Thread: Religious Conservatives Embrace Proposed E.P.A. Rules on Climate Change

Religious Conservatives Embrace Proposed E.P.A. Rules

By THEODORE SCHLEIFER JULY 30, 2014



Members of religious groups rallied outside the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington on Tuesday. CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Rev. Lennox Yearwood punched his fist in the air as he rhythmically boomed into the microphone: “This is a moment for great leadership. This is a moment for our country to stand up. This is our moment.”

But Mr. Yearwood’s audience was not a church. It was the Environmental Protection Agency.

The E.P.A. on Tuesday held the first of two days of public hearings on its proposed regulation to cut carbon pollution from power plants, and mixed in with the coal lobbyists and business executives were conservative religious leaders reasserting their support for President Obama’s environmental policies — at a time when Republican Party orthodoxy continues to question the science of climate change.

More than two dozen faith leaders, including evangelicals and conservative Christians, are expected to speak at the E.P.A. headquarters in Washington by the time the hearings conclude on Wednesday.

“The science is clear,” said Lisa Sharon Harper, the senior director of mobilizing for Sojourners, an evangelical organization with a social justice focus. “The calls of city governments — who are trying to create sustainable environments for 25, 50 years — that’s clear.”

Ms. Harper was one of about 20 interfaith activists who quietly sang “Hallelujah” and Jewish spirituals in a prayer circle outside the environmental agency’s 12th Street entrance here on Tuesday. Mr. Yearwood and three other faith leaders spoke at the hearings on Tuesday. Some 20 others are to make remarks on Wednesday.

Although many of the faith leaders come from traditionally progressive congregations, like black churches, synagogues and mainstream Protestant denominations, others were more conservative Christians who reflect a growing embrace of environmentalism by parts of the religious right. This week’s hearings on the new E.P.A. rule gives them an opportunity to make their argument that climate change hurts the world’s poor through natural disasters, droughts and rising sea levels, and that it is part of their faith to protect the planet.

“I have been called by God to speak out on these issues and believe it is my conviction as an evangelical Christian that we must be stewards of God’s creation,” the Rev. Richard Cizik, a former top lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals and now president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, plans to say Wednesday at the E.P.A. hearing in Washington, according to his prepared remarks.

The agency is also holding hearings this week on the regulation in Atlanta, Denver and Pittsburgh. About 1,600 people are scheduled to speak.

Five years ago, only 34 percent of white evangelical Protestants agreed that solid evidence existed that the earth was warming because of human activity, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center. An additional 31 percent said that no evidence existed proving global warming whatsoever. Recent polling shows that many evangelicals are still skeptics.

“For the most part, people in the climate advocacy movement are ignoring a number of various biblical texts that are more specifically relevant to the issue,” said E. Calvin Beisner, spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance, an evangelical organization opposed to the E.P.A. rule. “They’re quoting broad general texts that everyone would agree with.”

But in recent years a number of well-known conservative religious groups have embraced global warming as a serious concern.

The National Association of Evangelicals first began pushing for an assertive climate change policy during the George W. Bush administration. The Christian Coalition, founded by Pat Robertson, lobbied in 2009 and 2010 for a climate change bill that ultimately failed on Capitol Hill.

“Rather than letting our faith dictate our politics, we’ve gotten to the point for many of us where we’re letting our politics — typically what the Republican Party says — dictate our faith,” Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian who is a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, said in a telephone interview. “Caring about God’s creation and caring about God’s people is entirely consistent with caring for your neighbor.”

In addition, groups like the Evangelical Environmental Network have seen explosive growth over the past five years, said the network’s president, Mitch Hescox, by making a different argument than typical environmentalists make.

“This is not about polar bears. It’s not about future life. It’s about current reality and children’s health,” Mr. Hescox, a Republican who was scheduled to speak at the E.P.A. hearing in Pittsburgh, said in a telephone interview. “We’re not going to get anywhere if it remains a liberal issue.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/us...ules.html?_r=0

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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

• 

Tri-City Herald file / MCT

An aerial view of the Columbia River and the cable and blue bridges that span it and link the cities of Kennewick and Pasco in Washington state. Scientific models predict that rising temperatures will reduce the snowpack and glacier mass in nearby mountains, resulting in less water for the 1,243-mile-long Columbia River. (Tri-City Herald/MCT)


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• New White House climate report: Waiting on action boosts costs dramatically

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Florida official describes efforts, challenges in combating climate change

By Chris Adams
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Published: Tuesday, Jul. 29, 2014 - 4:44 pm

WASHINGTON -- Citing South Florida’s unique view on climate change, a Broward County commissioner told a Senate panelTuesday that the issue is one of the most pressing the region now faces _ and that local governments will help usher in necessary changes.

Kristin Jacobs, a Democrat, is also a member of President Barack Obama’s task force on climate change, which recently offered a range of steps federal officials could take to reduce carbon pollution and mitigate the impacts of climate change. The Obama administration is in the midst of a major push to take action on climate change, and right now the Environmental Protection Agency is pushing through rules designed to lower carbon pollution.

Jacobs testified before a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. It was just the latest in a string of hearings on climate change science and the proposed EPA rule, which could shutter older coal-fired power plants and spur development of more wind and other alternative energy sources. It requires that states develop plans to lower carbon pollution by specified amounts.

Like most hearings, this one fell along traditional party lines.

Republican senators bashed extra regulations as burdensome and the science of climate change as uncertain. The leading Democrat on the panel said the science was beyond doubt and the time to act was now.

“Inaction on climate change is not an option for Florida,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island and the subcommittee’s chairman. “The longer the wait for action, the higher the cost.”

“Climate change is stacking the deck against our oceans, our fisheries and our coastal economies,” he said.

Jacobs detailed the impact of rising temperatures and seas on South Florida and talked about steps governments in the area have taken to combat it.

“Florida, especially South Florida, is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change,” she said. “Our extensive coastline, low land elevations, flat topography and unique geology combine to put South Florida communities on the front line for combating climate impacts.”

As did Whitehouse, Jacobs noted that the time to act was now, that “economic implications of a failed response do not allow for inaction. With just one additional foot of sea level rise, $4 billion of taxable property will be flooded in Palm Beach, Broward and Monroe counties. At three feet, that figure rises to $31 billion.”

Among the most pressing problems, she said: extensive flooding during extreme high-tide events, with neighborhoods that are inundated as seawater pours over sea walls, pushes through storm drains and rises through the ground.

What affected communities have done is form the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, which has coordinated initiatives to reduce greenhouse gases and worked to integrate climate change considerations into county plans. The compact also has a work group to expand the use of coral reefs, mangroves, dunes and other living shoreline projects.

Asked to contrast the partisan rancor in climate change discussions in Washington to those in her state, Jacobs said that “in South Florida, it’s a bipartisan conversation.”

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/29/659...l-help-to.html

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Connecticut Must Retreat From The Shore

The edge of the Thwaites Glacier in Western Antarctica is seen in a NSA photo. Theories of the ice sheet's impending doom have been circulating for some time, and a study in the journal Science said the process is now expected to take between 200 and 1,000 years. (NASA / May 12, 2014)

Robert M. Thorson
6:40 p.m. EDT, August 6, 2014

Shore Up Connecticut is a policy mistake. A state loan program named Shore Back Connecticut would make more sense because retreat from the coast is the only viable long-term option. Recent developments in Antarctica have made this crystal clear.

As I write, the edge of the Thwaites Glacier is thinning and retreating back to the bedrock ridge that pins it in place. Once inside this threshold, the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet will disintegrate, raising global sea level by 10 feet.

The plug has already been pulled. The global drip will continue until the thaw is complete.

My source is a May 16 "News & Analysis" report published in Science, the magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Read it and weep. Backup for this claim is a report published in the same issue by a team of glaciologists from the University of Washington who have been scrutinizing their computer models in disbelief. They simply can't make the problem go away. Nor can a separate team that published equally alarming results following a separate line of inquiry.

This has happened before. Sometime within the last 750,000 years, an earlier version of the Thwaites Glacier melted back, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet disappeared, and global sea level rose sharply. Prominent glaciologist Richard Alley, who wasn't involved with either study, describes the near future: "Very crudely, we are now committed to global sea level rise equivalent to a permanent Hurricane Storm Sandy storm surge." Keep in mind that future storm surges will be superimposed above this new level.

The good news is the timing. Assuming the models are correct, we've got two centuries to respond. This may seem like a long time, but it's only half as old as the early coastal infrastructure we're trying to protect.

There's more good news in the planning. Scientists are already investigating policies that the politicians can't touch. A team from Vrije Universiteit in the Netherlands, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania published an unrelated Science report two weeks earlier titled "Evaluating Flood Resilience Strategies for Coastal Megacities." Note that all but one of these prestigious academies are located in megacities threatened by climate-driven sea-level rise.

The global situation is ominous. Urban populations in coastal flood-prone areas are still growing rapidly; trillions of dollars are still being invested for infrastructure in these areas; and flood damage remains the largest share of insured losses for such infrastructure. In spite of these compelling concerns, investments for flood protection have been haphazard due to political infighting, fear of making wrong choices and, most important, the short time frames for profitable economic investment.

Focusing on the physics and economics, these scientists put together an elegant numerical model to explore how coastal megacities should respond, using New York City as an example. Their model combines three basic inputs: the probable risk of flooding based on past statistics and future trends; the direct relationship between flood depth and dollar damage; and the total economic losses caused by damage, disruption and remediation. They calibrated their model using actual numbers from Hurricane Sandy.

The predicted economic losses are staggering. Given the status quo, the flood loss for New York City will average $174 million per year. Losses for storms with return periods of 100 and 1,000 years will be $2.2 billion and $25.4 billion, respectively. Obviously, something more must be done beyond hand-wringing, political posturing, and bailing out homeowners and businesses with federal dollars that aren't there.

The key decision is whether to improve present practices or to bite the bullet and block the rising sea from invading vulnerable shores. When the model is tuned for minimum rates of sea level rise and storm intensification, changes in shoreline management makes sense, and "shoring up" can be part of that solution. But when the model is tuned for greater rates of change such as those involving West Antarctic melt, the most cost-effective scenario involves sealing off Greater New York City with a physical barrier between the Rockaways in New York and Sandy Hook in New Jersey.

Building such a dike is not an option for the Connecticut shore because its hundreds of harbors open outward to the sea. Shoring back from the rising sea is our only hope.

Robert M. Thorson is a professor at the University of Connecticut's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His column appears every other Thursday. He can be reached at profthorson@yahoo.com.

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/...4231833.column

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