Letter: Climate change is not ‘false religion’

To the editor,

The following paragraph is in the April 25 issue of Session Weekly, a publication of the Minnesota House of Representatives. It is an article about proposed cap-and-trade legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gases.

“Folks, just because you saw Al Gore’s movie doesn’t make you a global climatologist and an expert,” said Garofalo (R-Farmington), alluding to the former vice president’s climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Garofalo described concern over climate change as a sad devotion to a false religion.

The most recent issue of The Lutheran, a publication of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, devotes 8 pages to Stewarding God’s Creation. The National Council of Churches has a publication entitled Climate and Church: How Global Climate Change Will Impact Core Church Ministries. Many Baptist churches have adopted positions on environmental justice and climate change.

This quote from the web site of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB):

The U.S. Catholic bishops have declared, “At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group pressures. It is about the future of God’s creation and the one human family. It is about protecting both ‘the human environment’ and the natural environment.” (Global Climate Change: A Plea for Dialogue, Prudence and the Common Good, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2001, p.1).

Perhaps Rep. Garofalo should check out the web site of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, which includes the NCC and USCCB referred to above as well as the Evangelical Environmental Network and the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.

So, does Rep. Garofalo really think that the concern these entities have about climate change make them false religions?

Guenther Moesler,

Randolph Township (Dist. 36B)

Tags: opinion, climatechange, garofalo