examined the radically ‘green’ town of San Mateo, where everything is eco-friendly, and a person with median income can afford only 13% of the homes (contrasted with the average, where a person of median income can afford 87% of homes in his community). He noted that in San Mateo, not only is everything INCREDIBLY expensive because of the environmental policies and programs, but the very wealthy of San Mateo bring in many, many low-income workers to do everything from care for their children to paint their nails. Because of the insane property values, these workers have very long commutes and, therefore, release a whole lot of carbon into the atmosphere. Rich environmentalists? Bad for the environment. Read the article, it’s very witty.

Jessica’s other brilliant post on the environment took a Family Research Council quote entirely out of context and made it look stupid. Well, actually, what the oh-so-clever Jessica did was remove the citation which backed up FRC’s claim, but left the claim more or less intact. Very cute. If you read the entire email, as Jessica prevented her dear readers from doing, you can see that the claim FRC makes, namely that environmentalism is intimately linked with sex education and population control, and therefore the pro-life movement is backed up by reference to a quote on the Sierra Club’s website - "Talk to your decision-makers and demand an increase of funding for voluntary family planning programs and access to comprehensive sex education for young people,” and a paper from Optimum Population Trust that argued children are “bad for the planet.”

The comments on Feministing.com never cease to amaze me. But today, there were two that really caught my eye. One astute reader realized that FRC was, in fact, correct, and provided links to two terrifying articles about two young women who decided not to have babies to save the earth. One had her husband sterilized, the other was sterilized herself at age 27 following an abortion. I suppose I’d rather see women sterilized than murdering their infants, but the whole mentality over flowers over babies is truly disturbing.

Luckily, Cardinal Pell and Bishop Crepaldi agree with me. and These brave men have provided a voice of reason for the Church in an age when environmental fervor has become a new religion. They stress the fact that people MUST, for the Christian, come before the Earth while nevertheless acknowledging that we are called to be stewards of God’s earth. It is interesting to me that it takes a Cardinal and a Bishop to call for objectivity in science and urge scientists to challenge what has become dogma, because the science community will not do it for itself.

Web addresses of all referenced sites (because I STILL can't figure out how to make my links work...):

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61758

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WU08D17

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=26342

http://www.ignatius.com/Magazines/CWR/pell_jan08.html