The Earth Deserves More Than a Day

… which is why I’m glad many have set this whole week aside as Earth Week. Of course, it deserves more than a week too, which is why environmental concerns should be with us 24/7/365. The older I get and the more I think about what kind of world my grandchildren and their grandchildren will inhabit … the more I believe that everything must change … including our theology, liturgy, and mission regarding the regeneration of the planet we have so ignorantly, glibly, and greedily been destroying.
Notable this week:
Our do-nothing Congress should be remembered with shame (and its do-nothing members replaced wherever possible) in regard to this: no national environmental legislation has been passed in about 1900 days. In fact, the last time the government did anything new for the environment was as part of the stimulus bill back in 2009.
Shocking numbers of politicians still deny climate change, a fact that is not unrelated to the influence of coal, oil, and other incarnations of the fossil fuel industry. Here are some choice quotes from politicians who ostensibly represent me in Florida (but don’t):

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL-25): “I know there’s a lot of money to be made on the bandwagon of global warming, you can make movies, documentaries, get a lot of research money – and that’s okay, I love capitalism.” “My fear is using the bandwagon of global warming to have Congress act on some knee-jerk reaction which will please some editorialists, will hurt our economy, will not do anything to help us in the future.” [Mario Diaz-Balart Video, 9/25/07]
Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL-01): “I have scientists that I rely on, the scientists that I rely on say our climate has changed. It wasn’t just a few years ago, what was the problem that existed? It wasn’t global warming, we were gonna all be an ice cube. We’re not ice cubes. Our climate will continue to change because of the way God formed the earth.” According to Buzzfeed, earlier at the same event, Miller announced his intentions to defund the Environmental Protection Agency and responded to questions about a scientific consensus on climate change by saying none existed. [Buzzfeed, 8/14/13]
Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL-08): Co-sponsored H.Res.954, a resolution that stated: “Whereas recent events have uncovered extensive evidence from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England (in this resolution referred to as the ‘CRU’) which involved many researchers across the globe discussing the destruction, altering, and hiding of data that did not support global warming claims.” [H.Res.954, GovTrack, 12/8/09]
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL): “I don’t think there’s the scientific evidence to justify it,” Rubio said. Asked whether he accepts the scientific evidence that the global climate is undergoing change, he responded, “The climate is always changing. The climate is never static. The question is whether it’s caused by man-made activity and whether it justifies economically destructive government regulation.” [Tampa Tribune, 2/13/10]

Thankfully, there are Cool Congregations and groups like Presbyterians for Earth-Care and CAP that are working constructively with faith and resolve … along with Good Steward Campaign, the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate, The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, the Evangelical Environmental Network, and Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, which participated in the recent Day of Prayer for Climate Action.