Religious Conservatives Embrace Pollution Fight

[cbayer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/us/religious-conservatives-embrace-proposed-epa-rules.html

By THEODORE SCHLEIFER
JULY 30, 2014


Religious and environmental groups rallied Tuesday outside the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington in support of its proposal to cut power plant emissions. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Rev. Lennox Yearwood punched his fist in the air as he rhythmically boomed into the microphone: “This is a moment for great leadership. This is a moment for our country to stand up. This is our moment.”

But Mr. Yearwood’s audience was not a church. It was the Environmental Protection Agency.

The E.P.A. on Wednesday ended two days of public hearings on its proposed regulation to cut carbon pollution from power plants, and mixed in with the coal lobbyists and business executives were conservative religious leaders reasserting their support for President Obama’s environmental policies — at a time when Republican Party orthodoxy continues to question the science of climate change.

More than two dozen faith leaders, including evangelicals and conservative Christians, spoke at the E.P.A. headquarters in Washington by the time the hearings ended.

more at link

[silverweb]

1. A step in the right direction.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Glad to see it.

[cbayer]

2. Wouldn't it be great if their political punch took a new direction?

I know that a lot of them are very disillusioned with the republicans.

[silverweb]

3. It certainly would.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I've read that they're losing a lot of young adults because of their many unchristian, science-denying, intolerant, and uncharitable views.

Maybe, finally, some of them are rethinking those views and are actually listening, reflecting, and opening their minds for a change.



Wouldn't it be great?!

[cbayer]

4. Surveys support what you are saying.

Young people are leaving the churches, but no necessarily leaving their religious beliefs.

I know we have a few members here who are affiliated with progressive evangelical churches. Not sure is this is a trend, but it could be a good thing.

The religious right has been such a destructive force in this country for the last 30 years or so. I would love to see a radical change.

[merrily]

7. I would say that the combination of the religious right and their Republican backers

has been such a destructive force in this country since the Nixon era, maybe the Eisenhower era, when The Family lobby convince Ike to insert "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance that every kid in the country was saying then every day for 13 formative years. As a way of fighting Communism, no less.

Although, if you think about the long view, secular law always reflected religious teaching and vice versa. OT religious teaching was the law of the land in Israel. Caesars were gods. Christianity really took hold firmly when Roman Emperors began ceding their secular/religious powers to the Pope, one secular/religious power after another.

Laws against divorce adultery, abortion, contraception, homosexuality, etc. were simply a given in the US, as they had been in Elizabethean England, until the US population started chafing against, in effect, having the Pope rule their private lives, even if they were atheists, Jews, Buddhists, etc. And even if the Constitution said Congress should make no law establishing religion and the Supremes had extended that to the state legislatures.

[cbayer]

8. I am just now learning a lot about the struggles between the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church.

I am visiting an area where this battle took place and it is fascinating.

The longer I live, the more I realize how little I know, lol.

There was a time in this country when the liberal/progressive religious leaders and groups really held sway. I was fortunate to have lived in highly politically active communities at that time.

I am happy to see the religious right focus on environmental issues at this point.

[merrily]

9. I would not trust the Dominionist portion of the religious right with

the environment. Or the Family.

[cbayer]

11. No, as their goal is to have a theocracy, I wouldn't trust them either.

But there are others in the religious right who I will support when they are working towards goals that I share.

[cbayer]

6. I think you may have meant this for another thread.

[merrily]

10. In the immortal word of Gov Perry, "Oops."

I headed for your prayer discount at the restaurant thread, of course, but the post somehow landed here. I will delete here and re-post on the other thread if I manage to find it again.

[cbayer]

12. It happens. I have made some very embarrassing, and sometime hilarious, errors

by having too many tabs open.

[Brettongarcia]

13. Overpopulation causes fuel use & global warming. Catholic anti-birth control policy makes it worse

My idea is that overpopulation causes global warming: more people means more consumption of fuel; that means more greenhouse gas. So in short? Overpopulation is really the decisive root cause of global warming.

They say that the major factor in climate change, is overconsumption of fossil fuels, say. But think carefully: why are we using more fuels? It is especially because WE HAVE MORE PEOPLE.

Learn to think analytically.

I've been working on this issue for years. I've worked with and for the head of the EPA. My information comes from well known facts. Then working out the implications of those facts. Using reason, and intelligence: induction and deduction.

There are many factors in Global Warming. But figure it out, rationally: 1) Global warming comes from CO2. 2) Carbon Dioxide is produced by, critically, consumption of fossil fuels. 3) People consume fossil fuels. 4) The more people, the more consumption. 5) The more consumption, the more C02. Therefore? Overpopulation leads to global warming. (By the way, its not all industrialization: burning the fields, rotting vegetation, also contribute CO2; clearing away vegetation, trees, grass, slows consumption of carbon dioxide).

We need people to think analytically.

Yes there are many other factors, aside from overpopulation. And decreasing fuel consumption would help. But interestingly? Decreasing population worldwide - not just in China as I have already noted to you several times in effect - would totally solve the global warming problem. And this is easily done, nonviolently; by birth control.

If only religion, the Roman Catholic Church, was not opposing that at every turn.

(It is argued that China and the “Third World” are often overpopulated, but don't cause global warming, because they don't have as much consumption. But? They do have some – and it is increasingly significant. While overpopulation in the industrialized world of course, is the major problem, China is industrializing. Then too, China's population is already so large - that just a slight increase in per capita consumption, adds up to a fatal amount).