Francis published a landmark papal encyclical on the environment this summer, blaming climate change on human action and calling for more of an effort to prevent it. But when people are asked if environmental laws are worth the cost, support drops to 56%. Rick Santorum have rejected Francis’s words on climate change by pointing out that the Pontiff is not a scientist. For comparison, MIT researchers say electricity industries in the US now have the capacity to generate 1.15 terawatts.
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In recent years, evangelical action on climate has continued to grow, and the intersection of faith and climate has become more clearly defined and more widely understood.
A lot will depend on how quickly the US can innovate.
“We can rest content with the bureaucratic exercise of drawing up long lists of good proposals – goals, objectives and statistical indicators – or we can think that a single theoretical and aprioristic solution will provide an answer to all the challenges”, Francis said. The general consensus is there will be winners and losers.
Another study in the series examined the possibilities of solar power and found that the southwestern area of the USA had between 54,000 and 87,000 square miles of land suitable for solar farms that could theoretically generate about 7 terawatts (or 7 trillion watts) of energy while operating at full capacity.
Losers: Coal mining, oil and gas extraction, chemical plants, metals, transportation and airlines.
But there were boos, too, when the man whose name graces the Trump Tower, his head as recognizable as the pope’s, walked out into the crowd, grinned and waved.
The USA economy has proven resilient before to big shifts. By 2007, there were only 14 million manufacturing employees.
The hope is that dynamic would play out again.
Pope Francis is completely out of touch with refugees and climate change.
The CBO analysis was done in 2009 when there were active bills in Congress to do some sort of carbon tax or cap-and-trade plan. “When it comes to the care of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of history”.
But the bills died in the Senate.
Although countries have been submitting pledges to cut emissions ahead of the talks, the joint announcement by Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping provided details on the specific steps their nations would take to meet their carbon commitments. But that will collide with economic and political reality.
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“I don’t like Donald Trump“, she said.
