The Earth Is the Lord’s: Our Responsibility for God’s Creation

Here we go again. Another election cycle in which climate science is being debated by high ranking elected officials, party activists and interest groups with the power to sway what our candidates say they believe and how they act in office. It seems inconceivable that at a moment when there is virtual scientific consensus that climate change is happening, and is significantly affected by human behavior, that there are those who persist in denying the single greatest threat to life as we know it.

Of the eight major Republican Party Presidential candidates this past year, five (Perry, Paul, Bachmann, Cain, Santorum) expressed outright climate change denial. Jon Huntsman was the only candidate who unequivocally affirmed the scientific consensus on climate change. And after previously holding positions that climate change was real and pressing, both Newt Gingrich and candidate-elect Mitt Romney have retreated to expressing varying degrees of skepticism on the subject.

Of the various constituencies and interest groupsworking to eat away at environmental legislation and to fuel the denial of climate change, those doing it in the name of religion are the ones I find most disturbing. As someone whose faith as a religious Jew deeply informs my concern for, and sense of obligation to, the biosphere, I am profoundly troubled by those who point to Scripture as justification for an anti-environmental agenda.
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