Catholic Climate Change

Campus Report ^ | July 11, 2008 | Malcolm Kline

[bs9021]

Catholic Climate Change

by: Malcolm A. Kline, July 11, 2008

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.”...

[NY.SS-Bar9]

The sun is blank--no sunspots.

Stock up on firewood and wool mittens.

[Jeff Chandler]

For many millennia?

[agere_contra]

Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology

The hell he is.

This is the problem with being dead for centuries. There's not much you can do when people wrap their lame agendas about your neck.

[Mygirlsmom]

I will never understand how someone could reconcile the belief that God created this planet in all its wonder and put us on it with the idea that we are so powerful that we could destroy His Creation as an accidental byproduct of our very existence.

[tbpiper]

I will never understand how...

Hubris, one of the 'gifts' we got on our way out of the garden.

[stratboy]

Although I avoid church religiously, I am getting quite irked at Pastors, Priests, and Friars becoming political. If that is what they want, then remove their tax-exempt status.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[SuziQ]

Actually Global Cooling will be much worse for poor people than Global Warming would have been. At least with Global Warming, there are more areas that can grow crops to feed folks.