Recently in Environmental Justice Category

So the green economy will start off as a small subset and we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society.

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And the white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people-of-color communities, because they don't have a racial justice frame.

-- Obama Administration Green Jobs Advisor Van Jones

-- Former Obama Administration Green Jobs Advisor Van Jones

Times Online:

The five-day festival was due to open on Wednesday but the organisers surrendered their licence yesterday after concerns, including issues involving road and fire safety, could not be resolved with police and the local council.

Directors of the BGG, which has been running since 1994, are furious. Penny Kemp, a director, told The Times: “Our barrister has said it appears the council, police and regulatory authorities have leaned heavily on the road closure people to make sure we don’t get the order.”

Hmmm.

RELATED?: The first US domestic terrorist on the FBI's Most Wanted List is green. More at the WSJ here. Treehugger is worried that FBI is branding "environmentalists." Don't worry, Brian. The only ones FBI is worried about are the disaffected ones that blow people up.

For now, anyway.

Ken Chilton:

On the cost side, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that any cap-and-trade bill that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 15 percent could cost the average household roughly $1,600 (in 2006 dollars). Further, "The rise in prices would impose a larger burden, relative to income, on low-income households ...." (Households in the lowest income quintile spend 21 percent of their income on energy-intensive items compared with 4 percent for the highest one-fifth of American households.)

A Heritage Foundation analysis finds that Waxman-Markey would, by 2035, raise electricity rates 90 percent, gasoline prices 74 percent, residential natural gas prices 55 percent and an average family's monthly energy bill by more than $100.

How about the corresponding value of reducing greenhouse emissions? Congress has made no attempt to answer this obvious question.

One estimate by Paul Knappenberger, an environmental scientist with 20 years experience as a climate researcher, concludes "by the year 2050, the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would result in a global temperature 'savings' of about 0.05 degrees Centigrade ... about two years' worth of warming." In short, this legislation creates very high costs for American households and produces NO discernable benefit!

As an elder in a 300-member evangelical church, I am aware of efforts to recruit church leaders to push for climate change legislation. The advocates label their efforts "creation care" and claim Biblical support for their position based mainly on helping the "least among us" and stewardship of God's creation.

But efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions necessarily result in higher energy costs that impact "the least among us" most harshly. The Biblical command to care for the poor and deal with them justly should give us pause as we consider policies with almost no benefit and great cost to the least of these.

MetroCatholic:

Recently, religious leaders have spoken about global climate change and its impact on people in poverty. The National Religious Partnership on the Environment has called particular attention to the hardships that will burden the poor if policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not carefully structured. Representing the Partnership as a guest speaker, Walter Grazer said that it is incumbent that policies “create new well-paying, climate-friendly jobs and assist workers who lose their jobs as a result of new climate regulations and other policies.”

Climatists have unwittingly created a new sort of eco-justice program.

UPDATE: More here. What about the "climate refugees" created by the economic impacts of climate change regulations?

Welcome to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement's home page, featuring such FAQs as:

Does VHEMT favor abortion? (Answer: Only when someone is pregnant)

Does VHEMT support China's one-child policy? (Answer: The policy is less than voluntary, and even one child is too many.)

Are religions to blame for human over population? (Answer: Extinction is in accordance with God's plan for us. Jesus Christ lived His life as a lesson to us all, and begat naught.* Let us follow His example and concentrate on the spiritual journey to God, rather than on human endeavors such as producing more humans. We have been fruitful and multiplied, now it is time to mature and nurture.)

At least they took a stab (sorry) at an answer to the why-do-these-people-never-volunteer-to-go-first question. And bits like this that quote Luke 23:29, while completely out of context, are pretty thought-provoking.

*(um, not quite)

The Vietnamese central government wants the Church to endorse industrial projects in the name of progress. The Cardinal of Ho Chi Minh City says no.

In his letter, card. Pham Minh Man echoes the concern of scientists and intellectuals that: “Since natural environment is for everyone, no one has permission to damage or control it even in the name of economic development”.

The prelate argues that industrialists only think “to gain profits for a small group of privileged people” without any thought for the “collateral effects caused” by their factories.

“These strategies of economic development can only lead to chaos– concludes the archbishop of former Saigon – They are neither for the common good of society, nor the future of the nation”.

The criticism of bauxite projects has come from various directions of Vietnamese civil society, but the communist party has singled out the Catholic community for punishment: Last month, Fr. Peter Nguyen Van Khai, the spokesman of Hanoi Redemptorist Monastery, and another Redemptorist, Fr. Joseph Le Quang Uy were victimized by the government for their opposition against bauxite projects.

Communists have historically traded off the environment for industry, something Western democracies quit doing a generation ago. Think about that as you watch America slide toward socialism. And think about the risk these Christian leaders are taking for creation.

Pray for them too, while you're at it...

Conservatives and progressives see morality differently, says Jonathan Haidt in Miller-McCune. Here's the bit on ecology:

Haidt notes that the environmental movement was started by liberals, who were presumably driven by the harm/care impulse. But conservative Evangelical Christians are increasingly taking up the cause, propelled by the urge to respect authority. "They're driven by the idea that God gave man dominion over the Earth, and keeping the planet healthy is our sacred responsibility," he notes. "If we simply rape, pillage, destroy and consume, we're abusing the power given to us by God.

That's a good insight. More:

"The climate crisis and the economic crisis are interesting, because neither has a human enemy. These are not crises that turn us against an out-group, so they're not really designed to bring us together, but they can be used for that. I hope and think we are ready, demographically and historically, for a less polarized era."

There's a little book, been out for a while, called The Grace and Truth Paradox that explores this from a Christian standpoint. It seems (according to this author) that conservatives tend to be "truth" oriented and progressives "grace" focused. Problem is, as John says and the author notes, Christ is full of grace and full of truth. He doesn't give us the option to be one exclusive of the other.

Perhaps we're most like Him when we're most united as a body. Ultimately it is the reconciling power of Christ that will overcome polarization. Nothing else can do that.

Catherine Claire Larson, author of As We Forgive, on how how social conditions contribute to reconciliation:

I wasn’t able to include it all in my book, but I’ve been greatly impressed by the groups which are wedding reconciliation work with micro-enterprise. World Relief has an essential oil business that is enabling Hutu and Tutsi to work in reconciled community, Indego has their basket weaving enterprise that is doing the same, and Prison Fellowship Rwanda has been involved with a cattle operation, while Land of a Thousand Hills works with coffee plantations. It strikes me that by creating economic opportunities where interdependence is vital, they are really creating ideal environments for reconciliation and restoration. I wasn’t ever able to track it down, but one of my friends shared that her college professor did his dissertation in Reconstruction era history of America. He concluded that in areas where interdependence was more vital to survival that racial reconciliation happened at a more rapid pace. Intuitively, that seems to make sense. I’d love to see the research though.

A holistic approach to ecology that includes economic as well as social and environmental development is pretty intuitive, though we tend to think of this applying more in the third world than in our own country.

Hugh Hewitt:

The massive costs associated with this approach cannot be quantified, but as the economy struggles to return to real growth, the litigation burden is the unseen hundred-pound pack on every CEO's back.  What this economy could do if the tort system and environmental laws were rationalized is amazing to contemplate given what it can do even while carrying those extraordinary costs.

Hugh Hewitt interviews two guys with a finger on the pulse of today's evangelical youth.

Click the dove and jump the break for a couple interesting excerpts on how ecology has factored in to the evangelical youth vote for Obama, and Christian youth culture in general.

[pjtv.com photo]

Phil Baugh is the Director of Community Development over at Green Exchange. He's looking for green companies to be tenants. A Green Exchange business or non-profit must be advancing initiatives in one or more the following areas: 1) environmental responsibility, 2) health and wellness, or 3) social responsibility. You can catch him at phil@greenexchange.com.

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Last fall, folks from across the country working on coal and energy-related issues came together to launch a new project- Power Past Coal: Expose the True Cost of Coal, Plug into New Power. The goal of this project is to "connect, identify, and publicize 100 independent actions during the first 100 days of the Obama administration and weave them together into a narrative about the growing movement for a better energy future." They hope to raise the profile of individual campaigns and educate citizens, business leaders and politicians about the problems caused by coal and solutions that will help us move beyond coal.

The campaign kicks off January 21st with a national call-in day to the White House organized by CLEAN, a collaborative movement of organizations and individuals with the common goal of implementing a new energy future. Christians for the Mountains has pledged to make 400 calls.

Rebekah Epling sez there's lots more at powerpastcoal.org.

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Jordan Blevins, one of the good folks at National Council of Churches Eco-Justice, sez Senate bill 22 "provides a unique opportunity to take action to protect more lands for the good of God's Creation."

From giving congressional authorization to the National Landscape Conservation System, to protecting some of the finest scenic views, wildlife habitat, and outdoor recreational opportunities in the Wyoming Range, to establishing new wilderness areas in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, this legislation provides Americans across the country with new opportunities to experience the beauty of God's Creation, and new places to which they can journey to experience the presence of the Holy.

More here.

Shea Gunther has launched Green Options. Go over and run up his new hit counter, will you?

Been a while since our last cow flatulence update. (via)

While I'm a skeptic about anthropogenic global warming gas, I have been steadily pointing out the suspicious silence by the MSM on the meat issue -- because according to all the official data, human meat consumption is said to be the number one cause of global warming. I now I see that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is laying the issue at Al Gore's feet -- and they accuse his movie of failing to address cause number one...Among other things the letter cites studies showing that switching to a vegan diet is more effective than switching to a Prius...I hope they hold Al Gore's feet to the fire on this one. Something about the way they're avoiding meat strikes me as downright devious. I suspect it's because they don't believe their own rhetoric. Or maybe it's because they think taking the country off meat will be too much of a hard sell. Whatever it is, I'd like nothing more than to get to the bottom of this nonsense.

I hope PETA makes Gore squeal like a stuck hog.

Time to start thinking sirloin offsets! More on cap"-and-charade" at Greenie Watch.