Today Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and noted as the "most powerful woman" in the Christian religion spoke out against climate change denial. She spoke out against it as a moral issue and one that is in direct opposition to the teachings of God and the Bible.
“It is in that sense much like the civil rights movement in this country where we are attending to the rights of all people and the rights of the earth to continue to be a flourishing place,” Bishop Jefferts Schori said in an interview with the Guardian. “It is certainly a moral issue in terms of the impacts on the poorest and most vulnerable around the world already.”
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“Episcopalians understand the life of the mind is a gift of God and to deny the best of current knowledge is not using the gifts God has given you,” she said. “In that sense, yes, it could be understood as a moral issue.”
She went on: “I think it is a very blind position. I think it is a refusal to use the best of human knowledge, which is ultimately a gift of God.”
The Guardian
Even as an atheist, I cannot emphasize how important this is to have people in religious positions of power speak out against climate change denial. There is a direct correlation between climate change denial and religious belief according to studies, such as one published last year, Who are the climate change deniers
Sure enough, we see the same trend as with political affiliation: The more religious a person is, the more likely they are to deny climate change. Whereas 80% of atheists accept climate change, only 56% of all very religious Americans agree.
It is becoming a far more cultural issue than anything else rather than a scientific one. It's why it's so significant to have the
Pope speak out and any other highly visible religious figure say, climate change is real, it is man made and it is our responsibility as Christians, Catholics, etc. to do something about it.
As those paying attention know, pollution may not see socio-economic circumstances, but it affects people differently regardless. IT IS A MORAL ISSUE.
The greater the concentration of Hispanics, Asians, African Americans or poor residents in an area, the more likely that potentially dangerous compounds such as vanadium, nitrates and zinc are in the mix of fine particles they breathe.
Latinos had the highest exposures to the largest number of these ingredients, while whites generally had the lowest.
The findings of the Yale University research add to evidence of a widening racial and economic gap when it comes to air pollution. Communities of color and those with low education and high poverty and unemployment face greater health risks even if their air quality meets federal health standards, according to the article published online in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
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So not only does
climate change affect the poorest around the world, pollution harms the least of us here at home and elsewhere. This is a moral issue.
And as Republicans try to suppress information, ban language to describe climate change and generally bury their heads in the sand, things continue to worsen. It's not getting better people.
But hey, we could just be like Lindsay Graham and blame Al Gore!
"You know, when it comes to climate change being real, people of my party are all over the board," Graham said after a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations while responding to a question about whether Republicans could work with Democrats to address climate change.
"I said that it's real, that man has contributed to it in a substantial way," Graham continued. "But the problem is Al Gore's turned this thing into religion. You know, climate change is not a religious problem for me, it's an economic, it is an environmental problem."
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"I think the Republican Party has to do some soul-searching. Before we can be bipartisan, we've got to figure out where we are as a party. What is the environmental platform of the Republican Party? I don't know, either," he said.
Source
So, we have religious leaders calling this a moral issue and Republicans blaming Al Gore for turning Climate Change into a religious problem.
Ultimately, the truth is this. The Republican party has no environmental platform because the almightily dollar is their religion and they can't understand that without the environment and sustainable natural resources, there is no economy for us to worry about.
This is not alarmist. This is not over the top. We live in a time where it's so upside down because it's not about saving the environment, it's about slash and burn at any cost to accumulate as much wealth to the top and leave everyone else at the bottom to fend for themselves.
This is the moral issue.
Thank you Katharine Jefferts Schori for coming out for the planet, climate change denial is a moral issue. But we have a larger moral issue at hand and that's the systematic failure of our Government to work. It's the moral failing for corporate America to actually give a shit for anything other than turning a profit for shareholders.
Yeah, I said it.
The moral failing goes beyond just climate change deniers, it goes to the very failure of Republicans ability to govern in any shape or form. It goes to the failure of our Government's ability to function at anything but the bare minimum.
I wonder at times how anything gets done and then think, hey look, Republicans are winning, they are proving exactly the point they want to, Government is incapable of solving any problems.
I hope we can find a way of showing people that the real problem is that Republicans have no intention of Governing wisely nor of solving problems because they don't believe in the power of Government and its ability to do good.
This is the moral failing. The systematic destruction in our basic belief in that good can be done by our Government.
A horrible moral failing indeed.