What does it take to get through to government leaders?

The auto companies resisted until they could no longer avoid installing seat belts, mocking the cries of safety proponents as Chicken Little plaints. Today all cars have them. The banking biggies resisted until they could no longer defend sub-prime mortgage-loan bundling, whereupon the economy collapsed. They had laughed at regulators, claiming they were too big to fail. They failed. The military boldly invaded Iraq a year and a half after 9/11 despite having known on 9/12 that none of the hijackers was Iraqi, and knowing as well that a certain president was a year and a half from reelection. They scoffed at the peaceniks who reasoned that wars usually beget bigger wars. Today we try to extricate ourselves from yet another global blunder.

What does it take to get through to government leaders? How about the citizens who elect them? Besides the above test cases, there are dozens of others. The common factor is that people of an affluent culture resist changing what seems to have brought them prosperity, not seeing the seeds of destruction sure to follow. When the evidence starts to accumulate, the denial mechanism kicks in, with appropriate stereophonic scoffing.

Perhaps one of the most black-and-white test cases today is global warming. For some perverse reason, in the face of growing scientific unanimity, resisters deny it with hands over their ears while humming loudly. In fact, many of the same deniers of the above short list deny global warming. What an interesting pattern. Those who stand to be enriched by denying something as obvious as the noonday sun are all on the same side, suggesting that in this undeniably affluent culture, profit preempts everything else, even survival as a planet. Short term gain, long term loss. Bad business sense if there was ever any.

As Kyle T. Kramer stated in a recent issue of America, “The myriad scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have published reams of solid data that show the urgency and the scale of the problem. In Global Climate Change: A Plea for Dialogue, Prudence, and the Common Good, the U.S. bishops ‘call on our people and government to recognize the seriousness of the global warming threat and to develop ef-fective policies that will diminish the possible consequences of global climate change.’”

Note that our church leaders are weighing in on this very technical question. They usually respect the competence of scientists speaking about science. But since the climate change demonstrably underway is in fact a life issue, as is abortion or embryonic stem-cell research or nutrition/hydration procedure, they have full competence to teach about the moral (i.e., religious) value of preserving human life. Pope Benedict in his latest encyclical Caritas in veritate tells how the earth’s most vulnerable, the poor, are the most susceptible to the effects of rising tides and ever more powerful coastal storms.

You would think that believers would value the insightful and dispassionate teaching of church leaders using their magisterial authority to guide people of all faiths toward a safe and humanly advantageous place. You would think people would appreciate that such leaders have no partisan axe to grind. However the same human nature that moves misguided Catholics on the left to ignore papal instruction on marriage and chastity moves those on the right to disdain church leadership on the above issues. Cafeteria Catholics are found at both ends of the spectrum, not just at one.

When climate-conscious people urge us to shrink our carbon footprint by spewing less waste and using less produce of the earth, they are in fact saying something profoundly religious, even if they wear no identifiable denominational badges or insignia. They are not anti-patriotic or anti-business or anti-government. They are not trying to hurt commerce or to return us to a lifestyle Davey Crockett would recognize. We made it through the changes of seat belts and borrowing within our means and trusting the United Nations to keep world peace. So we should be able to change in time to bring about an environmentally sustainable planet.

God I think would approve.