Interfaith Effort Supports Environmental Reform

The group of faith leaders met with Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb’s staffs, specifically calling on them to support a mandate to reduce the nation’s greenhouse emissions by 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 and an 80% percent reduction by 2050.

Joe Stanley, Director of Virginia Interfaith Power and Light, said equitable environmental policy for low-income families and impoverished countries is also critical.

Stanley:  Some of the worst impacts of global climate change are in third world nations that contributed the least to the proble.  As part of the industrialized world that really caused this, we owe it to them with funding to help mitigate those disasters.

Dennett Slemp is an Episcopal Priest and member of the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care.  He calls environmental policy an ethical issue.

Slemp:  It used to be we could get along when political positions and ethics were not the same, but we no longer can afford that, in a global world in which we live, a global village, what I do now affects people all over the world and vice versa.

Both Senators Warner and Webb were out of town, but released statements thanking the group for their input.

Craig Carper, WCVE News, Capitol Square.