Letter to Senate from Bishop Hubbard and Catholic Relief Services on Climate Change, June 3, 2010

Letter to Senate from Bishop Howard J. Hubbard and CRS on Climate Change, June 3, 2010

Dear Senator Kerry, 

We welcome your leadership and hard work, along with Senator Joseph Lieberman, to develop and offer important legislation to address the moral and environmental challenges of climate change. Serious and effective measures to address global climate change are both urgent and necessary. We are encouraged by provisions in the American Power Act that seek to protect the poor and vulnerable at home and abroad. However, we are very concerned about the inadequate funding to help the poorest people in the most vulnerable places on earth to adapt to the devastating impacts of global climate change. 

As articulated in the bishops’ statement, Global Climate Change: A Plea for Dialogue, Prudence and the Common Good, “At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group pressures. It is about the future of God's creation and the one human family.” We are not experts on the science, technical remedies and particular provisions of the legislation. Rather our efforts seek to link care for creation and care for “the least of these.” The Catholic bishops insist that, “Action to mitigate global climate change must be built upon a foundation of social and economic justice that does not put the poor at greater risk or place disproportionate and unfair burdens on developing nations.” 

For the United States Catholic bishops and Catholic Relief Services a fundamental moral measure of climate change legislation is how it affects the poor in our own country and around the world. We applaud your efforts to provide adequate resources to protect low-income individuals and families in the U.S. from increases in energy costs associated with necessary climate legislation. We welcome the language and the mechanisms established by the legislation to provide adaptation assistance for poor and vulnerable populations internationally. However, we are deeply disappointed by the delayed and inadequate resources provided to help the poorest communities in the most vulnerable countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. This proposal delays any funding to help the world’s poor adapt until 2019 and then offers less than one billion dollars a year, which increases over time, but too slowly to meet the growing needs of those living in poverty around the world.

letter-to-senate-from-bishop-hubbard-and-crs-on-climate-change-2010-06-03.pdf