Oil prices have gone up dramatically, impacting the cost of everything: filling up the gas tank, the cost of food, heating your home, airline travel.
It has impacted food in another way–farmers, especially agribusiness, are opting to plant crops for fuel rather than food production. Those choices are felt hard now in countries like Haiti. Some protests ended in food riots.
Why have oil prices gone up so much in the last year? Part of it is speculation. Oil and energy traders have driven up the price, betting that oil prices will continue to rise. Because regulatory measures are ineffective, government can’t intervene to stop the cycle. 
There is also supply and demand. China, India and other developing countries have developed a thirst for oil to rival that of the U.S. Demand for cheap Asian goods has fueled explosive growth in factories and a new consumer class. Now that transportation costs have risen, that growth may slow down a hair.
More oil and refined products are needed, but the supply isn’t easily or cheaply available. Iraq produces one million barrels a day less in 2008 than it did in 1990. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Range and off the coasts of California and Florida will supply millions of barrels, but it will be costly given legal challenges by homeowners, municipalities, environmental groups and others. Anyway, coastal and wilderness drilling is not a long-term solution as much as a short-term political fix.
Food, energy, land use, allocation and consumption of resources–are global as well as U.S. social justice issues. The oil price conundrum is far more complex than a simple statement on the evils of abortion.
What about the evils of no food, no heat and not enough money to pay for them; oil slick birds, dirty shoreline, filthy water–weighed against Exxon Mobil setting an annual profit record by earning $40.61 billion last year. Is it time for the bishops to speak up?
Catholicism in the U.S. especially the hierarchy, seems stuck on abortion and same-sex marriage. Should abortion continue to be the #1 issue on the bishops’ political agenda, or should it be natural resources management? Which impacts the “dignity of the human person” more? Which kills more innocent children–abortion; or starvation, malnutrition, and lack of clean water?
As a start, I suggest we support our bishops if they call on all Catholics to do the following:
- Conserve energy by driving less, and walking or taking public transportation more. This includes bishops, their staff, and diocesan managers.
- Pressure legislators to reduce unnecessary tax advantages and credits for oil companies; and initiate oversight into unregulated energy markets. Publicize these efforts in Diocesan papers and parish bulletins.
-Study and develop teaching on the interconnecting issues of food and fuel and how they impact the most vulnerable–children, poor people, the elderly, people on public assistance or disability payments, immigrants–through price increases and increased pollution.
Expand this working group beyond bishops to include laity, including energy traders, oil company executives, small scale farmers, social workers, and environmentalists. Many perspectives “from the ground” are needed to develop a realistic and positive solution.
“Therefore, neither he that planteth is any thing, nor he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.”
The writer had evangelizing on his mind with this line, but I thought about my garden. I lovingly covered up the roots with soil; I water the plants thoroughly, even refreshing the leaves; I admire them from close and afar, I glory in their color and wildness.
But it is God who infuses them with life. 
Joan Brown, OSF wrote an inspiring article for U.S. Catholic Magazine on the environment. It discussed the background and focus for her Ecology Ministry, and how love of creation has deep roots in our Catholic spiritual tradition. 
“One night when I was six years old, while walking outdoors before bed, I gazed at the sky and found myself wrapped in the vast mantle of stars, the Milky Way. Standing in awe, my body felt both small and large. In that instant I felt God.”
“The natural world has always taught us about God. Thirteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhardt said, ‘Creation is a revelation of God, a home for God, a temple for God.’ But with the growth of industrialization, technology, materialism, and consumerism, we have been lulled to sleep, forgetting who we are and our place on earth.”
“Our Catholic and Christian spiritual tradition–its saints, sacramentality, and practices–can help us to navigate this new challenge. In fact, the ecological crisis may very well lead us into a deeper relationship with God and help awaken us to the true meaning of life, which is loving all that exists.”
“Passionist Father Thomas Berry, the most influential Catholic eco-theologian, speaks of this time in history as a moment of grace, yet because of the urgency of this crisis, the transformation of our understanding of who we are must take place in a short period. Celebrating the wonders around us is part of our vocation to love and serve God and might very well be the path that can transform our lifestyles from consumerism to sustainability.”
Joan Brown directs efforts with the faith community through her work in Ecology Ministry. She is a Sister of the Rochester, Minnesota Franciscans; President of the Partnership for Earth Spirituality in Albuquerque, New Mexico; serves on the board of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference; Vice President of New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light (NMIPL) and chairs the NMIPL’s education committee.
Her work entails organizing, education, outreach, retreats and advocacy around water, climate change and sustainable living. Brown is the co-founder of Tierra Madre, a sustainable and self-help strawbale community for people of low income in Sunland Park, New Mexico.
Joan Brown, OSF is one of those people who makes you feel proud to be Catholic. Hers is a prophetic ministry for this century.
Christians and Buddhists share a common concern for the environment and can do more to protect the planet that is home for us all, says the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.
Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran, president of the council, and Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata, secretary, affirmed this in a greeting sent to Buddhists for their festival of Vesakh.
Noting that the U.N. general assembly declared 2008 as the International Year of Planet Earth, Cardinal Tauran and Archbishop Celata affirmed that “Christians and Buddhists respect the same creation and have a common concern to promote care for the environment which we all share.”
“Christianity and Buddhism have always upheld a great respect for nature and taught we should be grateful stewards of the earth,” the note continued. “Indeed it is only through a profound reflection on the relationship between the divine Creator, creation and creatures that attempts to address environmental concerns will not be marred by individual greed or hampered by the interests of particular groups.”
The pontifical council message asked if more could be done on a practical level, and proposed: “Recycling, energy conservation, the prevention of indiscriminate destruction of plant and animal life, and the protection of waterways all speak of careful stewardship and indeed foster goodwill and promote cordial relations among peoples.”
“In this way,” the note concluded, “Christians and Buddhists together can be harbingers of hope for a clean, safe and harmonious world.”
“In past elections, voting guides for Catholics, written from both ends of the political spectrum, have focused on hot button issues like abortion, gay marriage, war and economic justice. The environment, if mentioned at all, has been an afterthought. But the increasing urgency of climate change and its potential to generate catastrophic consequences for human life and civilization make this election different. This time, the environment is front and center.”
“The environment has long been a poor stepchild within Christian theology, and the Catholic Church is no exception. While Catholic social teaching has not wholly ignored the issue, the major social encyclicals of the twentieth century largely failed to tackle the question of our obligations toward the Earth. Although by no means hostile to environmentalism, Catholic social teaching consistently failed to place ecological concerns at the center of the church’s attention. Recent years, however, have seen signs of a shift in attitudes…”
Read the rest of this great article by Eduardo Penalver in Commonweal.
In a new pastoral letter on the environment, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops says that while scientific and technical developments can help in restoring the environment, “we will not succeed without a personal and collective conversion.” This conversion is aimed at healing “the ruptures we have created with nature, with our neighbor and with God” through humanity’s role in air, water and soil pollution, destruction of the ozone layer, deterioration of large ecosystems and reduced biodiversity. “We must re-establish the links with nature that we have damaged. We know that we are tied much more closely to the environment in which we live than we had imagined.”
The letter, titled “Our Relationship with the Environment: The Need for Conversion” stresses to “convert is also to regain a sense of limit. It means adjusting our lifestyle to available planetary resources. Many are not renewable, and those that are have a pace of regeneration too slow for our impatient natures.”
“Since over consumption and waste have become a way of life, conversion implies that we free ourselves collectively from our obsession to possess and consume. In the words of renowned ecologist Pierre Dansereau, ‘joyful austerity’ or voluntary simplicity will help us to reorient ourselves on being instead of having. Our humanity will gain in the process.”
“It is manifestly unjust that a privileged few should continue to squander available resources, while masses of people are living in conditions of misery at the very lowest level of subsistence. Today, the massive threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to which greed and selfishness–both individual and collective–are contrary to the order of creation, an order which is characterized by mutual interdependence.”
But the bishops also noted some favorable developments: “Growing numbers of individuals are agreeing to make personal efforts in favor of the environment,” including using public transit, decreasing and recycling waste, purchasing local and regional products and produce, and lowering the thermostat at home. “Ecological awareness is emerging and becoming a fact of culture.”
Unfortunately, their otherwise excellent letter didn’t cite any examples of what is being done by individual bishops at their chancery or in their diocese. In their role as teachers, how do they encourage conservation and care for the environment in say, religious education and faith formation programs? Are they willing to chastise Catholic politicians who have poor environmental voting records?
“Pope John Paul II, who in a remarkably consistent series of statements on the environment, has passionately promoted ‘Ecological Conversion’ as the norm for all Catholics.”
“If such a conversion was to become a reality among the one billion Catholics of the world, think what a difference it would make to the well-being of the world, now and in the future…But passion for the environment will not be maintained unless we are plugged into Christ through scripture, prayer and the sacraments of the church.”
“As a Christian, concern about the environment must be linked to faith. We can express that concern as simply as by the careful use of power or water in our schools and homes, or as powerfully as by ensuring the magnificent Barrier Reef off our Queensland coastland is protected for the benefit of the entire planet.”
From An Ecological Vision for Catholic Education in Queensland, an address by Archbishop John Bathersby at the Queensland launch of Catholic Earthcare Australia at Marymount College, June 5, 2003.
Earth Hour started with a question: How can we inspire people to take action on climate change? The answer: Ask the people of Sydney, Australia to turn off their lights for one hour.
On March 31, 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 businesses in Sydney turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. If the greenhouse reduction achieved in Sydney during Earth Hour was sustained for one year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.
Earth Hour founder, Andy Ridley, said 371 cities and towns from Australia to Canada–35 countries in all–had signed up for the 60-minute shutdown at 8 pm on March 29, 2008.
Ridley, who began Earth Hour last year while working with WWF Australia, said the initiative was about individuals and global communities joining together to own a shared problem - climate change.
Cities officially signed on include Chicago, San Francisco, Dublin, Manila, Bangkok, Copenhagen and Toronto, all of which will switch off lights on major landmarks and encourage businesses and homeowners to follow suit.
“Switching off the lights for an hour is not going to make a dent in global emissions,” said WWF organizer, Charles Stevens. “But what it does do is it is a great catalyst for much bigger changes. It engages people in the processes of becoming more energy efficient.”
Catholics in Toronto who wish to express their love of Earth liturgically will have a chance on March 29th when St. Basil’s Church holds “Earth Hour” vespers.
St. Basil’s, located at Bay and St. Joseph Streets, will mark the occasion with candlelight vespers from 8 to 9 pm. The prayers and readings for the service will focus on creation and the Christian responsibility to be good stewards.
Last night I attended a private screening of “They Killed Sister Dorothy,” a documentary about Sister Dorothy Stang, S.N.D., an environmental activist who was murdered in Brazil in 2005. She began her ministry there in 1966.
A citizen of Brazil and the United States, Sr. Dorothy worked with the Pastoral Land Commission, an organization of the Catholic Church that fights for the rights of rural workers and peasants, and defends land reforms in Brazil. Her death came less than a week after meeting with the country’s human rights officials about threats to local farmers from loggers and ranchers.
After receiving several death threats, Sr. Dorothy commented, “I don’t want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the battle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest. They have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can live and work with dignity while respecting the environment.”
The film’s producers are outreaching to Catholic groups, environmentalists like the Rainforest Alliance, and other socially-minded people and organizations who want to support the poor in finding sustainable livelihoods.
I found the film very timely, with a growing interest by Catholics around the world in environmental protection, and the ways its abuses fall disproportionally hard on the poor and marginalized.
Catholics in Waterloo, Iowa have Cool Congregations.
Cool Congregations is an education and stewardship program designed to help faith communities and people of faith recognize and respond to their responsibility for the care of God’s creation.
In Iowa, Cool Congregations is sponsored by Iowa Interfaith Power and Light, an affiliate of the Interfaith Power and Light network created by The Regeneration Project. Iowa Interfaith Power and Light is a joint initiative of Christian, Jewish and other faith communities in Iowa, including the Catholic diocese of Des Moines and the National Catholic Rural Life Conference.
The Iowa project is one of 25 state projects organized by The Regeneration Project to educate faith communities about global warming, promote renewal energy, energy efficiency and conservation.
Cool Congregations helps individuals, families and congregations become better steward’s of God’s creation. Cool Congregations participants learn how to reduce their contribution to global warming by implementing a wide range of practical (and in many cases inexpensive) action which reduce carbon dioxide emissions, reduce consumption of fossil fuels, improve energy efficiency, and reduce overall energy use.
The net result is that we reduce our contribution to global warming, and the devastating social, economic and environmental impact which it has, especially on the poor and marginalized who can least afford it.
Kudos to the folks in Waterloo.
