Many
of us believe campaign politics and donor contributions are playing a
huge role on how both presidential candidates artfully avoid the topic
head-on.
If you are an End-of-
days believer then Frankenstorm Sandy is merely a precursor to what
was forewarned millenniums ago by Nostradamus, the Book of Revelation
and Mayan calendar. And our human abilities to stem the tide of more
mega-storms are a futile battle with fate.
However, if we are of
the belief that human activity greatly contributes to climate change,
then why aren't our elected officials doing something about it as
ferociously as the storms themselves?
With now indisputable
scientific evidence of Greenland's ice sheet melting, oceans
acidifying, sea levels rising, and the tundra thawing, to name just a
few of the catastrophic changes occurring before our eyes, why have
President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney not
addressed human-caused climate change in their campaigns?
Many of us believe
campaign politics and donor contributions are playing a huge role on
how both presidential candidates artfully avoid the topic head-on.
For example,
flip-flopper Romney goes back and forth on the issue of global
warming and his stance has little if anything to do with strong
convictions or mixed feelings.
Just last year at the
Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, PA, Romney told his audience that
carbon dioxide emissions should not be reduced.
"My view is that
we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And
the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to
reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us."
But this past June,
Romney espoused the opposite position urging the need to reduce
greenhouse pollution.
"I don’t speak
for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s
getting warmer...I believe that humans contribute to that...And so I
think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants
and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the
climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing."
Romney's panders to
corporate lobbyists, and special interest groups because of their
huge campaign donations and they oppose climate change regulation as
big government or interference with free enterprise.
Case-in-point: the Koch
brothers- David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch- of Koch Industries.
They are one of the
biggest polluters on the planet. They have a history of aggressively
financially supporting right-wing groups, causes , Republican
candidates and politicians who deny climate change.
Why
have President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney not
addressed human-caused climate change in their campaigns?In 2010, the Koch
brothers doled out $1 million on California’s Proposition 23,
legally referred to as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.
Opponents of the bill, like the Koch brothers, called the initiative
the Dirty Energy Prop. The initiative lost by a landslide, but the
objective of Prop. 23 was to give permission to out-of-state oil
companies to overturn the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, a state
law to combat human-caused climate change by establishing regulations
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
While it is true that
Obama isn't a flip-flopper or denier of human-caused climate change,
he has, however, only once publicly uttered a full-throated support
of it while on the campaign trail. And that was during a speech in
Charlottesville, VA where he stated, “Denying climate change
doesn’t make it stop.”
Obama also ought to
know that not addressing it won't either.
“The Obama
Administration has never really tried to do much on the topic of
climate change,” Michigan State sociology professor Aaron McCright
told Discovery:
“So, while protecting
the environment and dealing with climate change is part of the
general Democratic platform, it is not something that Obama has
specifically pushed in his original campaign or at any time during
his presidency.”
With the pressing need
to create jobs and to built confidence in our sagging economy, the
issue of climate change has not been a high priority for the Obama
administration. But creating jobs for a green economy is
pro-business. And businesses of all sizes will have to adapt to
climate change, and not to do so will create a lost of services and
income.
While it is evident
that what we do to address global warming is a political issue, it is
also, surprisingly, a present and pressing religious issue for many
Christian evangelicals. And the divide among evangelicals depends on
which biblical scriptures inform their actions.
Opponents of
human-caused global warming will not only cite the book of
Revelation, but also End Times verses like Matthew 24:29-31:29, which
states, "Immediately after the distress of those days the sun
will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars
will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At
that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all
the nations of the earth will mourn....
Proponents of
human-caused global warming who feel they are to take responsibility
for being good stewards and “till and keep” the Earth are
informed my Genesis 2:15 - "Then the LORD God took the man and
put him in the Garden of Eden to farm the land and to take care of
it."
This coming Tuesday,
November 6th we vote. Creating jobs and improving the economy will
determine for most who they will cast their ballot for. And so too
should they consider who will help save our planet.
BlackCommentator.com
Editorial
Board member and Columnist, the Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion
columnist, theologian, and public speaker.
She
is the Coordinator of
the
African-American
Roundtable
of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry
(CLGS) at the Pacific School of Religion.
A
native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College
and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as
a pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard
Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently
named to MSNBC’s list of
10
Black Women You Should Know.
Reverend Monroe is the author of
Let
Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers
for Not’So’Everyday Moments.
As an African-American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector
of society that is frequently invisible. Her website
is
irenemonroe.com.
Click
here
to contact the Rev. Monroe.
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