Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
A banner calling attention to climate change is seen in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican June 28. Some 1,500 people marched to the Vatican in support of Pope Francis' recent encyclical on the environment. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Deal-Breakers in Congress

The longest-serving Jewish member of the House of Representatives, Sander Levin, Democrat of Michigan. on July 28 threw his support behind the Obama administration’s nuclear accord with Iran. That should be enough to give the Iran deal a chance to get through the Washington gantlet. With other negotiation partners hopeful now that a workable plan on Iranian nuclear enrichment has been reached, a repudiation of the accord in Congress would confirm the United States as the unreasonable aggressor in the stand-off with Iran, and with good reason.

While some in Congress are legitimately skeptical of the deal, many more did not even bother to read it before attacking it, picking up a well-worn script and knuckling under to pressure from lobbyists who refuse to acknowledge the net positives the deal offers both the United States and its ally Israel. Many of those in Congress and the U.S. media who would kill the Iran accord are the same people who glibly supported the ruinous intervention in Iraq. Now they seem all too willing to block a diplomatic course that offers some hope for long-term peace and improved security in the region.

Those who are eager to break the Iran deal should answer one simple question: What is the alternative? There is no “better deal” on any reasonable horizon. Their Plan B would steer the country back onto a course that would almost inevitably lead to yet another disastrous war in the Middle East. As the U.S. bishops have frequently urged, this deal, and the peaceful path of diplomacy and dialogue that has led to it, should be given a chance to work.

Killer Robots

As the people in the troubled tribal regions of Pakistan and other Middle Eastern hotspots grow accustomed to the steady hum of American drones, the next generation of remote weaponry is visible just over the horizon. And those who understand this technology are worried. On July 27, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and over 1,000 experts on artificial intelligence called for a pre-emptive international ban on fully autonomous lethal weapons, warning that the deployment of such systems “is feasible within years, not decades.”

A directive issued by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2012 bans for up to 10 years the use of weapons that select targets without direct human control. In certain circumstances, however, high-level Pentagon officials can waive the moratorium, and the guidelines do not apply to the Central Intelligence Agency. Human Rights Watch called the policy a positive step, but called on the United States to embrace a “permanent, comprehensive ban“ as we work toward a legally binding global convention against fully autonomous weapons.

If preventing a nuclear Iran seems a herculean task, stemming the proliferation of “killer robots”—easier to replicate and harder to monitor than uranium enrichment—will be all but impossible. Further, as Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the United Nations, said in an address on the topic, “The encounter with the face of another is one of the fundamental experiences that awaken moral consciousness and responsibility.” By putting ever greater psychic and physical distance between the two sides, these weapons create the illusion of surgical warfare while dehumanizing killer and victim alike.

Climate Talk in 2016

On August 3, President Obama announced a new Clean Power Plan, aiming to reduce the United States’ carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent by 2030. Responses to climate change are also shaping up to become a key issue in the 2016 elections, as Democratic candidates are arguing over whose clean energy proposals are bold enough to be credible, and Republicans have begun critiquing many of these goals as wrongheaded or unachievable.

Significant reductions in carbon emissions are a worthy goal, and plans to achieve them through cleaner power deserve our consideration and support. It would be a mistake, however, to think that setting goals for the right mix of energy generation 15 years from now is a sufficient response to climate change and the need to “care for our common home,” as Pope Francis puts it in “Laudato Si’.”

A deeper engagement with what this care requires is needed at all levels. Locally, we must prioritize sustainable energy use, even if it costs us more. Archbishop Blase Cupich’s recent commitment for the Archdiocese of Chicago to track its buildings’ environmental impact offers a model that should be widely followed. Nationally, we ought to welcome debates not only about energy policy, but also about what model of growth should be encouraged. Globally, the issue is not just sustainable energy but sustainable development more generally, and a just sharing of responsibility between industrialized and developing economies. Decisions about sustainable energy usage are a fine starting point, but they are not nearly ambitious enough to be the end goal.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
David Knoble
8 years 7 months ago
Clearly you do not have a preference for the poor, wanting "sustainable" energy even if it costs us more. Your assumption that Climate Change (aka Global Cooling, aka Global Warming) is a fact, when it depends on immensely complex computer models, and ignores measurements that don't conform. How about the programmers that indicated that they were required by their management to "tweak" the model to obtain the "right" answers? Climate change, at this point, is a political religion, not a science, as evidenced by the several thousand scientists that have signed statements to that effect. This is a great example of telling a lie often enough to transform the lie into the accepted truth.
David Crane
8 years 7 months ago
Mr. Knoble is quite right. The science of global warming is very dubious. But apart from that, the policies that are inspired by it hurt the poor and the environment. In the US the drive for "sustainable" energy is causing us to put over 40% of our corn production into our gas tanks. More and more marginal farm acres are being plowed so we can grow corn. Not good for the land. And what about in years of scarcity like 2007 when commodity prices skyrocketed. Remember the civil unrest in Mexico and other places when poor people couldn't afford to eat? And think of the deforestation in Asia and other places caused by palm oil production. Then there are the poor folks in Africa who are being kicked off the land to make way for tree planting so rich Europeans can have their carbon offsets. An even more egregious example of eco-imperialism is the World Bank and other orgs which discourage the production of cheap electricity from abundant coal reserves. Very sadly, the baneful effects of climate change policies are already upon us.
Leonard Villa
8 years 7 months ago
I deny your premise that there has to be a deal. Know your enemy. A deal with Iran any deal is not worth the paper it is written on because they are completely untrustworthy. They understand strength and determination. The deal is more about administration ego's rather than the security of the U.S. which this administration endangers every day.

The latest from america

The 12 women whose feet were washed by Pope Francis included women from Italy, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia, Peru, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"We, the members of the Society of Jesus, continue to be lifted up in prayer, in lament, in protest at the death and destruction that continue to reign in Gaza and other territories in Israel/Palestine, spilling over into the surrounding countries of the Middle East."
The Society of JesusMarch 28, 2024
A child wounded in an I.D.F. bombardment is brought to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on March 25. (AP Photo/Ismael abu dayyah)
While some children have been evacuated from conflict, more than 1.1 million children in Gaza and 3.7 million in Haiti have been left behind to face the rampaging adult world around them.
Kevin ClarkeMarch 28, 2024
Easter will not be postponed this year. It will not wait until the war is over. It is precisely now, in our darkest hour, that resurrection finds us.
Stephanie SaldañaMarch 28, 2024