USCCB offers principles for addressing climate change

February 28, 2013

Responding to a request by the congressman and senator who chair a new Bicameral Climate Change Task Force, the chairman of the US bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development has offered seven principles to assist lawmakers in developing climate-change legislation.

“Effective measures to address climate change are urgent and necessary,” said Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. “Evidence continues to point toward significant damaging impacts from climate related events in the United States, across the globe, and particularly for the poorest developing countries.”

“Some poor nations and small island states already experience these impacts as a matter of survival for their people and cultures,” Bishop Blaire added. “People living in poverty in communities served by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) already suffer the tragic consequences of climate change. Increasingly limited access to water, reduced crop yields, more widespread disease, and increased frequency and intensity of droughts and storms all make the lives of the world’s poorest people even more precarious.”

After quoting Pope Benedict and a US bishops’ document on climate change, Bishop Blaire outlined the seven principles:

• “Prudence requires us to act to protect the common good by addressing climate change at home and abroad.”
• “The consequences of climate change will be borne by the world’s most vulnerable people and inaction will worsen their suffering.”
• “Policies addressing global climate change should enhance rather than diminish the economic situation of people in poverty.”
• “Policies should create new resources to assist poor and adversely affected communities to adapt and respond to the effects of global climate change in the U.S. and in vulnerable developing countries.”
• “Policies to address climate change should include measures to protect poor and vulnerable communities from the health impacts of climate change, including increased exposure to climate-sensitive diseases, heat waves and diminished air quality.”
• “Participation by local affected communities in shaping policy responses to address climate change and programs for adapting to climate change is essential.”
• “Technology should be made available to people in the most vulnerable developing countries to help them adapt to the effects of climate change (adaptation) and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation).”

 

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Further information:

• Letter to Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change (USCCB)
• Rep. Waxman and Sen. Whitehouse Form Bicameral Climate Change Task Force (House Committee on Energy and Commerce)