I want to beat televangelist Pat Robertson to the jump on today's East Coast earthquake.
Robertson is genius at knowing the mind of God when it comes to natural disasters. He blamed the Haiti earthquake on a God-offending "pact with the devil." Hurricane Katrina was God's pay-back for abortion in America.
Having spent some time with the Lord recently, I feel there is a message for President Obama: It is God's wrath that shook the White House today. This was a 5.8 wake-up call.
Why is God all wrought up this time? What is it that God wants President Obama to do? Well, my friends, the issue is climate change. Global warming. Specifically, the Keystone XL "Dirty Oil" pipeline.
God is very disappointed with humanity for leaving the gas on in our home planet. it's dangerous, wasteful, and wrong. God takes it a little personally.
This week more than 2,000 people are outside the White House, rattling the gates, demanding that President Obama refuse to sign the lease that would allow TransCanada to build a controversial 1,700-mile pipeline that would carry diluted bitumen from Canada's Alberta tar sands to the Texas Gulf Coast. Already, 220 have been arrested as part of two weeks of sustained protests led by the Tar Sands Action group.
If this pipeline is made operational, greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector as a whole will rise by nearly one-third from 2005 to 2020. As one Canadian wrote, "This [pipeline] will make the Great Wall of China look like Tom Sawyer's picket fence."
From God's point of view, this plan stinks to high heaven!
On August 29, many people of faith -- who fervently believe that God has a much better energy plan for us than the TransCanada oil company -- will go to the White House to bring God's word straight to President Obama's doorstep.
What is God saying? "Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD's thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is" (Deuteronomy 10:14). A contemporary translation: That oil is mine, sayeth the Lord, keep your hands off!
On August 29, religious leaders of every stripe -- Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Unitarian, to name a few -- will sit down on the White House sidewalk to encourage President Obama to stand up against climate change. They will be arrested. They will be held in jail. But in determined peaceableness they will lead others to flood the streets, raise the banners, fill the jails. The cost of inaction is just too high -- and I have it on good authority that it makes God cry.
God knows that President Obama wants to do the right thing. When he addressed the United Nations in 2009, the new U.S. president made his position clear: "The danger posed by climate change cannot be denied. Our responsibility to meet it must not be deferred. ... The days when America dragged its feet on this issue are over."
In case this historic commitment to save humanity and restore the health of the planet has slipped low on the president's "to do" list, today God sent a 5.8 temblor as a reminder. The quake was so strong it rang the bells of the Washington National Cathedral.
President Obama, can you hear God now?
HuffPost's Lucia Graves recently reported on the pipeline protests:
Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D.: Jon Huntsman and Evolution: A Missed Opportunity
Keystone Pipeline - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Keystone XL Pipeline | Friends of the Earth
Keystone XL Oil Pipeline Arrests Mount As Climate Activists Push Obama
Keystone XL Pipeline Obama's 'Biggest Climate Test,' Green Groups Say
Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline, No More Dirty Tar Sands Oil | Facebook
Which is to say not everything that harms us little human beings is because someone was angry at us, or because we did something wrong. A little too heavy on the anthropomorphism there.
WHEN a car is well maintained, it can provide safe transportation. But that vehicle when abused and neglected can be dangerous. In some respects, the same may be said of planet Earth.
In the opinion of a number of scientists, human-induced changes in earth’s atmosphere and oceans have made our planet a dangerous place by contributing to more frequent and more severe natural disasters. And the future looks uncertain. “We’re in the middle of a large uncontrolled experiment on the only planet we have,” said an editorial on climate change in Science magazine.
So that we can better grasp how human activity might be affecting the frequency and severity of natural disasters, we need to understand a little about the underlying natural phenomena.
http://www.watchtower.org/e/20050722/article_02.htm
"Why did you do this to us, God? What did we do to upset you?” Reuters news agency reported that an elderly woman in India asked those questions after a tsunami devastated her village.
“Where was God? And if God has ultimate control, why did God let this happen?” These questions were raised by a newspaper in Texas, U.S.A., after a gunman opened fire in a church, wounding and killing a number of worshippers.
“Why did God allow her to die?” A woman asked this question after cancer took her friend’s life, leaving the deceased’s husband to care for their five children.
Religious Confusion
Instead of offering satisfying answers, religious leaders often contribute to the confusion. Let us focus on just three of their common responses.
http://www.watchtower.org/e/200611/article_01.htm
Did It ever tell you why It gave the planet an initial CO2 atmosphere and oceans of H2O and a hot sun to empower photosynthesis and thus bring forth the green plants which beyond building themselves exhaled O2 enabling It to bring forth animals , including you , oh VoG , who so fears that molecule out of which you are made , and the restoring to the biosphere of more of that molecule from the vast resources from previous cycles of life It sequestered over the eons which have so extended and enhanced the lives of the last few centuries of humanity's existence ?
If It never has , can you ask It for me ? Why did It create these enormous resources , and teach us how to use them for our welfare , then say "No , no , thou shalt NOT ! " . Is it some sort of cosmic "look but don't touch" joke like the apple in the Garden of Eden ?
What abuse are you talking about ? Certainly there are pipelines crisscrossing the country which have been supplying heat and power and locomotion around the country with a pretty decent record for decades and regulations and penalties in place for abuses .
Speculation: Environmental agencies in Canada won't allow it. The pipeline is to ship the oil sand to the US where the assault on the EPA has weakened environmental protection.
Think about the process of extracting oil from sand. What does it take? I don't know exactly, but I used to live in Butte, MT. Butte was downwind from the Anaconda Company smelter. The plant life between Anaconda and Butte was destroyed by the smoke from the smelter that was extracting copper from copper ore. Trees were only starting to grow a decade after the smelter had been shut down.
They want to win popular support by the "ghee whiz"-ness of a giant pipeline. Oh my, what a giant... pipe! It must belong to God!
Anyway, though tongue in cheek, Ms. Berger's article is right on.
The Reagan and Bush Administrations negated a lot of successes that environmentalists had made in the 1960s and 1970s, and the conservation movement suffered severe setbacks which have since caused a lot of damage. And now the Obama Administration seems to have set concerns about the environment on the back burner.
It is just one more indicator of how and why it doesn't matter now whether Democrats or Republicans control the three branches of government. They all serve the interests of the wealthiest few, because that's who funds their campaigns for office, and that's who pays for the negative, slanerous attack ads on television that paint progressive reformers as the bad guys.
There's a better way. Read all about it at http://messenger.cmcp.org/newdeclaration.html