Former Vice President Al Gore and Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich sparred off at Capitol Hill last Friday over a bill that would endorse sweeping climate change reform by Congress. Gore, the Noble Prize winner behind “An Inconvenient Truth” which highlighted the severity of the global warming crisis, urged Congress to find the “moral courage” to pass what he claims as “one of the most important pieces of legislation ever introduced in the Congress.”
On the other hand, Gingrich responded by calling this bill a future energy tax to be paid by Americans and major power move for the Energy Department. “Make no mistake about it: This bill amounts to a $1 [trillion] to $2 trillion energy tax levied on a struggling economy, which is destructive and wrong,” Gingrich said. However, Gingrich does believe that global warming is a factor in current weather trends. In addition, he also has outlined his own alternate climate change plan that is not as bold as the current bill, but would take some action against global warming.
Personally, I am in favor of changing the laws to protect the planet from global warming. However, I respect Gingrich’s position that whatever budget allotted for this program must be spent meticulously – similarly to the banking bailout, if the funds are not watched carefully for this program, the costs can easily skyrocket. Both arguments made by Gore and Gingrich were interesting, well-researched, and relevant to the issue at hand.
Unfortunately, I could not say the same thing for another point of view from U.S. Representative John Shimkus, who sits on the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment. He spoke a couple of weeks ago when this climate change bill was first being drawn up. He essentially argued that since God will destroy the Earth, global warming cannot be a threat to the planet.
In his discourse, Shimkus (above) cited Genesis 8: 21-22 about the Biblical flood and stated for the record that: “…the earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood.... I appreciate having panelists here who are men of faith, and we can get into the theological discourse of that position, but I do believe God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.”
And here I find myself in the same position as I was last time – discouraging those who use religion solely as the basis of augmenting a political position. The only reason Shimkus does not believe in global warming is, in a childish sense, because ‘God said so.’ Is this the type of reasoning we want making the laws of this nation – just because ‘my religion told me so?’ At what point can intellectual reasoning be the foundation of the laws we seek to establish instead of just someone’s private religious beliefs?
In a recent news report by the Discovery Channel, researchers published their results of an expedition to the Himalaya Mountains in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. They found that the Himalaya mountain glaciers are currently melting faster than what was predicted. Some of the experts even claim the glaciers could disappear in as fast as 15 years. Hundreds of millions of people depend on these glaciers as their water supply. Former Democratic National Committee Chairperson Howard Dean responded to this alarming report: “We can’t avert this crisis … it’s not our grandchildren, it’s us.”
It is clear that global warming is becoming an issue which the U.S. government needs to make a decisive move on soon. Whether it is the sweeping reform presented in the current bill in Congress being backed by Gore or the limited, economically-friendly outline by Gingrich, the U.S. needs to start taking the proper precautions to combat climate change. But as long as the debate on this important problem facing the planet does not focus on shallow religious-based arguments, I will not be complaining about it.
This article was published in The Collegian, La Salle University's student newspaper.
No comments:
Post a Comment