VATICAN CITY — "Birth control."
Those words were uttered on Friday just 99 minutes into a novel four-day meeting of scientists, theologians, economists and other analysts convened at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences here.* The phrase — not heard often in these halls — was just one of many signs of the free-wheeling nature of discussions that unfolded in hopes of charting fresh paths toward durable human advancement on a finite planet.
Organizers said the workshop, "Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Planet, Our Responsibility," is largely aimed at bringing together disciplines and ideologies that rarely intersect.
Participants range from Walter Munk, a 96-year-old marine researcher from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., to Juan Grabois, an Argentinian in his 30s who is a lawyer and organizer of street vendors, waste pickers and other marginalized workers.
The presentations, nearly all of which are online, are focused on food, health and energy, but also on the value of slowing climate change and conserving the planet's biological bounty, called by some participants "natural capital."
In introductory remarks, Margaret S. Archer, a sociologist who is president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which is co-hosting the talks with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, said her hope was that the interplay of points of view and specialties would identify new research opportunities and inspire lasting collaborations.
What she did not want, she stressed, was the kind of atmosphere seen at village dances, at which the "girls line up on one side, the boys on the other" and they only meet glancingly before going their separate ways.
Over 10 hours, a host of views were expressed, ranging from a hopeful picture of demographic trends from Gérard-François Dumont of the University of Paris to an urgent call for action to avoid crossing dangerous planetary boundaries from Jeffrey D. Sachs of Columbia University's Earth Institute.
No one had a free ride. You can sift part of Friday's 10-hour session on YouTube here. Particularly interesting was a prolonged discussion following Sachs's talk, which focused on the United Nations push to develop a set of Sustainable Development Goals to succeed the Millennium Development Goals expiring next year. (Scroll to the spot on the video around 8:08:00 for his talk and the discussion. Sachs's slides are here.)
Even within disciplines, there was a constructive search for clarity. After Sachs spoke of the importance of fostering a "global ethics," Stefano Zamagni, an economics professor at the University of Bologna, cautioned that it was important to qualify such statements. "When we talk about ethics we mean different things," he said, rattling off a list of ethical frames ranging from utilitarian to neo-contractualist.
One of the most profound phrases came first thing in the morning, in a wise and impassioned speech by Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, a close adviser to Pope Francis:
Nowadays man finds himself to be a technical giant and an ethical child.
(Of course I'm exhibiting confirmation bias in highlighting this line, given how it resonates with my notion that we're essentially going through "puberty on the scale of a planet.")
I encourage you to read his full speech, but here's another excerpt:
Built on consumerism and the rapid augmentation of profits, progress in our post-industrial age has led to serious environmental imbalances in the most comprehensive sense of the term: an over-consumption of non-renewable raw materials, noise, visual and air pollution, and the extinction of animal and vegetable species. It has also brought about profound social and economic imbalances: a wealthy Northern Hemisphere where a poverty-stricken Fourth World has emerged, a Southern Hemisphere riddled with deprivation and misery, and forced emigration. In addition, our world is currently the sad witness of energy crises and speculation, of health disorders caused by the overabundance of food in some places and by famine elsewhere, and of old diseases in a new form as a result of antibiotic-resistant microbia.
No doubt man's life on Earth has been riddled with ordeals, which explains his aggressiveness and his drive for domination.
In the face of a difficult and hostile world, more and more sophisticated techniques have been created to domesticate it and make it inhabitable.
But technical advancements have progressed so much that it already seems as if we were living in an artificial world. Thus a sort of "supra-nature" has been created, which has partly helped man, but which has also detached him from Mother Nature. Both history and our current existence show that our "software" — i.e., our ideas and values — has evolved much more slowly than our "hardware", which has focused for centuries on maximum growth and productivity.
Dan Misleh, the director of the Catholic Climate Covenant, provided a useful summary of the day on his blog.
I've been invited to offer a brief summary of the workshop's most resonant themes at the end of the final day, May 6. If the first day was any indication, I've got my work cut out for me.
I'll be trying to convey interesting points along the way using the Twitter hashtag #sustvatican. Keep track or weigh in.
Addendum, May 3 4:51 p.m. | * The first mention of birth control came from Hsin-Chi Kuan, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (and emeritus political science professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong). He asked Werner Arber, the president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (and a Nobel laureate in medicine) if he approved of birth control. He did.
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