{sidebar id=2}Chillingly, the report, published in the journal Nature, depicts rich nations as the greatest producers of the greenhouse gases that are causing our climate to get warmer, while the poorer nations, those least able to cope and least responsible for the greenhouse gases, bear the brunt of the effects. The effects of global warming can range from flooding, drought, heat waves and hurricanes to increases in deadly diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, dengue and cholera, which are all sensitive to climate.

Naysayers that claim climate change is merely a naturally fluctuating cycle, having little to do with human actions, are facing increasing evidence to the contrary. According to a major new study by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, today’s climate change is not natural. Scientists drilling in the Antarctic studied ice samples dating as far back as 650,000 years. They found that today’s constant rising level of carbon dioxide is already 27 per cent higher than its highest point during all those millennia.

Carbon dioxide, a product of fuel burning, is a greenhouse gas, aptly named because it accumulates in the atmosphere, trapping heat, resulting in gradual warming of the planet. The evidence is overwhelming and confirms what various concerned Christians have argued for years.

The most compelling and forward-looking document to date is a 2002 World Council of Churches document entitled, “Solidarity with Victims of Climate Change.�? It insists, “Measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions run against the dynamics of the present project of society based in ever-expanding production and consumption.�?

“Herein lies an enormous global ethical challenge,�? says Jonathan Patz, professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author of the climate report. In what amounts to a preferential option for the rich, our energy-consuming lifestyles are “having lethal impacts on other people around the world, especially the poor.�? And herein lies our own challenge as Canadian Catholics, as citizens of one of the countries causing the problem.

Unfortunately, from an environmental perspective, Canadian Catholics have remained relatively inactive and blasé on global climate change. But might the fact that this is no longer just an environmental issue, but a social issue, one that challenges our social teaching on the preferential option for the poor, change our thinking and cause us to change our lifestyles?

Ethicist Stephen Bede Scharper, assistant professor of religious studies and environmental studies at the University of Toronto and author of The Green Bible, is not holding his breath. Looking back at the past two decades of Catholic relative inaction on social and environmental justice issues, he recognizes that while Catholics continue to give charity, acting for justice “has taken it on the chin.�?

We have become sidetracked by less important issues. “We are getting all mixed up on ancillary issues, such as gay issues, and not concerning ourselves with what Jesus cared about, poverty issues.�? Scharper offers the famous statement by the late Brazilian bishop, Dom Helder Camara —“When I feed the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist�? — as an apt example of what is happening today. A champion of Brazil’s poor, Dom Helder Camara was denounced as the “red bishop�? when he dared question what the lifestyles of the rich were doing to the poor. The rich did not want to hear the hard questions that challenged them to change the way they lived.

In a similar vein, as Canadian Catholics, will we merely content ourselves to donating charity to victims of floods and hurricanes as these effects of climate change increase in frequency and intensity? Or, when confronted with the evidence, will we take real action to change our lifestyles that are causing the cry of the poor and the cry of the Earth? Will we make it a priority to retrofit our scandalously energy-wasting church buildings?

Will we get rid of our fossil fuel—guzzling SUVs? Will we demand not tax cuts but bold investment in public transportation and the development of renewable green energy? Will we meet our Kyoto Protocol targets? Will we live out a true preferential option for the poor?

(Appolloni is a Contributing Editor to The Catholic Register and a member of the Elliot Allen Institute for Ecology and Theology.)