Pope Francis will offer useful clarification in an imminent encyclical declaring action on climate change to be a matter of moral imperative.
Until now, the issue had seemed to be primarily a dreadful confusion of politics and science, with religion merely an undertone when proponents of energy-use radicalism condemned anyone who questioned their agenda.
But the leader of the Roman Catholic world, citing concern for the poor, intends soon to assign one side of the political debate full stature as a religion.
Apparently, Pope Francis accepts the dire warming predictions of United Nations computer models.
If those predictions came true, impoverished people indeed would suffer. But the predictions aren't coming true. Temperature observations aren't validating the models.
More certain to hurt the poor are the monstrously elevated costs associated with replacing enough cheap energy with costlier alternatives to create even the possibility of influencing globally averaged temperature.
Especially because of their effects on poor people, those costs deserve attention beyond blithe assurances from activists that they would be minor. European experience dispels those claims.
Now come reports that the US Environmental Protection Agency granted University of Michigan researchers $84,000 to study ways to help religious groups advocate for climate-change response.
According to an EPA project document, "This research has potential to provide models of practice that may help faith communities seeking pathways to respond to climate change, as well as informing policies and programs intended to promote more environmentally sustainable behaviors."
Climate activism, soon to receive papal support, thus is becoming established religion in the US. The First Amendment of the Constitution is supposed to preclude that.
If climate change truly represents a moral justification for papal pronouncements, suspension of US constitutional protections, and impoverishment by imposed cost, the issue deserves serious deliberation.
Instead, it's riddled with dissent-squelching nonsense about "settled science" and "tipping points" and with outright fabrication, such as the often-repeated claim that 97% of scientists think humans cause most global warming.
Distortion of truth raises moral questions, too.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted on May 1, 2015; author's e-mail: [email protected])
