With nation and media fixated on impeachment, one executive fiat after another is quietly rolled out, rolling back years and even decades of hard-won protections for vulnerable people and a vulnerable earth.
Teach the king to judge with your righteousness, O God …
He rescues the poor who call to him,
and those who are needy and neglected.
He has pity on the weak and poor;
he saves the lives of those in need.
He rescues them from oppression and violence;
their lives are precious to him. (Psalm 72:1, 12-14)
Last month White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders condescendingly dismissed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ Green New Deal saying:
I don’t think we’re going to listen to her on much of anything, particularly not on matters that we’re going to leave in to the hands of a much, much higher authority … [The country should leave the fate of the planet in] the hands of something and someone much more powerful than any of us.
Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in reply:
“Genesis 1: God looked on the world & called it good not once, not twice, but seven times.
Genesis 2: God commands all people to “serve and protect” creation.
Leviticus: God mandates that not only the people, but the land that sustains them, shall be respected.” https://t.co/AhWd3vuVBd
She’s right. Taking care of this planet is our human responsibility, our delegated responsibility, from the One in whose image we are made. Like the One who made us, we possess the power to build up or tear down, to protect or to destroy, to care … or not.
How can we claim to love God and not love (care for) this earth that God has created? How can we claim to love our neighbors and not care for the home which sustains their life and all life?
Christian environmentalist is not an oxymoron. Environmentalism is an essential and necessary part of our Christian identity!
It seems that “America first” means America alone … and that is not good for America or for the rest of the world.
Fortunately, there remain leaders of erstwhile allies and partners who refuse to be bullied and who are prepared to stay the course for the sake of the well-being, not only of their own compatriots, but of all of humanity and of the planet we share. The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said today:
The European Union will not renegotiate the Paris Agreement [on climate change]. The 29 articles of the agreement must be implemented and not renegotiated. Climate action does not need more distractions. We have spent 20 years negotiating. Now it is the time for action. Now it is the time for implementation.
He affirmed that the US ‘abandonment’ will not mean the end of the agreement, but would make the world more united and determined to work towards the accord’s full implementation.
Because we must! If we care about our children and our grandchildren, we must! If we care about the planet with which we have been entrusted, we must!
Climate change is truly a global issue, an impending catastrophe to which all peoples contribute and by which all peoples will be impacted. Confronting its perils will require long-range thinking, coordinated effort, and common sacrifice. There is no better or worse “deal” to be found, for any given nation, for any given economy. There may not be nations, let alone economies, if we do not act now with resolve.
May the best hopes of European leaders like Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands, be fulfilled that the nations of the world may “use the three years before the US pulls out of Paris to try to convince President Trump of the importance of climate action.” And may American recover some of its capacity for moral leadership, leading not by intimidation, but by example, not saying “me first,” but standing for liberty and justice and dignity and life for all.
I, along with many EPA staff, are becoming increasing alarmed about the direction of EPA under your leadership. The policies this Administration is advancing are contrary to what the majority of the American people, who pay our salaries, want EPA to accomplish, which are to ensure the air their children breath is safe; the land they live, play, and hunt on to be free of toxic chemicals; and the water they drink, the lakes they swim in, and the rivers they fish in to be clean.”
These are parting words from Mike Cox, a retiring twenty-five year EPA employee, part of a letter sent to EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt.
Clean air is not a liberal agenda; it is a human agenda.
Clean water is not a liberal agenda; it is a human necessity.
A clean environment, an environment as free as possible from toxins harmful to life, human and otherwise, is not a liberal agenda; it is a human agenda.
The Environmental Protection Agency is not the enemy; not the enemy of progress, not the enemy of profitability. The EPA is the friend of the people, the friend of the earth, the friend of our children and grand-children. Only a fool would poison his own family for a short term gain. I pray neither we nor our elected leaders will be foolish …
A leading member of the environmental justice arm of the EPA, a twenty-year public servant under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, Mustafa Ali, has resigned. Here is his explanation:
I never saw in the past a concerted effort to roll back the positive steps that many, many people have worked on through all the previous administrations … I can’t be a part of anything that would hurt those [disadvantaged] communities. I just couldn’t sign off on those types of things.
In his letter of resignation to EPA director Scott Pruitt, Ali wrote:
When I hear we are considering making cuts to grant programs like the EJ small grants or Collaborative Problem Solving programs, which have assisted over 1,400 communities, I wonder if our new leadership has had the opportunity to converse with those who need our help the most. I strongly encourage you and your team to continue promoting agency efforts to validate these communities’ concerns, and value their lives.
This is our home, the home we share, the home given us as a gift and a blessing by our Creator, the home entrusted to us to preserve and protect and enjoy.
Cedar River woods
This is our home! — the home we bequeath to our children and our grandchildren and to generations of children of God to come. And this home will feed them and enthrall them and delight them, too … if we care for it.
The new administration is proposing and enacting dramatic changes in governance on many fronts: a travel ban on immigrants and refugees from a few particular Muslim-majority nations, expanded deportation of undocumented residents, repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act, removing protections for transgender youth, ramping up the nuclear arms race, a budget that sharply increases defense spending and makes radical cuts to program and agencies that are intended to serve and protect the most vulnerable of our citizens.
But of all the newly implemented policies, one of the most disturbing to me is the virtual abandonment of environmental stewardship. Here’s an excerpt from a New York Times op-ed by William Ruckelshaus, who served as the first administrator of the newly-created Environmental Protection Agency from 1970-1973 and again as EPA administrator under Ronald Reagan from 1983-1985:
One of the factors leading to the creation of E.P.A. was the recognition that without a set of federal standards to protect public health from environmental pollution, states would continue to compete for industrial development by taking short cuts on environmental protection. The laws that the E.P.A. administers create a strong federal-state partnership that has worked well for over 40 years. The federal government sets the standards and the states enforce them, with the E.P.A. stepping in only if the states default on their responsibilities.
Budget cuts that hurt programs that states now have in place to meet those duties run the risk of returning us to a time when some states offered industries a free lunch, creating havens for polluters. This could leave states with strong environmental programs supported by the public at a competitive disadvantage compared to states with weak programs. In other words, it could lead to a race to the bottom.
A race to the bottom is a race to a despoiled home, a ruined planet. Environmental protection is not a partisan issue. Ruckelshaus is a Republican, a Reagan Republican. If you pit business against environment, both lose. Both lose! Gutting the EPA serves no useful purpose, no purpose at all, except for some small short term profit for a few resource-exploitive industries at the expense of long term disaster.
And gutting the EPA seems to be the goal. Here is a sampling of proposed cuts in the fiscal 2018 Trump budget taken from a OregonLive report:
In other words, the government of the people, by the people and for the people has no interest in cleaning up polluted swimming beaches, dirty air, and poisoned homes, and has no interest in preserving some of our nation’s natural gems like Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, and the Great Lakes which account for 1/5 of the freshwater surface on the planet. There is no needed federal investment in preparing the next generation of good stewards of our precious natural resources and no interest in pursuing environmental justice, no interest in addressing the unbalanced impact of environmental degradation on vulnerable populations.
And climate change? The greatest looming threat to life in earth as we know it, undisputed by the overwhelming majority of climate scientists? We don’t need to worry about that. Making a few more bucks matters more. Right?
I pray that the administration will heed wise counselors like William Ruckelshaus and the will of the American people, the majority of whom who do care about preserving the environment (Gallup polling) even if the economy is adversely impacted, and do the right thing. This is our home!
