A developing subtext to planetary politics is the impact of population growth. With this development has come more explicit keywords: sustainability, reproductive-health, abortion. These keywords are repeated time and time again in the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 (https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda). The threat to the planet, according to the UN, isn’t really climate change but humanity itself: https://press.un.org/en/2021/sc14445.doc.htm. This press release identifies humanity as the victim but also the cause of its own mass-extinction. It is interesting that in this article it is explicitly noted that it is not the lack of money that is the issue but humans themselves. I find this hard to believe since half of the world’s population lives on less than $5.50 a day income (https://www.usnews.com/news/economy/articles/2018-10-17/world-bank-half-the-world-lives-on-less-than-550-a-day). If I were to throw my hat in the ring to determine what is really the threat to the planet and humanity, I would name two: (1) usury, and (2) centralization of power. What do I mean by this? For those of us indoctrinated happily with Scripture, it is a bit shocking that the Old Testament Law repeatedly prohibits usury, which is the charging of interest on loaned money. Modern dictionaries define usury as “charging exorbitant interest on loaned money,” but this is a major change from the Old Testament definition, which is charging any interest at all on loaned money (cf., Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Deut. 23:19).
The early church through most of the medieval ages prohibited all usury, and it did not distinguish between Jew and Gentile in this prohibition. In the OT law, Deuteronomy 23:20 allowed only for the charging of interest on the foreigner. Those belonging to the community of Israel were never to be charged interest on loaned money. That the church would see this prohibition as effectively universal, with major condemnation towards it, is not strange based on its self-understanding as a new Israel or now “grafted in” part of Israel. Muether cites Ambrose, stating: “Ambrose agreed when he wrote: ‘If anyone commits usury, he commits robbery and no longer has life (John R. Muether, “Money and the Bible,” Christian History Magazine-Issue 14: Money in Christian History: Part I (Worcester, PA: Christian History Institute, 1987)).'” This early church teaching that charging interest was tantamount to or resulted in the loss of one’s salvation is shocking because of how wide spread the practice is in the modern world. We have now come full circle back to why it is the case that half the world makes $5.50 or less a day. In a word, usury. Jesus’ favorite teaching topic was the danger of money; perhaps the early church and the OT before it rightly understood the damning effect interest has on one’s soul.
Before we go on about usury destroying the livelihoods of half the planet, let’s consider the relationship between usury and centralization. Usury is a wildly successful tool to centralize power. To loan money and receive back more than loaned accrues power over the long term, there is little doubt. In the current era of modern monetary policy–which I cannot get into now with going on a huge digression, you can read about it here, https://againstallodds.site/2022/06/12/monetary-fascism/–the ability to loan governments money, after first creating those fiat, unbacked dollars, is demoralizing and insane, and it is even more monstrous by its enforcement through taxation. This present situation where banks loan governments fiat currency–instead of governments creating their own currency–is really the capstone of a long centralization of power over the control of money, or monetary policy. There is a reason Andrew Jackson destroyed and got rid of the 2nd central bank in the United States, the precursor to the current central bank, the so-called Federal Reserve. One question easily demonstrates how inane it is to think the Federal Reserve is fiscally part of the US government: why does the Federal Reserve charge the US government interest (usury) on the fiat dollars it prints? Whoever enjoys the benefit of this interest has potent centralized power.
How much money has been collected through usury over the past 124 years? How would the world be different if that currency remained with the families who produced it? Of course, we could investigate and see how those interest-payments flow from certain parts of the world to other parts of the world, effectively removing wealth from local economies. Since trees process and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the further developed local economies are, the better the chance that energy sources other than trees are used. This isn’t terribly insightful; local wealth results in improved infrastructure which results in better energy options. There are only two options for handling the increase in carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: either (1) we plant more trees or (2) we reduce carbon emissions. Water produced energy is utterly efficient, clean, and sizable. The countries of northern Africa could have arguably built infrastructures to improve the habitats of deserts to be able to plant trees if local wealth remained local.
Before someone avers that we need to redistribute wealth from rich countries to poor countries, we must recognize the specter of centralized power hiding behind that suggestion. Who would decide what countries should receive it? What persons in that country get it? Who is the wealth taken from in rich countries? Why should someone have the power to decide who has to give up wealth and where it should go? No, centralized power of this sort over money and how it flows on the planet is precisely what led to this situation. How could it not? If tomorrow, you could be in a position to determine how money flows, who it flows to, who it is taken from, and the steps involved in its transfer, wouldn’t it seem reasonable to get the smallest of a fraction of that money for the kids? Taking the smallest of amounts from such large amounts of money won’t really hurt anyone, but it will change my kids’ futures. Fast forward a few generations, however, and that same family is likely in the same business but with far more resources and with far less inhibitions about what they are doing.
To try to summarize and bring this together, the danger of carbon dioxide to humanity is a symptom of the practice of usury in the service of centralized power. The root threat to humanity is usury, which today is the forcible removal of wealth from local economies to private interests. To repair the world to make it feasible for population growth, we must (1) build renewable energy infrastructure, (2) make habitats hostile to trees favorable to trees through investments in environmental projects, and (3) decentralize monetary policy and give it back to the local families. That a very few people on the planet determine how everyone else’s wealth will behave–i.e., monetary policy–will always lead to impoverishment, lack of modern infrastructure, and those who have always having more. It may be a dream, but the banishment of all usury would create the greatest financial revolution on this planet perhaps ever.
Dr. Scalise