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Friday, July 9, 2004

N.M. Clerics Push for Global-Warming Bill

By Paul Logan
Journal Staff Writer
    New Mexico religious leaders joined those from 45 other states Thursday to urge U.S. senators to act with "great moral urgency" on a global-warming bill.
    The letters support the Climate Stewardship Act, co-sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. The act would set limits on greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to global warming.
    Endorsed by 20 of the state's religious leaders, the letter was delivered Thursday to the offices of Sens. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Pete Domenici, R-N.M.
    Bingaman said he strongly supports the McCain-Lieberman legislation.
    "I have voted for it in the past and will support it again if it comes to a vote this year," Bingaman said Thursday in a prepared statement.
    Domenici also said in a statement that he looks "forward to reviewing the latest version of the McCain-Lieberman bill as soon as it becomes available. After that, I would certainly welcome a debate on the Senate floor."
    Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has continued to block a floor debate on the bill, said Stan Euston of Albuquerque, environmental program director for the New Mexico Conference of Churches.
    Euston said there is "an impatience" among individuals representing a spectrum of faiths because it is "so profoundly important to address the issue."
    The letter said global warming will bring "weather and agricultural disruptions, floods, refugees, migrating diseases and other dislocations that most harm the planet's poor and vulnerable. The United States contributes 25 percent of these world emissions."
    The religious leaders listed scientific information that includes:
   

A National Academy of Sciences study, requested in 2001 by President Bush, that found that greenhouse gases "are accumulating in the earth's atmosphere ... causing ... temperatures to rise."
   

A letter to the Senate in 2003 from more than 1,000 scientists, noting that such findings by the NAS "have been reinforced rather than weakened by research."
   

Estimates of World Health Organization scientists that roughly 160,000 people die every year from side effects of global warming, ranging from malaria to malnutrition, "and that the numbers could almost double by 2020."