EPA chief headed to Vatican to talk climate change

The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is scheduled to make a brief Vatican visit at the end of the week on the topic of addressing climate change.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy will meet there Friday with senior officials, among them Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. She is also slated to meet with Catholic journalists Friday morning and business leaders in Rome that afternoon.

The agency initiated the meeting through U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Ken Hackett, viewing it as a unique opportunity to directly engage the Vatican.

Speaking to NCR ahead of her trip, McCarthy, an Irish Catholic from Massachusetts, described the Vatican stop as “the most important” on a five-day trip that will also have her visiting Geneva (Thursday), Rome (Friday) and Florence (Monday). She said the meetings will focus on discussing President Barack Obama’s climate action plan [1] and EPA’s role in addressing the effects of climate change both domestically and internationally.

“Clearly, climate change is an issue that is impactful in terms of how we’re not just going to protect the most vulnerable but also take responsibility for protecting God’s natural resources,” McCarthy said.

“I think that the president and myself agree that climate change is indeed a moral issue,” she said. “It is about protecting those most vulnerable, and EPA’s job, as focusing on public health and environmental protection, always tasked ourselves to look at those most vulnerable and to ensure that when we’re taking action we’re addressing their needs most effectively.”

Discussions also expect to touch on Pope Francis’ upcoming encyclical on the environment. In August, Turkson delivered a first draft of the teaching document to Francis, who has indicated [2] the encyclical will publish in June or July -- in time for it to “make a contribution” to international climate negotiations in Paris in December.

McCarthy told NCR she intends to communicate to Vatican officials the president’s commitment to addressing climate change, and hopes “to provide whatever support they think is advisable and appropriate.”

She added the most important thing she can do in the meetings is “to encourage that this dialogue continue” and to talk about the shared concerns the U.S. and the Vatican have “to really highlight this issue and begin to turn that into concrete actions that protect those that are most vulnerable and our key natural resources.”

The international outreach comes after recent, similar efforts at home. EPA has worked to connect with faith communities of all denominations, recognizing most have long teaching traditions on creation care, and their ability to reach people in a way that stating the science of climate change -- which McCarthy described as clear yet too often debated -- cannot.

“And we’re hoping that this effort will not only generate sort of a broader understanding of the challenge of climate change, but a really good discussion of how the work of the church, the work of all faiths, can actually be … a way that recognizes and addresses climate change,” she said.

In the summer, McCarthy called Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, chair of the Domestic Justice and Human Development committee of the U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops, to thank him for his May letter [4] supporting EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan.

The plan seeks to reduce carbon emissions from existing coal-fired power plants by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. A final version of the rule, as well as separate rules for new and modified/reconstructed plants, are expected in mid-summer. Power plants are the largest source of carbon pollution in the U.S., and account for a third of the nation's greenhouse emissions.

During the Clean Power Plan’s commenting period, which closed Dec. 1, EPA received more than 2 million comments. The U.S. bishops’ conference and its affiliate groups encouraged Catholics to participate, with the Catholic Climate Covenant holding eight educational events at Catholic colleges and institutions in five states.

Since the summer, EPA has held meetings with USCCB officials, including an October gathering where McCarthy, Wenski and several Catholic groups -- among them Catholic Climate Covenant and Catholic Relief Services -- met at EPA headquarters to discuss the Clean Power Plan.

In two letters to the EPA, the bishops have stressed the importance of curbing carbon pollution in relation to its effect on the poor, who often face the brunt of impacts. They stated CRS has already seen “the tragic consequences of climate change” in communities they serve worldwide -- from increasingly limited water access and reduced crop yields, to more widespread disease and more frequent and intense storms and droughts -- and “all these are making the lives of the world’s poorest people even more precarious.”

The connection between addressing poverty and carbon pollution was made during Obama’s trip to India, which concludes Tuesday. A joint statement [5] from the two nations’ leaders stated they “recognize that global climate change is a profound threat to humanity and to the imperatives of sustainable development, growth and the eradication of poverty.”

Domestically, the intersection is evident in Native American tribes in the West struggling with drought, the administrator said. Internationally, Vietnamese governmental officials have expressed concern how even a small sea level rise in the Mekong Delta region could displace millions of people.

“Let’s keep in mind that environment isn’t just a natural resource issue or a safety problem. It is a fundamental threat to the economies across the world,” McCarthy said.

She continued: “And that’s why it’s important to have Pope Francis continue to speak as clearly as he can because there are millions if not billions of people at risk here who the Catholic church and other faiths have been focused on for many, many years. And it’s those individuals that we need to speak for, and to help.”

FRANCIS IS THE WHITE CLONE OF OBAMA

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” - Edmund Burke

Thousands of Christians are being murdered, more than 1,000 CHURCHES DESTROYED! Fear of More Muslim Attacks on Christianity Escalate During Nigerian Election while Francis pray at he altar of the environmentalist hoax

Pope Francis ignores how Christians around the world are being slaughtered by Muslims fanatics.

CHRISTIANS BURNED ALIVE : Where’s the Outrage?

Raymond Ibrahim

Powerl

By John Hinderaker

http://www.raymondibrahim.com/in-the-media/christians-burned-alive-wheres-the-outrage/

From Pakistan, another in a long series of horrifying news stories: because of a (presumably false) rumor that they had burned pages of a Koran, a Christian couple was burned alive by a mob of Muslims:

Sajjad Maseeh, 27, and his wife Shama Bibi, 24, were set upon by at least 1,200 people after rumors circulated that they had burned verses from the Quran, family spokesman Javed Maseeh told NBC News via telephone late Thursday.

Their legs were also broken so they couldn’t run away. “They picked them up by their arms and legs and held them over the brick furnace until their clothes caught fire,” he said. “And then they threw them inside the furnace.”

Bibi, a mother of four who was four months pregnant, was wearing an outfit that initially didn’t burn, according to Javed Maseeh. The mob removed her from over the kiln and wrapped her up in cotton to make sure the garments would be set alight.

This outrage prompted the President of the Pakistan Christian Congress to write a letter to President Obama:

It is surprising that neither US Administration under your honor nor US State Department even bothered to condemn this horrific crime of burning live of Christian couple by a mob living in country named Islamic Republic of Pakistan which is receiving billions of aid of US taxpayers.

I would appeal your honor to put pressure on government of Pakistan to end misuse of blasphemy laws against Christian, Ahamadiyyia and other religious minorities and condition US Aid to Pakistan on human rights and repeal of blasphemy laws.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Obama to Obama to do anything about the persecution of Christians. Who knows, it might cause an anti-Muslim backlash! What I want to know is, are the 1,200 people who comprised the mob that burned the Maseehs alive “real” Muslims? Or are they just a handful of deviants who defame the beautiful message of the Prophet?

Actually, the story is the same wherever Muslims dominate. Westerners naturally focus on Islamic terrorism that is directed at them, but that is only one aspect of a pervasive pathology.

If you follow the link above, you can read accounts of Muslim persecution of Christians in Bangladesh, Egypt, Iraq, East Jerusalem, Malaysia, Kenya, Nigeria, Syria, the Islamic State and elsewhere. The author, Raymond Ibrahim, performs a tremendous service by chronicling the persecution of Christians on a regular basis. Like the President of the Pakistan Christian Congress, he must be baffled that hardly anyone seems to care.

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