Sen. Whitehouse: God Won't Save Us from Climate Change

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) took the floor of the US Senate Wednesday to rebut the remark of a fellow senator, whom, he said, told him God wouldn't allow humanity to ruin the planet with carbon pollution and climate change.

"It is less an expression of religious thinking than it is of magical thinking," Whitehouse said. The remark sweeps aside consequences, duty, responsibility and awareness of the issue of climate change, he said. "That is seeking magical deliverance from our troubles, not divine guidance through our troubles," Whitehouse said.

The Senator hasn't attributed the remark that spurred the speech, but The Huffington Post reports Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) recently said he didn't know what humans have done to Mother Nature. In the House, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) quoted scripture to deny that climate change is a danger.

The EPA's website page on the causes of climate change states that after the 1700s and the industrial revolution, climate change is not attributable soley to natural events. A second site, savingaplanetatrisk.org addresses common climate change debunker claims point by point.

Whitehouse argued the Bible has much to say about the consequences of actions, offering Revelations 11:18: "And thy wrath is come, and the time that thou shouldst destroy them which destroy the Earth."

The Senator argued that belief in God as the creator of the Earth also requires belief that he created its laws: gravity, chemistry, physics, as well as the gifts of human intellect and reason. "He gives us these powers that we, his children can understand Earth's natural laws, which he also gave us," Whitehouse said.

Why then, Whitehouse asked, would a tidy-up God drop in and spare us if we ignore what intellect and reason tell us are the consequences of carbon pollution?  

Climate change denial, Whitehouse said, is bad science, a falsehood, bad economics (ingnoring the cost of carbon pollution in its price), bad policy, bad religion, and bad morality. "We need to face up to the fact that there is only one leg on which climate denial stands. Money," Whitehouse said.

Polluters give and spend money to create false doubt, buy political influence and to keep polluting. "That's it, that's it. Not truth, not science, not economics, not safety, not policy and certainly not religion, nor morality. Nothing supports climate denial. Nothing except money. But in Congress, in this temple, money rules."