WASHINGTON: A coalition of US Catholic groups on Tuesday launched a campaign urging Americans to step out of their comfort zones and put the world's poor first in the global battle against climate change.
Unveiling a five-point covenant and pledge, the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change, which groups the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and 10 US groups linked to the Roman Catholic church, urged Americans to "pray, learn, assess, act and advocate" to fight climate change.
The coalition behind the "Catholic Climate Covenant: St Francis Pledge to Care for Creation and the Poor" vowed to be the voice of the poor, who it said are often overlooked in political debates on the environment.
"The real inconvenient truth is that those who contribute least to climate change are affected the most and have the least capacity and resources to respond," Bishop Bill Skylstad said, referring to the Oscar-winning film "The Inconvenient Truth" from former US vice president Al Gore, who refocused on environmental issues after his defeat in the 2000 presidential election.
"Our message is quite simple: put the poor first in assessing and responding to climate change," said Skylstad, a former president of the USCCB and now bishop of Spokane in Washington state.
In a three-column advertisement that ran in the New York Times Tuesday, the coalition called on Catholics to "tread lightly and act boldly" to fight global warming.
"Our cars, power plants, growing energy consumption and waste are leaving a bigger and bigger carbon footprint," read the ad.
The covenant asks Americans to give up some of the creature comforts of life in the United States and "move out of their comfort zone," Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change said.
"It's not going to happen all at once but there are many things we can do to help to reduce our energy consumption and to maybe consume a little bit less, so that others around the world might have a little bit more," Misleh said.
The Catholic Climate Covenant was launched in the midst of global events to celebrate Earth Day, which falls on Wednesday and marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.
But for Catholics, caring about the planet and its poor began long before 1970, said Skylstad.
"It began with Genesis," he said, referring to the Bible's "book of beginnings" that includes the creation of the planet and humankind, and an early historical climate crisis, the great flood, for which Noah built the ark.
