Joel Makower at GreenBiz posted excerpts from an email exchange of Roger’s and other’s thoughts on the Pope’s encyclical. Below are Roger’s thoughts, click through to the link for the full post, which has great insight from many thought leaders, including the former VP of Sustainability at McDonald’s and CEO of the World Environment Center.
[Roger Ballentine, President of Green Strategies; formerly Chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force and Deputy Assistant to the President for Environmental Initiatives under Bill Clinton]
Bill’s last point is important. The impact of the Pope’s Encyclical is still being measured, even as it moves off the headlines. Fundamentally, I believe that the Pope may have upended the political dynamic of the climate debate in the U.S.
To date, the climate issue has been largely debated in a two-dimensional echo chamber reinforced by calcified ideological presuppositions: it’s the economy versus the environment. Despite the fact that many of us like to think that this perceived trade-off has long-since been vanquished, political debates can sometimes be immune from evidentiary influence. What the Pope has done is add a third dimension — morality — to the binary debate. Intergenerational equity and the regressive impacts of a changing climate have long been preached, but not by a preacher with such a megaphone.
This third dimension can be particularly impactful on the U.S. climate debate precisely because neither side in the binary struggle can exclusively claim or wholly dismiss the moral message. The Pope’s visit to Washington in September will put this dimension back on the radar screen of policymakers at a time when opponents of action continue to hang their opposition on perceived short term economic considerations alone.
Read more at http://www.greenbiz.com/article/thoughtful-conversation-about-popes-encyclical
