Catholic Climate Change

For many millennia, Catholic school children could find inspiration in their own names because likely they shared them with a sanctified namesake, or patron saint. St. Anthony, for example, is the patron saint of the lost and found.

Now, it seems, even the saints have become political totems. “In the spirit of their founder, Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology, the Franciscan Friars of Holy Name Province recognize the seriousness that the challenge of climate change presents, especially to the poor and marginalized,” the bulletin of the parish in Triangle, Virginia that bears that sainted gentleman’s name reads. “Please consider joining the friars in their support of the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.”

Actually, that bill just got torpedoed in the United States Senate because, based on the skimpiest of science, it was set to slam “the poor and marginalized” with gas taxes ready to drive already exorbitant pump prices right through the roof. “Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares,” the founder of the Weather Channel pointed out in a speech in San Diego. “That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline.”

“Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years.”

“I mean, this thing is a $6.7 trillion tax increase on the American people,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh of the ill-fated Lieberman-Warner-Boxer bill. “And we know, at a minimum, it will drive up gas prices 53 cents a gallon.”

The Kentucky Republican’s numbers come close to those of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, a research arm of the United States Congress. Meanwhile, “According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s own analysis, by 2050 Lieberman-Warner would only lower global CO2 concentrations by less than 1.4% without additional international action,” Senator James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Sen. Inhofe serves as the ranking minority member of the U. S. Environment and Public Works Committee.

Indeed, the Sierra Club found more than 100 new mandates in it. For example, the bill would order the “EPA to expand the definition of ‘covered facility’ to include all emissions from natural gas emitted, flared or sold for use in the US.”

As well, the bill would force “EPA to conduct six US ‘regional infrastructure cost estimates’ of impacts of climate change, and research and report to Congress on the impact of climate change on low-income populations ‘in all countries,’ including recommendations, etc.” Beware of environmental lawyers who use “etc.”

It’s also interesting to see how the “poor and marginalized” themselves feel about such actions undertaken on their behalf. “No firm link between the documented [climate] changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established,” India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change in June 2008 declared. “It is obvious that India needs to substantially increase its per capita energy consumption to provide a minimally acceptable level of well-being to its people. […] India is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no point exceed that of developed countries.”

Far afield as L-W-B may seem from theological concerns, the Virginia parish promoting it has a much more Catholic cause for advocacy much closer to home. Both the federal government and Virginia Governor Tim Kaine are doling out millions to Planned Parenthood, America’s leading abortion provider.

Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, is targeting inner city minorities to offer its “service” to. Thus far, the Franciscans have yet to make note of this practice, let alone try to end it.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.