I won't speak for Eric, but I can detect no trace in Jerome's writing of any call for austerity.

It seems that this strawman is triggered by a rather convoluted reasoning :

1. If we recognise that the planet is finite, this means we have to consume less resources
   
2. If we consume less resources, this means austerity
   
3. anyone who thinks this is the same as the monetarist economists who are strangling Europe.

Both 2 and 3 are non sequiturs.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}