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Ecology
Halfway back from the moon
Voting with your fork
Eco-skeptics put spin on Benedict's message
Growing a healthy neighborhood
Degree programs unite business, sustainability
Mar. 06, 2010
Matthew Tueth
It could be just an earth-hugging environmentalist fad or perhaps the next great industrial revolution.
In 2002 Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Mich., began an undergraduate degree program in sustainable business. It was the earliest of only three such programs among Catholic colleges in the United States. Duquesne University in Pittsburgh has instituted a master’s degree program in sustainable business. Dominican University of California in San Rafael, which calls itself an “independent university of Catholic heritage,” offers a master’s degree in sustainable enterprise.
Andes water dispute illustrates balance between climate, livelihood
Mar. 04, 2010
The snowy peaks of Peru’s Cordillera Blanca provide a scenic backdrop for a gathering of Quechua-speaking villagers on the shore of Lake Paron in 2009. Now that control of the lake has returned to the government, local villagers hope to increase their income by promoting tourism in the region. (CNS/Walter Hupiu)
CRUZ DE MAYO, PERU -- The government officials who came to this small farming community to convince farmers to stop blocking access to a disputed lake were taken by surprise at the start of the meeting.
Instead of angry words, the farmers -- who had blocked the road to the lake since mid-2008 -- began with prayer. Reading scripture, praying in their native Quechua language, and reciting the Our Father and Hail Mary in Spanish, they commended their community to God, who created the earth and the water on which they depend for the crops that provide their livelihood, and asked God to lead them to a peaceful solution.
Eco-skeptics put spin on Benedict's message
Jan. 08, 2010
Pope Benedict XVI takes a leisurely walk in Stabie, Italy, during his July 2007 vacation in the northeastern Italian Alps. (CNS/Catholic Press Photo)
Analysis
One reliable way to gauge the impact of a papal message is the amount of energy that pundits invest in analyzing, dissecting and recasting it. The rule of thumb is that the more spin a given statement breeds, the more important it probably is.
By that test, Pope Benedict XVI’s teaching on the environment, expressed most recently in a message for the church-sponsored “World Day of Peace” on Jan. 1, would seem to be pretty important indeed.
Future prospects for climate repair
After Copenhagen, views vary on how to combat global warming
Jan. 08, 2010
A man walks past smoke coming from cooling towers of a power plant in Yingtan, in China's Jiangxi province, Nov. 26. (CNS/ Reuters)
Analysis
A historic U.N. world climate conference ended Dec. 19 with only a nonbinding “Copenhagen Accord” to show for two weeks of debate and frustration. It was a deal short on concrete steps against global warming but signaling perhaps a new start for rich-poor cooperation on climate change.
Will Copenhagen’s near collapse and halfhearted outcome help or hinder the effort to repair our climate?
Churches blast lack of climate agreement
Dec. 22, 2009
A protester holds a globe during a demonstration in Copenhagen, Denmark, Dec. 16. (CNS/Reuters)
GENEVA -- Faith groups have expressed disappointment and anger over the outcome of the United Nations talks on climate change that have ended in Copenhagen, pledging to continue to press for climate justice.
"With a lack of transparency, the agreement reached this past week by some countries was negotiated without consensus but rather in secret among the powerful nations of the world," the World Council of Churches' program executive on climate change, Guillermo Kerber, stated.
Churches must educate voters, say climate activists
Dec. 21, 2009In the wake of what some describe as a tepid climate agreement in Copenhagen, Denmark, Catholic activists say church groups must focus on educating voters and lawmakers about climate science and policy.
Faith, economics and the environment are interconnected, Kathy McNeely of the Maryknoll Global Concerns Office, who was in Copenhagen for the first week of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, told Catholic News Service.
Copenhagen accord: 'first step' to curb climate change
Environmentalists call accord 'a triumph of spin over substance'
Dec. 21, 2009
The world's press covers the U. N. conference climate in Copenhagen.
An historic U.N. climate conference ended Saturday, Dec. 19, with only a nonbinding "Copenhagen Accord" to show for two weeks of debate and frustration. It was a deal short on concrete steps against global warming but signaling perhaps a new start for cooperation between rich and poor countries on climate change.
The agreement brokered by President Barack Obama with China and others in last-minute diplomacy huddles on Friday, Dec. 18, sets up the first significant program of climate aid to poorer nations.
But although it urges deeper cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming, it does nothing to demand them. That will now be subject to continuing talks next year.
Vatican calls for 'new thinking' on climate change
Dec. 18, 2009COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- The world must confront its current moral crises, ranging from hunger to environmental destruction, with "discernment and new thinking," said the head of the Vatican delegation to the United Nations climate change conference.
Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican's nuncio to the U.N., invited delegates during a plenary session Dec. 17 to "a new and deeper reflection on the meaning of the economy and its purposes, and a profound and far-reaching revision of the model for development, to correct the malfunctions and distortions."
Climate decision hangs in the balance
World leaders make last-minute decisions on the final day of UN conference
Dec. 18, 2009
Delegation greeting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Copenhagen Dec. 18.
A hush fell over the entire Bella Center Friday morning during President Obama’s eight-minute speech . He took on climate skeptics with his opening words and then made a pitch for a collective agreement.
“While the reality of climate change is not in doubt, I have to be honest, as the world watches us today, I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now and it hangs in the balance,” he said. “I believe we can act boldly, and decisively, in the face of a common threat. That is why I have come here today. Not to talk, but to act.”
The U.N. climate talks were in grave disarray Friday, prompting Obama to change his schedule and hold closed door talks with 19 other world leaders in an effort to forge a last-minute agreement on fighting global warming.
Climate talks: hope on the brink of failure
U.S. puts forth new payment proposal
Dec. 17, 2009
Bolivian president Eva Morales addresses the conference
On Thursday morning, moments after the African nations complained that the U. N. climate change negotiations were going nowhere fast, U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared in a press briefing room announcing that the United States would contribute to a $100 billion international fund starting in 2020— as long as “all major nations” commit their emissions reductions to a binding agreement and submit those reductions to transparent verification.
By “all major nations,” she meant China, which has balked at any kind of outside verification of its climate change mitigation efforts.
With this nearly last-minute declaration, the United States changed the Copenhagen dynamic. For most of the two week conference, as the developing nations and European countries talked about setting up a global fund that would help developing economies contend with climate change, American officials were quiet about money, trying to change the discussion by focusing on China’s refusal to place its announced emissions limits within an international agreement and to accept monitoring and verification of its pledged emissions limits.
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