What drove me and more than fifteen representatives of other faith communities to deliver compelling testimonies at a hearing of the Environmental Protection Agency last week? The need for robust carbon standards for new power plants in the United States. Our interest was not so much in the technical aspects of the EPA’s proposed rules, although they are important. We were there to shine a light on the moral and ethical dimensions of our carbon emissions and the need to dramatically change how we produce energy in order to avoid the many catastrophic impacts of carbon pollution.
Early in the day, I was particularly moved by the testimony of Tricia Bruckbauer, representing Creation Justice Ministries, the “creation care” voice of 37 Christian denominations. She quoted from President Obama’s State of the Union speech in which he said, “when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did.”
