Creation Care for Pastors

Here is an article from Reuters this week. The popular press has picked up on the disproportiantely severe effects of climate change on the world’s poor and indigenous peoples.Minorities the forgotten victims of climate changeMon Mar 10, 2008 9:00pm EDTBy Jeremy LovellLONDON, March 11 (Reuters) – Minorities and indigenous peoplefrequently bear the brunt of the ravages of climate change but alsooften come last on the aid list because they are on the margins ofsociety, a report said on Tuesday.Some are even the victims of efforts to tackle global warming such asclearing tracts of land and forest for growing biofuels, according to”State of the World’s Minorities 2008″ report from Minority RightsGroup International (MRG).”Climate change has finally made it to the top of the internationalagenda at every level but…recognition of the acute difficultiesthat minorities face is often missing,” said MRG’s policy chiefIshbel Matheson.  Read the rest of this entry »

Facts:

1. Coal burning power plants release mercury particles into the atmosphere with well documented health effects given the fact that mercury (the stuff in thermometers) is a poison.

2. We have the technology to burn coal cleaner, but it costs more to do so.

3. We tend to want the cheap energy of coal burning power plants without the mercury poisoning, but we’re less concerned about the poisoning effects of mercury if it affects someone else.

4. People with the means to keep coal burning power plants out of their neighborhood, tend to exercise that power.

4. Poor people don’t have much money. Money is power. So they have more coal burning power plants in their neighborhoods. And they and their kids and their unborn babies tend to suffer more harm as a result.

5. If people with power had more coal burning power plants in their own neighborhoods, they would be more likely to insist that we all spend a little more money to build clean power plants.

Am I missing something, or shouldn’t we all insist that no more dirty power plants be built? And that we spend money to clean up the ones that are spewing the mercury over poor people?   Whose children suffer memory loss and greater learning disabilities with all the mercury wrecking havoc in their brains?  One in six children are born at risk of this,  according to the EPA, and most of them are poor kids who can’t move away from the flipping power plants.  Excuse me, I got a little annoyed there.

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