Iowa Catholic leaders: Politicians must address climate change

ANKENY - Catholics must implore their political leaders to take action on climate change, and politicians must possess the courage to act, Iowa Catholic leaders said Thursday.

Catholic leaders from across the state on Thursday held a media event near a wind turbine on the Des Moines Area Community College campus to express their support for Pope Francis' environmental encyclical and to encourage Catholic to engage elected officials and presidential candidates on climate change.

'It isn't about political debate,” said the Rev. Bud Grant, a theology professor at St. Ambrose University in Davenport. 'We need to buckle down and get to work.”

Although multiple studies in peer-reviewed journals show 97 percent of scientists agree climate change has been fueled largely by human behaviors, lawmakers disagree over the degree of the severity and how to address the issue, and the public has not fallen in line with scientific consensus. According to Pew Research, 71 percent of Democrats and independents who lean to the Democratic Party say the Earth is warming due to human activity, compared with 27 percent of their Republican counterparts.

Grant said politicians must have courage to face the difficult decisions in front of them.

'The politicians have to have the courage to do the right thing and not necessarily the politically expedient,” he said.

When asked about the Pope's comments on climate change, some presidential candidates and federal lawmakers said they would prefer the Pope stick to 'religious” issues and stay out of politics.

Grant discarded that notion as 'silly.”

'Asking us not to be involved in science is like asking us to be to be blindfolded and backed into the shadows into a corner of ignorance,” Grant said. 'It's like expecting us to talk about health care, but don't expect us to know anything about medicine.”

Ray Gaesser, a farmer from southwest Iowa, suggested addressing climate change should be an issue that unites Iowans, not one that divides them.

'We shouldn't take sides on climate issues or farming practices. We should all work together because morally it's the right thing to do. We need to find ways to sustain our families, our soil, our communities and our people,” Gaesser said. 'As the encyclical says: to till and to keep, means to feed people and care for the land.”

Bishop Richard Pates of the Diocese of Des Moines, who was recovering from throat surgery, said through a substitute speaker that Iowa Catholics should press presidential candidates during their frequent visits here.

'You have a unique opportunity to keep the issue of climate change on the front burner. Ask not if, but how, they plan to work toward solutions to climate change,” Pates said.