Opinion: Faith voters such as me want action on climate change - The Virginian-Pilot

Opinion: Faith voters such as me want action on climate change - The Virginian-Pilot

Last week, Pope Francis published a new document urging us to act on the climate crisis. Moderate faith voters such as me see climate action as critical to our success as a nation. The national GOP’s embrace of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has used ethically dubious maneuvers that will increase families’ risk of harm from climate change, gives us pause.

Pope Francis’s new document stands on decades of Catholic teaching on climate change. This isn’t a flash-in-the-pan trend, but a long-standing concern embraced by leaders on the left and right. More than 50 years ago, St. Pope Paul VI warned of the imminent “ecological catastrophe.” In the decades since, popes who many would consider more conservative, such St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, have spoken about the urgent need to address climate change.

These leaders spoke up because harming the planet we share is a moral disaster. The global thermostat is now about 1.1 degrees Celsius higher than when the industrial revolution began. Our planet has never seen change on this scale this quickly.

There are real consequences for the people we love. Parents can’t move out of the path of newly stronger hurricanes. Doctors face emergency-room visits for heat-related illnesses that continue to increase with heat waves. Families can’t rebuild when 100-year floods happen every 25 years or, for more than a million people, even more often.

These real human consequences are why moderate faith voters see action on climate change as essential to the moral health of our nation.

This is why the GOP’s embrace of Youngkin is so troubling. The governor has tried to cancel a widely popular program that protects families from climate chaos now while reducing greenhouse gas pollution in the future.

The program that Youngkin has targeted for cancellation is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. RGGI forces energy utilities to either stick to limits on greenhouse gas pollution, or pay a fine.

RGGI has used fines from polluting utilities to generate almost $6 billion in funding across member states. Local communities use that money to protect homes from flooding, provide low-income residents with better insulation.

The program successfully reduces greenhouse gas pollution for the long term. Emissions in its member states have shrunk twice as fast as the national average.

This win-win approach makes RGGI popular across the political spectrum. As the governor mulled canceling the program, polling showed that 66% of Virginians on both the right and the left wanted to remain in it.

Despite the overwhelming enthusiasm for a highly effective initiative, the governor moved ahead to cancel it. His attempt to actually increase families’ risk from climate change is stunning. Equally troubling is how the governor went about his cancellation.

RGGI was voted into Virginia law, and an act of the legislature is needed to take the commonwealth out of the program. With the legislature not inclined to support him, the governor used a vote by an unelected Virginia Air Pollution Control Board to withdraw Virginia from the program.

Many people of faith yearn for a return to the rule of law. The governor’s willingness to use such ethically dubious maneuvering is of concern.

As moderates come to the fore in battleground states such as Virginia, opposition to the governor’s action is being led by faith-based groups. Opposition from these groups, including Interfaith Power and Light and Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions, send a strong signal to faith voters.

As speculation over the governor’s political ambitions grows, moderate faith voices are speaking up: we need a leader who will protect us from climate chaos. Sadly, it appears that Youngkin isn’t the leader we need.

Reba Elliott of Crozet is a senior director at Laudato Si’ Movement and a fellow of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication in partnership with the Op-Ed Project.