Pirate's Cove

Isn’t there something in the Bible about not worshiping golden calves?

US ‘abandoning its moral responsibility’ with exit from bedrock climate treaty, Catholic groups say

Catholic groups quickly assailed the Trump administration’s move to withdraw from dozens of international accords and organizations, including the bedrock United Nations treaty that for three decades has convened global efforts to address climate change.

In an executive order issued Jan. 7, President Donald Trump directed the U.S. to withdraw as soon as possible from 66 U.N. entities and related organizations that his administration deemed “contrary to the interests of the United States.” Chief among them was the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1992 treaty that facilitates international climate negotiations and under which nations adopted the Paris Agreement to rein in heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions, released primarily from burning fossil fuels. (snip)

“These decisions will have painful and direct repercussions on the lives of vulnerable populations and God’s creation already suffering from a changing climate,” Bishop A. Elias Zaidan, chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement to the National Catholic Reporter (snip)

In a joint statement, Catholic Climate Covenant — the Washington-based group that with 20 national Catholic partners guides church responses to climate change — and the North American chapter of the Laudato Si’ Movement said that in withdrawing from international climate and environmental institutions, the U.S. “undermines our responsibility to listen to both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.”

“Climate change, ecological degradation, environmental disasters, forced migration, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss do not recognize national borders,” the statement said. “Turning away from international cooperation on these issues does not make them disappear; it only leaves the most vulnerable and marginalized people, along with future generations, more exposed to harm.”

Yeah, whatever. Tell all your folks in these groups to give up their own use of fossil fuels and make their loves carbon neutral.

In an interview, Sr. Barbara Bozak, an American sister who represents the Congregations of St. Joseph at the U.N., said the latest U.S. withdrawals were not surprising but go against long-standing commitments made by the United States — commitments she said affirmed multilateralism, the U.N. Charter and “peaceful responses to difficult situations.”

At the same time, said Bozak, who attended COP30 in Brazil, the absence of an official U.S. presence at the conference was in some ways a relief because of past U.S. intransigence to multiple climate treaties and agreements, including the Trump administration’s opposition to climate-related initiatives.

Did she walk there, bike, take a sailing ship? Or, a fossil fueled flight?

Sr. Carol De Angelo, director of the Office of Peace, Justice and Integrity of Creation for the Sisters of Charity of New York and an NGO liaison for her congregation at the U.N., said she is upset by the Trump administration’s moves to withdraw from U.N. treaties and leave U.N. programs, saying that it “goes against [global] coalition and consensus building.”

I’m pretty sure Jesus went against the consensus in Israel. And that God is a jealous god, who gets upset when other gods are put ahead of Him.

The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, which in its missionary work in 25 countries sees up close the life-threatening impacts of intensifying droughts and rising sea levels, called it an “isolationist move” whereby the U.S. “is abandoning its moral responsibility as a leading global power and as the world’s largest historical contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.”

Read: Catholic Groups Worried US “Abandoning Its Moral Authority” On Climate Doom »