If you think we don’t exploit the earth, just ask the animals

“The pandemic has exposed and aggravated social problems, above all that of inequality,” said Pope Francis Aug. 26 as he continued his pandemic catechesis, “To Heal the World.”

This isn’t some vaguely socialist political opinion in the mouth of the Pontiff. It is a recognition of a basic truth about the injustice in our economy.

Listen to the Pope’s diagnosis, which he repeated twice so we wouldn’t miss it. Our economic illness is “the fruit of unequal economic growth.”

What is “unequal economic growth”? Again, these are not words naming some optional political opinion. They name an alarming economic sickness that every person of good will needs to see, regardless of their political inclinations.

To understand “unequal economic growth” better, I ask you to consider our treatment of animals. I know that people love their pets, so that is a good place to begin considering the way humans are acting in relation to non-human creation.

As conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton observes in his final book, Wagner’s Parsifal: The Music of Redemption, “our stance towards animals” is “a test of our moral sincerity: to offer kindness where there is no reward, not even the reward of gratitude.”

Young children learn this “desire to protect and cherish,” he writes, when “they take some animal to heart and wish to protect it from injury.” In this “primordial moment of cherishing” an animal, they learn the “compassion” of agape (love), a lesson how “to escape from selfishness and to renounce the dominion of the self-affirming will.”

If you ever loved an animal as a child, or do so now as an adult, consider the treatment of animals in factory farming. Horrific pain and suffering is inflicted upon animals so we can buy meat at low prices.

Ten billion non-human animals are slaughtered in factory farming each year in just the United States alone. If that staggering number does not disturb you, then do some research on the internet about what that involves. Watch the videos if you have the stomach.

This isn’t a sentimental vegetarian argument. As Charles Camosy explains in his book Resisting Throwaway Culture, we should be willing to pay more money for meat and, as humans did in the past, to eat it only on special occasions (like the return of a prodigal son).

We should get to know our local farmer and butcher and be able to look in the eye the animal we are about to eat.

If this strikes you as absurd and impractical, return now to the teaching of Pope Francis about a sick economy being founded on inequality. This example of factory farming is manifest proof of our selfish lifestyle.

Eating more meat is something that people in our world can do only when they become relatively wealthy. If you eat a lot of meat and can buy it for low prices, then you are fortunate.

The meals you enjoy could not be enjoyed by all of humanity. If they were, the planet’s environment would become unlivable. The environmental devastation that factory farming requires cannot be universalized.

Camosy in his book asks us to consider the total amount of carbon emissions combined from all forms of transportation: cars, planes, and so on. Francis reminds us in his catechesis he has written an encyclical, Laudato Si’, about the harm caused to our planet by such technologies.

Consider now that factory farming causes three times the total amount of all transportation emissions combined. This is a concrete example of the consumerist, throwaway mindset causing climate change.

We eat cheap meat only because we are unjustifiably exploiting the planet as well as economically dominating other humans. In his catechesis, Pope Francis calls such an economy “the sin of wanting to possess and wanting to dominate over one’s brothers and sisters, of wanting to possess and dominate nature and God himself.”

As Camosy points out, the wealthiest 10 per cent of humans generate 50 per cent of the total carbon emissions that are warming the planet and creating our environmental crisis. Conversely, the poorest half of humanity (50 per cent), generate only 10 per cent of carbon emissions.

These are the “pure statistics” to which the Pope refers when he speaks of how “a few wealthy people possess more than all the rest of humanity.” He’s not simply talking about billionaires, who are merely the unmissable symptoms of a wealthier few.

We are the wealthier few: we who indulge in the unsustainable consumerist lifestyle that, in turn, has made those billionaires so rich.

Our unthinking addiction to cheap meat is just one example of an economy founded on the domination and exploitation of other animals, both non-human and human.

Escaping this sin can be as simple as deciding what you want to eat today and, with compassionate love, embracing an animal.