Climate 411

This post is by Rev. Sally Bingham, president of The Regeneration Project and the Interfaith Power and Light campaign. She also serves on the Board of Trustees at Environmental Defense.

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.

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Last Friday, at the invitation of the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change, I spoke at the Climate Change Hearing of the Florida Catholic Conference. The two other speakers in the morning session were Dr. Ricardo Alvarez, who gave a talk on the “Florida Perspective”, and Mr. Walt Grazer, who spoke on the “Theology of Climate Change”. The purpose of this hearing – one of many across the country – was to devise a Catholic response to climate change.

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What a difference nine years makes!

For more than a decade, Exxon has been a major player in a campaign to spread doubt about global warming. We know this for a fact because a 1998 internal Exxon memo titled “Global Climate Science Communications: Action Plan” was leaked to the press. The stated goal of the plan, whose authors include Randy Randol of Exxon Corp, Sharon Kneiss of Chevron Corp, and Joseph Walker of the American Petroleum Institute, was to change the American public’s view that global warming was a threat so that policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions could be stopped. The memo laid out a wide range of strategies and tactics to achieve this goal, budgeting nearly $6 million plus the cost of advertising.

But suddenly Exxon has changed its tune.

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