In today’s Morning Sun, Bruce Edward Walker writes about the eco-encyclical’s short-sightedness when es to the merits of technological advancement.

To be fair, much of Laudato Si dispenses with progressive calls for population control bat climate change, and goes to great lengths to reiterate Catholic doctrine on abortion and euthanasia and even includes a portion on human ecology wherein Francis discusses natural law regarding gender identity. Rather than wading into the muddy waters of climate-change hype, which, in any event, has been covered in previous columns, space limits me to refuting Pope Francis’ claims that Mother Earth and her inhabitants are in dire need of major government interventions that will hurt the poor and disadvantaged he seeks to assist.

In the past two decades, we have provided an additional 2.3 billion people with clean drinking water, as pointed out by Steven W. Mosher in the New York Post, who also noted that individuals living at the time of Holderlin possessed a lifespan of 30 years and per capita e was $100. Today, Earth is populated by approximately 6.3 billion more people with an average lifespan of 71, and “enjoy a GDP per capita (using purchasing power parity) of more than $12,000.”

There’s more – so much more – but, suffice to say, if you’re maligning air-conditioning as an intrinsic evil, you’re probably missing the boat on a whole raft of humanitarian benefits wrought by technology and free markets.

Read the full column here.