There’s a lot to like about P.E.T.A. but there is much to question as well. Most 
Catholics would agree with the need to be wise stewards of the Earth. Respect for God’s creation, treating life in accords with its nature, and learning about the Creator though creation are certainly tenants that we hold. And for P.E.T.A.s work that mirrors these principals I commend them.
My first memories of this group were as a junior high student at St. John the Baptist Catholic Grade School in New Haven, IN. Our daily football game ended with some P.E.T.A. activists pushing trading cards through the chain link fence urging us to stop drinking milk. I’ve never cared for the white stuff on anything other than my cereal but I remember thinking it a little strange that people cared enough about milk to give goofy trading cards to school kids.
Anyway I applaud some of their efforts but find that often their adherence to a set ideology often prevents them from accomplishing any real change. Ideologies tend to do that. With that in mind an interesting news item has gained popularity lately. Chris Packham, a British naturalist, has began arguing that our efforts at saving the panda are rather misguided. He doesn’t believe they should die or be exterminated in Panda death camps but merely points out that the millions we spend annually on keeping them in cute reserves could be better spent if conservation is truly our aim.
Pandas are natural carnivores. In zoos and reserves they are fed a diet of costly bamboo shoots and living outside their natural setting is often believed to be the root cause of the low number of panda births. All of this adds up. Packham argues that our dollars would be better spent in preserving the rainforest and protecting areas rich in biodiversity. I’m convinced he’s right. But it is hard to truly do effective management of natural resources when so many self serving interests exist from corporate to cute.
I’ve been reading “Natural Capitalism” the past couple of weeks. The book is a decade old but it is worth a read. The book essentially argues that what prevents us from embracing technological advances is not a lack of their presence but our inability to change our thinking. From how we design buildings to installing pipes the inefficiency we take for granted is stupefying.
