Selected paragraphs are quoted (some in part) below [2]:
Participants at the Washington gathering looked at some of the data showing what can happen if places such as the Amazon keep experiencing deforestation at the current rate. The Amazon serves as the "world's lung," where global emissions of carbon dioxide can be turned into oxygen. Its deforestation is not just displacing indigenous communities who have long called the region home but may also accelerate the warming of the globe, leading to extreme weather patterns everywhere.
Extreme weather patterns are already occurring.
[Guatemalan Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini] offered as an example the manufactured need for the newest lines of smartphones, which render products released just a year earlier obsolete. The consumer does not stop to consider who might be sacrificing him or herself in another part of the world to manufacture those types of object others want, but do not need.
People, especially those born in the digital age, have no genuine care for others or for the environment, with exceptions of course, so long as they themselves attain personal worldly gratification.
Participants called for a shift, an "ecological conversion," that leads to a change of mind, but also a change of lifestyle, one that keeps the stewardship of the planet's resources in mind.
This will require a miracle.
Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, president of the Pan-Amazonian Church Network, ... based in South America links indigenous communities and Catholic organizations in nine countries to respond to challenges facing those who live in the Amazon.
It would be more effective if the organization were to link frenzied consumers in this digital age to their collective conscience, assuming that it can even be accessed.
[1] https://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2019/to-protect-earth-change-lifestyles-say-church-indigenous-leaders.cfm
[2] Ibid.
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