Religious Groups Push for Climate Change Legislation
American religious traditions have emerged as a large part of the environmental movement.
When Orthodox Jews met with top White House adviser David Axelrod and a handful of U.S. senators this month as part of an annual lobbying effort, they talked up climate change legislation as a way to improve security for the United States and Israel. "America's reliance on imported oil from the Arab Middle East has been a grave concern for a very long time," says Nathan Diament, public policy director for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. "The Jewish community is interested in energy independence."
But the Jewish delegation also based its case for a climate change bill, which cleared the House earlier this year, on another premise: the Bible. "We are getting ready to read Genesis and the creation story in our synagogues in a few weeks," Diament says. "Our responsibility to tend the garden is part of our understanding of the Torah and of our worship." Indeed, some Jews have begun referring to their green activism as "creation care," a term coined by environmentally inclined evangelical Christians.
As environmental interests begin pressing the Senate to pass major climate legislation before next year's midterm elections, groups and activists from across the spectrum of American religious traditions have emerged as an integral part of the effort. Some denominations and faith-based organizations are planning grass-roots campaigns around the bill for this fall. The White House's faith-based advisory council has convened a climate change task force. And Pope Benedict XVI's environmental proclamations, including writing recently that "the environment is God's gift to everyone," have earned him the nickname the "green pope."
At a time when many senators are skittish about adopting the House climate bill's cap-and-trade provision because of fears it could further slow the economy, religious activists may prove crucial to building support, or at least dampening opposition, among important religious constituencies. Religious conservatives, for instance, generally oppose more government regulation. And many African-Americans, among the most religious demographic groups in the country, worry about cap-and-trade's impact on manufacturing jobs. Faith-based environmentalists have responded to such doubts with a moral case that climate change will disproportionally affect the world's poor by causing food shortages, drought, and coastal flooding. "The faith community talks about climate legislation differently than scientists or environmentalists," says Cassandra Carmichael, director of the Washington office of the National Council of Churches. "We frame it in terms of the people impacted, which can bring in legislators who hadn't thought in those terms."
With the healthcare debate sucking up most of the oxygen in Washington, a climate bill might not have a chance in the Senate this year, as environmentalists had hoped. But Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry have vowed to introduce a bill by the end of September. And lobbyists on all sides of the issue have already begun trying to shape the legislation, battling over whether the Senate version should include cap-and-trade.
In the House, religious activists helped to narrowly pass a climate bill in June. A group called the American Values Network, founded by the religious outreach director for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, Burns Strider, bought Christian radio ads promoting the bill in conservative congressional districts. The progressive group Faith in Public Life funded polling that showed most evangelicals and Catholics support efforts to combat climate change. Religious lobbyists, meanwhile, won a provision in the House bill guaranteeing that houses of worship are eligible for federal subsidies for retrofitting energy-inefficient buildings.
The stepped-up environmental efforts of religious groups in Washington have paralleled a grass-roots effort among religious Americans to green their congregations. An ecumenical group called GreenFaith recently launched a program to certify green houses of worship. Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a tool kit to help churches, synagogues, and mosques earn its Energy Star ratings for their facilities. The Obama administration is reportedly considering the idea of a faith-based office at the EPA to expand its work with religious communities.
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Reader Comments
ENVIRONMENTALISM IS A RELIGION
Environmentalism has evolved into the “new” intolerant religion. It controls the media, courts, legislatures, schools, science, politicians and bureaucrats. In short, it has become The State Religion - a theocracy everyone once feared would be Christianity. It’s creed is simple; “All human progress and endeavors are evil. The only acceptable interactions between man and Nature are; Conservation, Preservation, Restoration and Veneration.”
Everyday, across the nation, we all pay for the environmental crusade of the “eco-elite”. When a rancher or farmer is forced to stop or curtail operations for one “environmentally correct “ reason or another we all pay in higher food prices. When a utility company can’t produce power because of concerns about nuclear plants ,or can’t build hydroelectric plants because of a threatened fish or snail, it cost’s us all. When a home builder can’t build homes for a growing nation without spending millions in environmental studies and “fees”, that expense is ultimately borne by the home buyer. Manufacturers of all types products are shackled by huge costs and fees generated by environmental, regulation, litigation and legislation and when you buy your next car, piece of lumber or box of detergent you’ll be paying.
It seems no price is too great for the “Crusaders of Environmental Purity”. That may be true for the Robert Redfords and the Barbara Striesands and other members of the “eco-elite”, but what about the working people laboring under the ever increasing burden of these costs? Try and explain to a family trying to keep food on the table or staggering under medical bills that it was necessary to spend millions of dollars doing studies and building fences and closing roads to protect some weed, insect or salamander!
And, what about the cost in freedom and the human spirit when access to our lakes, streams, rivers and forests is being lost as the result of draconian environmental regulation?
When the eco-elite demand and litigate that roads and campgrounds be closed do we consider that not everyone is a young, healthy member of the Sierra Club, able to hike many miles into the woods to enjoy nature. Isn’t the disenfranchisement of the handicapped, the infirm, disabled veterans, families with young children, the working poor and seniors from the outdoors too high a price to pay?
Is a legacy of closed roads, abandoned campgrounds, fences, outlawed recreational activities, and high fees for what little recreational opportunity remains really what we want to leave future generations?
As with most crusades the environmental movement had well intentioned, perhaps even noble beginnings. But, as they gained power and their dogma became “politically correct” common sense and moderation were replaced by zealotry and intolerance. Now, to say anything against them is blasphemy and political suicide. Think about it, what politician could say even this, “Perhaps the Endangered Species Act and The Clean Water Act need to be moderated in some way.” The environmental lobby would be in the streets and on talk shows. The p.c. media would hold an “inquisition”. The only question would be how to burn the poor devil at the stake in an “environmentally friendly” way.
We must, as a nation, reject the notion that no price in money and personal freedom is too great to pay in order to protect every aspect of nature. We must replace the dogmatic mantras of the eco-elite with a practical, common sense approach that balances the needs of society with environmental respect and concerns. It is my hope that, ultimately, the environmental pendulum will swing back to the middle ground of “environmental consciousness” and away from “environmental correctness”.
Going green has gone too far.
Too many people as consumers wreck environment
Churches in their search for tithes, fees, gifts of stock, inheritance of property, etc., are mostly to blame for enormous populations. When a religious group forces its women to bear ongoing generations of tithers, they always cross borders for "lebensraum, living-room." Those are holy wars, always fought to get MATERIAL assets. Churches tell believers to put no value on money here, so it's "better to give it to the church." Religion is l00 per cent all about money. India is over-populated. Buddhism has the terrible teaching that bodies re-incarnate, so they need a woman's womb for part of the road-trip to their next form: a grasshopper, or whatever, so there should be no abortions. Catholic nations train little girls to be over-breeders. At confirmation, little girls' dresses are very like wedding gowns. Churches tell religious rapists they are "forgiven for their sins (crimes.) That is a foul concept. Religious Absentee Dads must all feel forgiven for dumping their kids on taxpayers.
If churches want to go green, let them dump their rotten Ban=Abortion laws. The world has suffered enough under their self-serving evangelization.
In 2009, bad to see so many Creationist comments...
There never was a Creation or Creator. Scripture-writers were ignorant men who knew nothing about geology, so they said everything began in the same instant. They knew zero about anatomy so they invented a god who made a man from mud. From one of his ribs, they invented Eve. They said God warned her not to have *what amounted to sexual intercourse,) they blamed her for "original sin." There are two versions of creating Adam & Eve. The first said God told Adam not to "eat the apple of knowledge." The term "to know his wife" means to have sex with her. Some Creationists very angrily deny that Original Sin was sexual reproduction, but the message is there in Scripture. Some Creationists deny there is climate change.. the classic ostrich head reflex. Churches, seeking tithers, are very much to blame for creating demands for stuff that causes pollution of many parts of the environment. it's not hard for me to see jammed freeways, built-over fertile land and dirty air, and know that if humanity disappears, the world will be better for it.
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