Home Page: www.eco-justice.org * E-mail: ministry@eco-justice.org
| This document was posted on our website in June, 2002, as a response to US government actions that were being featured prominently in the news. |
Climate Change background
For at least 14 years, since the scorching summer of 1988, the idea of global warming has been in the public awareness. News reports have communicated the basic idea that greenhouse gasses (such as carbon dioxide) trap the sun's energy and warm the earth's atmosphere.
The scientific evidence of that human-caused warming has accumulated through the years. The theoretical models that are used to predict warming and its effects have been refined. The term "climate change" is now generally used to reflect the complex and varied greenhouse effects on the earth's weather systems. There is now widespread acceptance -- by scientists, environmentalists, business and political leaders around the world -- that climate change is under way, and that its effects will have profound implications for both nature and human societies.
Through the coordination of the United Nations, the nations of the world have negotiated for over a decade with how to deal with the problem of climate change. The Kyoto Protocol, which calls on the developed nations to take the lead in reducing greenhouse emissions, is the best political solution to emerge from those efforts. In late spring of 2002, Japan and the 15 nations of the European Union ratified the Kyoto Protocol, bringing to 73 the number of countries that have committed to the agreement.
Recent report exposes foolish US policy
In May, 2002, the US government submitted their "Climate Action Report 2002" to the United Nations, and posted it to the website of the Environmental Protection Agency. In the report, the US government has finally acknowledged that human-induced climate change is happening. The report details specific ways in which the changing climate will have profound impacts on habitats, communities and economies within the United States.
The report lays out a public policy which considers global warming to be "inevitable" and which takes no steps to reduce the US's emissions of greenhouse gasses. (Reducing "greenhouse gas intensity" allows a significant increase -- not a reduction -- in the total amount of pollution. See below for more information on this misleading terminology.) Instead of working to reduce global warming, the report proposes a strategy that focuses on adapting to the effects of climate change.
The report has provided a vivid new example of the ways in which the US climate change policy favors "business as usual" for the United States at the expense of other countries, future generations and the natural world.
Claiming the moment
Since the report's release, news stories, editorials, political commentary and editorial cartoons have lifted the Climate Action Report 2002 into the public awareness. Most of the news and commentary has noted the amazing disconnect between the awareness of climate change's effects, and the unwillingness to work for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
The media splash around this report is finally lifting up climate change policy in a way that the "person on the street" can relate to -- not as a matter of disputed scientific models, not as a matter of complicated legislation on energy policy, not as a 'yea' or 'nay' on ratification of the Kyoto Protocol -- but as a basic question of whether the global community, and especially the United States, needs to do something now to reduce the scale of climate change and its impacts in coming years.
For a brief time at the start of the summer of 2002, the general public in the US is uniquely attuned to the basic question about global warming: should we do something, or not? Now is the time to capitalize on that awareness, and to present our message in an especially effective way.
The role of churches
Eco-Justice Ministries works with churches -- with clergy and lay leaders of congregations -- to help them develop ministries and programming that are faithful, relevant and effective in working toward social justice and environmental sustainability. Most of the people in our constituency are not experts in atmospheric science, macro-economics, public policy or energy technologies. Our friends and colleagues are experts in social ethics and moral vision; they are skilled in communication and community organizing.
Now is the time for our core constituency -- for you -- to use your greatest strengths for moral leadership in the community. Now is the time for you to help shape public opinion and the policy debate about global warming. Now is the time for you to act on behalf of all of God's creation.
What you can do in the broader community
Resources for information and action
After rejecting the Kyoto treaty last year, President Bush promised a plan of his own, which he unveiled last February. Instead of committing to reduction of actual emissions, as the rest of the industrialized world has done, his plan speaks of achieving dramatic reduction in "emissions intensity". Sounds impressive, doesn't it. But what does it really mean?
"Emissions intensity" is defined as the percent increase in carbon dioxide emission over a stated interval of time divided by the percent increase of the gross domestic product over the same interval. This so-called indicator is not only irrelevant, it is also intentionally misleading. For so long as GDP growth outpaces carbon dioxide increases, as has historically been the case, "emissions intensity" will decrease. This gives the reassuring but false appearance that real progress in global warming mitigation is taking place. It masks the fact that actual greenhouse gas emissions will still be continuing to climb.
So the bottom line is this. According to the NRDC, the Bush approach will allow Americans to exceed the 1990 rate of carbon dioxide emission by 30% in the year 2012, the same year the rest of the industrialized world's goal is to have reduced their emissions to the 1990 level. But thanks to a miracle of accounting, many misled people will point with pride to our decrease in "emissions intensity." It's unlikely the rest of the world will share their euphoria.
Jack Twombly, the Presbyterian Restoing Creation Enabler for the Plains & Peaks Presbytery, submitted the following letter to his local newspaper.
Tied to coverage of the EPA's "U.S. Climate Action Report 2002" and of the president's rather cavalier dismissal of it, there is one misleading term newly surfaced in all this that must be clarified if the public is to understand what is really going on. It is the administration-invented concept "emissions intensity". David G. Hawkins, Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council Climate Center labels it "... a brazen, Enron-style accounting trick to obscure the worsening problem."
The weekly e-mail newsletter from Eco-Justice Ministries, Eco-Justice Notes has often dealt with matters related to climate change. Some of the past issues may be helpful in exploring how to speak to these issues from a faith perspective.
This issue of Eco-Justice Notes has been formatted as a half-sheet handout or bulletin insert that you can download in either Microsoft Word or PDF/Adobe Acrobat format.
Grist Magazine is an on-line service of the Earth Day Network. Their "Heat Beat" page is described as "Your One-Stop Climate Shop." Note the "Hot Links" item at the bottom of the page, which leads to 4 pages of web links related to climate change for "government sites, think tanks, environmental groups and contrarians."
The Interfaith Climate Change Network
is focused primarily on political action strategies. Their site has information on action options for individuals and congregations.
Eco-Justice Ministries * 400 S Williams St, Denver, CO 80209 * 303.715.3873
Home Page: www.eco-justice.org *
E-mail: ministry@eco-justice.org