{"id":432,"date":"2009-04-21T06:54:12","date_gmt":"2009-04-21T06:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/do-you-believe-in-global-warmi.html"},"modified":"2009-04-21T06:54:12","modified_gmt":"2009-04-21T06:54:12","slug":"do-you-believe-in-global-warmi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/do-you-believe-in-global-warmi.html","title":{"rendered":"Do you believe in global warming?"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"Earth<\/span>Earth Day<\/a> is tomorrow, Wednesday, April 22, and the folks at Pew have a poll<\/a> out showing who think the Earth is warming and who doesn’t, and whether they think we (humanity) have anything to do with it.<\/p>\n

Not surprisngly, Catholics are more in line with mainstream American opinion, and, thankfully, the scientific community. And especially with Benedict XVI–the “Green Pope,” some call him–who has made care of the environment a theme of his papacy. Many dioceses and parishes and religious orders have taken innovative steps, and the Vatican is even installing solar panels on its main audience hall. You can get a sense of Benedict’s approach in this CNS story<\/a>. Also worth a read is a fine essay in the latest America<\/em> magazine, “Stewards of Creation: A Catholic approach to climate change<\/a>,” by Bishop William S. Skylstad. (Graphic above from the America<\/em> article.)<\/p>\n

I alos agree it’s warming, and am alarmed, and I think there’s no doubt we contribute to that warming to some degree (so to speak), especially in the U.S. <\/p>\n

There could likely be long-term patterns at work, too. My question has always been, whether we contribute to global warming or not, isn’t it an exercise in virtue and moderation to reduce the energy we use and the pollution we throw off? Isn’t it, dare I say, Christian to use resources in a sustainable and equitable way, no matter what the impact on the atmosphere?  <\/p>\n

So here’s the graphic results. Where do you stand? <\/p>\n

\n\"Global<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earth Day is tomorrow, Wednesday, April 22, and the folks at Pew have a poll out showing who think the Earth is warming and who doesn’t, and whether they think we (humanity) have anything to do with it. Not surprisngly, Catholics are more in line with mainstream American opinion, and, thankfully, the scientific community. And especially with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nDo you believe in global warming? - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/do-you-believe-in-global-warmi.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Do you believe in global warming? - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Earth Day is tomorrow, Wednesday, April 22, and the folks at Pew have a poll out showing who think the Earth is warming and who doesn’t, and whether they think we (humanity) have anything to do with it. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}