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Spiritual,
Scientific Leaders Unite in Global Warming Action Plea
WASHINGTON, DC,
May 21, 2004 (ENS) -
An unprecedented group of 31 revered spiritual leaders
and respected scientific leaders is calling on the
federal government and the U.S. Congress to take
action that will protect Earth's climate from global
warming. "Many of us share a deep conviction that
global climate change presents an unprecedented threat
to the integrity of life on Earth and a challenge to
universal values that bind us as human beings,"
they wrote in a Plea for Action.
"Earth's climate
embraces us all, " the leaders affirmed in the
statement issued Thursday. They call for "moral
vision and leadership" in addressing global
climate change. "Resources of human character and
spirit - love of life, far-sightedness, solidarity -
are needed to awaken a sufficient sense of urgency and
resolve," the leaders said.
A thickening blanket
of greenhouse gases traps the Sun's heat close to
Earth, warming the planet's climate. (Photo courtesy NOAA)
Without naming the
current administration, the Plea for Action faults as
inadequate responses to the "crisis" of
global warming "policies that devalue scientific
consensus, withdraw from diplomatic initiative, and
seek only voluntary initiatives."
"We recognize
that there are other perspectives than our own, the
leaders say, acknowledging that "Societies and
governments respond slowly to such challenges,"
but also warning that, "Partisanship and acrimony
have brought us no closer to solutions."
The Plea for Action
calls on the U.S. Senate to consider a bill now before
it, the Climate Stewardship Act, S.139. "While we
take no position on specifics of the
legislation," the leaders say, "we urge the
leadership of the Senate to bring this measure forward
and to provide sufficient time and reflective tone for
debate. We ask our senators to step back from
partisanship and consider what is needed here for the
common good of humankind and our planet home."
Introduced in January
2003 by Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut
Democrat, the bill would provide for a program of
scientific research on abrupt climate change. It would
accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions
in the United States by establishing a market driven
system of greenhouse gas tradeable allowances that
could be used interchangeably with passenger vehicle
fuel economy standard credits. Its nine cosponsors
include both Republicans and Democrats.
Theodore Cardinal
McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington DC, chairs the
Domestic Policy Committee of the United States
Catholic Conference of Bishops. (Photo courtesy Missouri
Catholic Conference)
The people who signed
the Plea for Action acknowledge that they "travel
diverse, individual paths in our search for
truth," and that scientists and religious leaders
"have disagreed, sometimes contentiously, about
fundamental questions of human origin, nature, and
purpose."
But they say
"highly regarded institutions in the
international scientific community" have reached
broad consensus that climate change is a real and
imminent threat to life on Earth. "Global warming
is a universal moral challenge," the leaders
state.
Citing
"discernable human influence on global
climate," the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change reports that "the current atmospheric
concentration of carbon dioxide, the main human-made
greenhouse gas affected by human activity, has not
been exceeded during the past 420,000 years and likely
not during the past 20 million years," a
statement the religious and scientific leaders
evidently believe.
When
"discernable human influence" is determined
to be a cause of destruction, they write, "we are
dealing with moral and ethical concerns as well as
scientific and policy issues. For many, these are
shaped by religious conviction."
The 48th Bishop of
the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Thomas L.
Hoyt, Jr. is a signatory to the Plea for Action.
(Photo courtesy College
of Bishops)
The breadth of expertise
in the group members calling themselves "people
of religious life" ranges from Bishop Thomas L.
Hoyt Jr., Christian Methodist Episcopal Church Bishop
and president of the National Council of Churches USA;
to Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop of
Washington DC, who is chairman of the Domestic Policy
Committee of the United States Catholic Conference of
Bishops; to Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, Chancellor Jewish
Theological Seminary of America. The group also
includes high ranking Evangelical, Methodist,
Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Greek Orthodox leaders.
They quote the Bible
to give their Plea moral force. "In Judaeo-Christian
scripture, all creation, by God's handicraft, is
deemed 'good.' Because 'the Earth is the Lord's and
the fulness thereof' (Psalms 24:1), its gifts are
intended for the benefit of all," they write.
"Humans are
called into covenant with their creator as stewards of
life. In love, we care for the conditions of one
another's well-being; in justice we attend first to
the needs of the most vulnerable. When significant
danger threatens, the traditional value of prudence
requires us to prevent damage to the common good. All
these obligations apply to the protection of future
generations," the Plea states.
Atmospheric chemist
Dr. Mario Molina addresses an audience at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Photo courtesy MIT)
The "people of
science" signing the Plea include the two 1995
Nobel Prize winning chemists Dr. Mario Molina,
professor of environmental chemistry at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dr. F.
Sherwood Rowland, who serves as the Bern Research
Professor in Earth System Science at the University of
California at Irvine. These chemists were honored for
their discovery of the link between
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and depletion of the ozone
layer.
Other distinguished
secular leaders who signed the Plea include Dr. Lewis
Branscomb, Aetna Professor in Public Policy and
Corporate Management, Emeritus, at the Center for
Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University; Dr. Alan Leshner,
CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science and executive publisher of the journal
"Science;" Dr. Peter Raven, Engelmann
Professor of Botany at the Washington University in
St. Louis; and Dr. George Woodwell, founder/director
of the Woods Hole Research Center.
The group also
includes ranking professors at the California
Institute of Technology, Cornell, Duke University,
MIT, Princeton, Rice University, University of
Michigan, and Stanford, as well as physicist John H.
Gibbons, currently president of Resources Strategies
who served as director of the White House Office of
Science and Technology Policy under President Bill
Clinton.
Experimental
physicist John Gibbons is an expert in energy supply
and conservation and environmental technology
development. (Photo courtesy John
H. Gibbons)
The leaders point to the
United States as having "both responsibility and
opportunity." With four percent of the world's
population, the United States has contributed 25
percent of the increased greenhouse gas concentration
which causes global warming.
Now, having
contributed the most greenhouse gases to the warming
climate, "The wealthier nations of the planet
have a solemn moral obligation to help developing
countries protect the poor in their midst as they seek
to limit greenhouse gas emissions," the Plea
states.
The global warming
problem is "an unintended consequence of
technologies which have made possible great human
progress," the leaders acknowledge, and "we
uniquely possess technological resources, economic
power, and political influence to facilitate
solutions."
"The same
ingenuity that devised such benefits can redress their
destructive consequences," they say.
"Extensive study and debate - in science,
technology, commerce, and public policy - have led to
significant agreement about measures that would indeed
slow the pace of climate change. This is a challenge
we can meet."
The Plea calls for:
- continued
scientific research
- the further
development of new, clean technologies in power
generation and transportation
- an energy economy
with far less dependence on fossil fuels
- targets and
timetables for the reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions
- training and just
transition into new jobs created by new
technologies
The leaders pledged
to continue efforts to mobilize their communities,
separately and in joint initiatives. "We do not
have to agree on how and why the world was created in
order to work together to preserve it for
posterity," they say.
"In this
spirit," they are reaching out to leaders in
other sectors - commerce, labor, education, government
and nongovernmental organizations, research and
technology - "to join us in finding ways to
communicate to their own communities the urgency of
this threat to our global commons and the well-being
of future generations."
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