if god so loved the world, . . .

On theological grounds Christians ought to join Europe and press our president to wake up about the impact of our pollution on the environment. This, from the Financial Times:

Mr Bush's visit to Europe in the next week has been presented by the president as an opportunity to repair relations with Europe over climate change.

“We care about the climate,” he said on Thursday, while setting out some of the US's existing actions on climate change, chiefly the development of new technologies that will replace fossil fuel.

The US is the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and was responsible for about 20 per cent of the world's total emissions of the gas in 2000, according to the Pew Centre on Climate Change, a US research organisation.

But European governments and climate change specialists are likely to be wary of approaches that rely on long-term technology development and bilateral agreements dealing with certain aspects of climate change, instead of multilateral agreements on taking immediate action to curb carbon emissions the approach that the EU and the United Nations have taken.

This week saw the entry into force of the UN-brokered Kyoto protocol on climate change, which binds developed nations to strict limits on the amount of greenhouse gases they are allowed to emit.

The US has refused to ratify the protocol, and has been accused of stalling talks aimed at forging a new agreement on carbon dioxide emissions to replace the main provisions of the treaty, which expire in 2012.

Moreover, a central contention of Mr Bush on climate change, reiterated by the US delegation to the Kyoto protocol talks last December, is that there has to date been insufficient scientific research to establish whether or not climate change is really occurring, and is the result of human action if it is.

The latest study from the Scripps Institute challenges that view.

christian citizenship calls for action.

anon, and +peace