Advent is a time of reflection and conversion. When we generally use the term conversion we generally mean getting rid of some defect or vice that we have. Very frequently conversion is understood as personal or individual conversion. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Holy See's permanent observer to the United Nations during a speech he gave a couple of years ago used the term in a different sense. He referred to its collective or communitarian dimension when he referred to the need of ecological conversion. This is essential if we need to have truly sustainable development and the latter is what each and every one of us is morally obliged to strive for if we want to obey God’s command to be good stewards of creation.
"The world needs an ecological conversion so as to examine critically current models of thought, as well as those of production and consumption," said Archbishop Migliore.
He made a list of concrete actions that have to be taken if we really want to move towards this conversion.
"Serious public investment in clean technology must accompany this pragmatism as an urgent part of national and international strategies to diminish as fast as possible the impact of air and sea transport pollution and those sectors' continued use of outdated technology. ...Progress is slowly being made in clean technologies in other fields, including even that of car transport. But the time is now ripe for major investment in cleaner air- and sea-transport technologies before the ecological balance is tipped by culpable neglect."
It is very significant that Archbishop Migliore is speaking about culpable neglect i.e. something that we will be held accountable for in front of the Creator.
The relationship between nature and the economy is explained by the Archbishop.
"Even in the context of its fast transition and mutation, our economy continues to rest basically upon its relation to nature," the archbishop said. "Its indispensable substratum is soil, water and climate; and it is becoming rapidly ever clearer that if these, the world's life-support systems, are spoiled or destroyed irreparably, there will be no viable economy for any of us.
Therefore, rather than being external or marginal to the economy, environmental concerns have to be understood by policy-makers as the basis upon which all economic – and even human – activity rests."
The words of Archbishop Migliore make more sense in the light of the studies about global warming and climate change. This will be a great problem in the near future. One study predicted that if these issues are not addressed the world, in a few years, will be facing a worse depression than that of the 1930s. The situation is so serious that desertification and drought now affect more than one in six of the world's population!
We can take the easy option by stating that this is a problem which political leaders have to solve and that it has to be solved on a global level. This can be a soft option but it is also a wrong option. We are responsible – even if in a minor level – for the mess and as a result we are also responsible for the solution. We are morally bound to revise our lifestyles and the way we use energy and resources. The little bit that each and every one of us can do in this regard will make an effect if it is added up to the little bit that many others can do around the world.
Can we make ecological conversion our aim for the Advent season and our resolution for 2009?