©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Opinion

Strewn bottles and arrests for pot smoking ruin Pastorius Park’s community environment.

Lobbying for God’s green earth
by Janice McGrane, SSJ

We came from every corner of the commonwealth. Environmentalists and everyday citizens gathered in Harrisburg on June 5 to lobby our legislators about Pennsylvania’s two most pressing environmental issues: ridding our air and water of the neurotoxin mercury, and making cars cleaner and more efficient.

Of different faiths but sharing the same concern for God’s creation, my group of seven was drawn from Chestnut Hill and nearby areas. Our task was to make certain that area legislators knew the dangers of mercury and the benefits of clean cars. My task, at the request of Joy Bergey, a member of Chestnut Hill United Methodist Church and on staff for the environmental group Penn Future, was to give a Catholic perspective on the environment at the day’s press conference in the Capitol rotunda.

So I shared the good news that the Catholic Church has a clear and consistent environmental ethic. The late Pope John Paul II’s extensive writings make clear that the church views protecting the environment as a moral imperative. The bad news is too few know about it.

Stating in 1995’s “Evangelium Vitae” that “The ‘dominion’ granted by the Creator is not an absolute power,” John Paul II debunks the notion that God’s creation can be freely exploited and wasted by humans. He makes clear that the “dominion” in Genesis means the opposite: We are to be stewards of these life-sustaining resources. We ignore this mandate at our peril. In their 1991 statement “Renewing the Earth,” the U.S. Catholic bishops specify: “We in the developed world ... are obligated to address our own wasteful and destructive use of resources as a matter of top priority.”

Mercury is most dangerous to the unborn, infants and children, causing mental retardation and possibly autism. Pennsylvania has the unhappy distinction of ranking second in the country in mercury emissions. The state Department of Environmental Protection has advised pregnant women to severely limit their intake of fish due to its high mercury content; Consumer Reports has recently issued the same warning. And the advantages of more fuel-efficient cars are obvious: cleaner air and less global-warming pollution.

Environmentalists thought the mercury battle was over – that the sensible plan proposed by the DEP to reduce mercury emissions from power plants by 90 percent by 2015 would become law. Unfortunately, a bill has been introduced in Harrisburg that would force Pennsylvania to follow the much weaker federal standard.

A recent poll commissioned by Penn Future shows that Pennsylvanians want mercury out of their food, water and air, and they are willing to pay for it. Four out of five say they will pay the estimated $1 monthly increase on their electric bills to make their children safer.

I am proud that my religious community, the Sisters of Saint Joseph, have joined with other religious communities, parishes and congregations of all faiths to support more stringent regulation of mercury in Pennsylvania. Certainly, we must rely on coal for the immediate future, but we also must implement the available technology to remove the mercury from Pennsylvania’s smoke stacks.

Viewing our current environmental crisis through the lens of faith invites every person who benefits from the abundance of God’s creation to share in the responsibility to be good stewards. Not only because “God made the earth, and saw that it was good,” but because our very existence depends on protecting our planet. Every environmentally responsible action, from recycling to buying clean energy for our homes to eating organic food, makes us better stewards of God’s good earth.

Janice McGrane, SSJ, is a spiritual director and disability advocate. Her book “Someone To Lean On: Spiritual Companions for Illness & Disability” is being published this summer.