Last week we told you about Partnership for a Secure America — a new group that's calling for a climate bill for the sake of our national security. Now the group has released a signed statement calling for "a clear, comprehensive, realistic and broadly bipartisan plan to address our role in the climate change crisis."

The statement is signed by 32 heavy-hitters from national politics and the military, and from all over the political spectrum.

At the same time, our friends at Vote Vets are launching a new national TV ad campaign. From their website:

Featuring Iraq War Veterans, (the ad) makes the case that oil profits to the Middle East fund the same terrorists we’re fighting, and closes with the line that “It’s not just a question of American energy, it’s a question of American power."

Vote Vets has also sent more than one hundred veterans to Washington D.C. this week to push for passage of a bill. They are working with a coalition of other veterans and security groups called Operation Free.

The Partnership for a Secure America will host an event next Tuesday in Washington, DC, to call for bipartisan action and a “unified American strategy” on climate change, energy and national security. Here are the event details, and more about who's involved.

This is your last chance to make sure they hear your voice. Here's how:

• Make a call.  The Environmental Defense Action Network just launched  a new tool that makes it easy to call your Senators. The Senate needs to hear from you, so call and ask your friends to do the same!
• Check the calendar. Town hall meetings are winding down, but you might still have a chance to speak up for clean energy. Find a town hall meeting in your state (scroll to the bottom of the page).
• Raise a ruckus online. Don't let the small but loud opposition drown out the support for clean energy! Make your voice heard on the social networks.

And looking ahead to September, those of you in and near New York City can check out NYC's Climate Week, a series of events planned to build momentum building up to the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen.

So you'd think that now that the bill has passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Americans in the heartland would be up in arms. But…not so much.

In fact, some of the largest and most respected media outlets in the Midwest and other traditional coal and oil states are accepting of the bill, even happy with it. Here are a few  highlights from the last week:

"Gov. Mitch Daniels and U.S. Reps. Mike Pence and Steve Buyer have some significant non-allies in their vehement opposition to the carbon reduction legislation now moving through Congress. Among them are most of the Midwest's governors, who already have signed a regional cap-and-trade agreement; and Indiana's largest electric utility, whose boss accepts the need for congressional action and insists it will benefit rather than punish this coal-dependent region – if the region's leadership pulls up to the table."
– Indianapolis Star editorial, May 28, 2009

"Each generation is asked to generate new ideas that will make our nation a world leader. Clean energy could be our next big discovery…Our nation can stick with the status quo and continue to fall prey to $4-a-gallon gas – the straw that broke the economy's back – and environmental disasters such as the Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant spill, or change directions and move toward cleaner energy."
– Daily News Journal (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) editorial, May 28, 2009

"Climate change imposes very real costs on all of us, on our children and on our grandchildren. We are subsidizing current energy prices at the expense of our progeny. The longer we defer payment, the higher those costs will be … It's as if we are financing our lifestyle with an interest-only mortgage. There's a big balloon payment looming in our future, but we've refused to set anything aside to pay it … the cap-and-trade bill represents an important advance because it has a realistic chance of being approved. If we do not start reducing our global warming liabilities now, we will be overwhelmed with the debt later."
– St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial, May 28, 2009

"The American Clean Energy and Security Act unveiled this week is not perfect, but it's a smart step toward reducing carbon emissions without destroying American industry and jobs … The Waxman-Markey bill is a plan the Congress should accept."
– Bristol (Tenn.) Herald-Courier editorial, May 22, 2009

"While the do-nothing crowd stews on the sidelines, those committed to doing something about climate change are fully engaged … it's not just tree-hugging environmentalists. It's not just Democrats. It's not just climatologists. It's leaders of many stripes answering the call on the biggest issue facing our planet … Texas being the nation's petrochemical capital, it can't sit on the sidelines when guidelines are written."
– Waco Tribune-Herald editorial, May 22, 2009

"If done properly, cap and trade would be a responsible compromise as the federal government attacks the problem of global warming. Obama and the Democratic leadership must stand firm during debate on the cap and trade policy. The final bill ought to contain strict, fair rules on who should pay to reduce greenhouse gases and how much it could cost."
– Kansas City Star editorial, May 20, 2009

On this Earth Day, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is holding hearings centered around the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), and they asked the mayor to come talk about jobs.

Braddock used to be a booming steel town. When the steel manufacturing sector left in the 1970s, Braddock gradually slumped, falling from a population of 20,000 to 2,000.

When John Fetterman first came to Braddock, he saw potential, thinking not as an environmentalist, but as a citizen wanting to revitalize a community. He sees Braddock, and other cities that depend on steel (like Akron, Ohio, and Detroit, Mich.,), ready for economic growth. He has a vision of restoring jobs that left with the steel industry. And what can trigger that growth is a cap on carbon.

So today, the mayor is on Capitol Hill to tell Congress that there are jobs in renewable energy and steel, and if they pass a carbon cap, there will be jobs in Braddock, Pa.

This is a fun way to deliver a serious message: Our planet is in crisis and we need to act now.

A select group of photos will be incorporated into EDF's annual Earth Day video.   Anyone can submit a photo.  Here's how.

The deadline for photo submissions is April 14th.

After you vote, please pass the word on to your friends and family — for every 100 votes cast, we’ll buy 100 pounds of carbon pollution reductions from IdleAire, Inc. IdleAire helps truck drivers connect to the power grid so they don’t idle their engines.

Then come back here and let us know which videos you liked and why. Watch and vote now!

Sam Parry is director of Environmental Defense Fund's Action Network. 

There was a great editorial in Sunday's Waco Tribune. It starts like this:

It takes quite a leap of faith to see Texas as a national leader in global warming solutions.

But if there’s anything Texas has plenty of, it’s faith – from Protestant evangelical fervor to contemplative Catholic spirituality to Eastern mysticism and beyond.

And in growing numbers, communities of faith across Texas are moving by leaps and bounds to respond to the moral imperative of global warming.

The description of the progress and action in Texas is heartening, and it's not just happening in Texas. The author, Bee Moorhead, is executive director of the Texas arm of Interfaith Power & Light (IPL), an interfaith ministry that includes 26 states and over 4000 congregations.

Sally Bingham, president of IPL and a member of the EDF Board of Trustees, wrote in a blog post last fall that climate change is the "most serious moral issue of our time" and an opportunity to put faith into action:

Voices from many religious traditions have started speaking out about climate change. Clergy are taking on what is a new idea for us: putting faith into action. We're no longer just praying in the pews for a reverence for the Earth, or praising God for all the wonder and beauty created so that we might live. We're taking our religious faith and walking the halls of legislative buildings, meeting with lawmakers, and conversing about the moral implication of inaction.

IPL isn't the only religious group concerned about climate change. Last year, our then chief scientist, Bill Chameides, spoke at a hearing sponsored by the Catholic Coalition of Climate Change. The goal of the hearing (and others like it across the country) was to devise a Catholic response to climate change. Bill wrote:

Our host, Bishop Thomas G. Wenski, said that three themes from Catholic social teaching inform the theology of climate change: priority for the poor, pursuit of the common good, and practice of prudence. The poor will suffer the most from the effects of climate change, and humanity needs to make sure their needs are not forgotten. Passing on the gift of creation to future generations, without doing irreversible harm, is an aspect of serving the common good. The practice of prudence demands that we act thoughtfully but with urgency to halt further climate disruption.

Climate change isn't an issue for the right or the left – it's an issue for humanity.

I have maintained for years that climate change is the most serious moral issue of our time, but at first few believed me or took it to heart. Having just returned from a week of traveling and giving talks on a religious response to global warming, I'm more encouraged than ever that we will solve this problem before we destroy ourselves.

Things have shifted in the last several months, and it's a refreshing, hopeful time. More people are coming to events to find solutions, rather than to question the science. The most frequently asked question is, "What can we do?" Now that the religious voice is at the table with other solution seekers, I am very hopeful that we will stop the warming trend.

Religion forms our values; religion carries moral authority. Religious voices had a role in the civil rights movement, women's suffrage and the abolition of slavery. And religious, moral and spiritual values are starting to take hold in the climate change discussion. When we are reminded that the people who contribute the least to the problem are the ones who will be harmed the most, we accept the religious value to love and serve one another. Bringing moral authority to this issue is crucial.

Voices from many religious traditions have started speaking out about climate change. Clergy are taking on what is a new idea for us: putting faith into action. We're no longer just praying in the pews for a reverence for the Earth, or praising God for all the wonder and beauty created so that we might live. We're taking our religious faith and walking the halls of legislative buildings, meeting with lawmakers, and conversing about the moral implication of inaction.

We're at a time in history where human beings have a choice. We can continue to destroy this awesome and reliable source of life, or we can take responsibility for our behavior and change our ways. We are beginning to take responsibility.

We at The Regeneration Project's Interfaith Power and Light campaign headquarters are conscious that our role is unique. We don't side with any particular political party, and we're separate from the environmental community. We are people with voices deeply rooted in a theology that calls us to be the stewards of Creation. We accept this responsibility, and accept the moral challenge of our faith – to protect what God said was "good" and sacred.

As a Jewish kid growing up in New York City, my interactions with the Roman Catholic Church were limited. Then in 1984, early in my career at Georgia Tech, an opportunity came  my way. My friend Doug Davis arranged an invitation for me to attend a meeting on global climate change at the Vatican, one of several meetings on various topics hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

It was quite a week – walking through the grounds of the Vatican on my way to and from our meeting, enjoying a private tour of the Sistine Chapel with all its incredible artwork and architecture. The meeting also was pretty amazing.

There were about 15 of us in the global warming meeting, including Roger Revelle, who Al Gore talks about as his scientific mentor in An Inconvenient Truth, as well as Paul Crutzen and Sherry Rowland, who would later share the Nobel Prize with Mario Molina for their work on stratospheric ozone depletion. I found the discussions so stimulating that I had a difficult time following the protocol for speaking – raising one's hand and waiting to be recognized by our convener – and was scolded on more than one occasion, much to the amusement of my fellow attendees.

The high point of the meeting was an audience with the Pope, who had a message for the 100 or so scientists at the various meetings. He said we had a special responsibility to humankind, that instead of working to build instruments of destruction, we should work to build a better world. Those words were in my mind when I left Georgia Tech for Environmental Defense to advocate for a better world for our children and grandchildren.

Now, more than 20 years later, I was addressing a Catholic Conference on how to respond to climate change. Usually at presentations to non-science groups, the concerns are personal and economic: How will climate change affect my family, my community, the United States? What will it cost to address climate change? Will the U.S. economy suffer relative to that of China? Will I have to give up my car, my air conditioning?

The issues here were quite different. Our host, Bishop Thomas G. Wenski, said that three themes from Catholic social teaching inform the theology of climate change: priority for the poor, pursuit of the common good, and practice of prudence. The poor will suffer the most from the effects of climate change, and humanity needs to make sure their needs are not forgotten. Passing on the gift of creation to future generations, without doing irreversible harm, is an aspect of serving the common good. The practice of prudence demands that we act thoughtfully but with urgency to halt further climate disruption.

Given that perspective, it will be interesting to see how the church decides to respond.