The Pope Wants You to Recycle and Preserve the Earth!

Well, I hate to say I told you so, Reverend Robertson and the other evangelicals with a right-wing Christian stranglehold on middle America, but the Pope, yes the terrestrial right hand of the Catholic God himself, believes in global warming! At a Vatican conference on Climate Change on Thursday, Pope Benedict said that we need to "respect creation" while "focusing on the needs of sustainable development". It seems that common sense, reason, and forward thinking are indeed characteristics that some branches of religion can still possess.
In case you haven't heard, the majority of American evangelical ministers have come out publicly against our scientifically confirmed global energy and environmental crises. They cite various reasons for this stance, including the inherent distrust of the scientific process, the concern that putting our energy towards environmentalism is "taking our focus away from god", plus the brilliant concept that since the apocalypse is coming, it doesn't really matter what we do to the planet!
I still really cannot fathom how supposedly free-thinking Americans can buy into these evangelical brain-sucker schemes. All you have to do is a minuscule amount of research and it becomes painfully obvious how backwards some of these ministries are. Have you seen the movie Jesus Camp? Wow. Frightening to say the least.
While I am not religious in the least, ascribing to the "science as god" theory of the universe, and firmly convinced that all religions are simply varied attempts at explaining the world's and human existence, where we go when we die, and building moral frameworks, I am elated that we are seeing some sort of environmental leadership from the Catholic Church.
If we can get the followers of the silver diviner who was convicted of fraud then found golden tablets with scripture in the hills of upstate NY, reading them with "magic glasses" (which he lost then had to use "seeing stones" in a magic hat) to step up towards environmental stewardship, we might make some progress with the conservative religious side of our country!

via treehugger and the Guardian