Communities of faith care about environment

This month, Congress is deliberating the fate of the nation's most sweeping clean-air protections, and the Kyoto Protocol goes into effect with the glaring absence of the United States.

In his inaugural address, President Bush spoke eloquently about leading with his mandate from the American people. Many among us of religious faith are asking, "Whose mandate is this, anyway?"

While many of us helped vote Bush into office, we are dismayed by the plans of his administration - and Congress - to reverse or obstruct programs that protect God's creation. We did not intend our vote to translate into a green light to harm God's earth and its creatures.

American faith communities are bountifully diverse, as are our beliefs regarding controversial social issues. Yet, as revealed in the recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, there is nearly consensus on protecting creation. By a 2-1 ratio, people of faith support strong environmental protections.

The 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals recently affirmed that the environment should be a banner issue for Christians. Last fall, the organization adopted an "Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility" emphasizing the duty of every Christian to care for the planet and the role of government in safeguarding the environment. Signatories included such influential leaders as James Dobson of Focus on the Family.

Evangelicals, mainstream Christians and Jews alike are deeply troubled by the administration's Clear Skies initiative, which would weaken regulation of our nation's coal-fired power plants, our largest source of mercury emissions. The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has found that 9 percent of women of child-bearing age now carry mercury concentrations at levels that put fetuses at risk of neurological damage. Clear Skies would delay and weaken reductions in mercury emissions mandated by the Clean Air Act, exposing more unborn babies to mercury poisoning.

Clear Skies would also relax Clean Air Act mandates for reduction of power-plant emissions that cause acid rain and smog - with deadly effects. Pennsylvania's acidic rainfall is already the worst in the nation. Researchers at Lehigh University and Pennsylvania State University report die-offs and declines in Pennsylvania fish populations and forests due to acidification. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that smog triggers hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks and premature deaths every year. Children, the elderly, the sick and the poor suffer disproportionately. For the sake of humans, plants and animals, the regulations of the Clean Air Act must be enforced.

Of greatest concern to many devout Americans are the suffering and death caused by the increase in extreme weather events that scientists associate with a warmer planet. No scientist denies that the burning of fossil fuels releases gases that warm our atmosphere.

Christianity Today, a prominent mainstream magazine, is now calling for support of the bipartisan McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship bill, which would require that global-warming pollution be leveled off by the year 2010 to its 2000 levels.

The administration and Senate leaders also oppose this legislation.

Again, Pennsylvanians play a key role. According to data from the U.S. Department of Energy, we produce more global-warming gases than do 105 developing countries combined. Yet developing countries are most vulnerable to the ravages of severe weather, and our inaction will mostly affect future generations. This is a paramount issue of justice - for our grandchildren, for the poor and elderly across the planet, for all God's creation.

This week more than 1,100 pastors, rabbis, nuns and other faith leaders, including 125 from Pennsylvania, called on the administration and Congress to obey biblical mandates to "defend the poor," to "do justice" and to "tend and keep" creation.

As women and men from the pews and pulpits of mainstream America who are committed first and foremost to loving our creator and caring for God's creation, we pray that our leaders will exercise prudence for the common good and be mindful of a higher mandate: God's.