Hot hot hot

The worldly French statesman Talleyrand supposedly said of the killing of one of Napoleon’s political opponents: “This is worse than a crime, it’s a blunder.” But now, as then, most people disagree with that bishop-turned-politician. Branding a public policy one opposes as criminal -- or, better yet, sinful -- is much more effective than attacking it as unwise or inefficient. That explains why even secular-minded environmentalists are pleased that religious figures increasingly are blessing their agenda and that eco-friendly Christians are asking, “What would Jesus drive?”

Breaking with pro-business fellow believers, some evangelical Christians are calling for measures to combat global warming under the biblical imperative of “creation care.” This week, Southern Baptist leaders issued a “Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change,” noting that evidence of global warming is “substantial” and that Americans’ “cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed. We can do better.”

Environmentalists have paid special attention to pronouncements from the Roman Catholic Church. They were disappointed last year when Pope Benedict XVI warned against “hasty conclusions” about climate change. On the other hand, a prominent Catholic priest in Britain made headlines when he announced that he would open an eco-confession booth in which, as the Times of London put it, “he will hear the sins of those who have not recycled the things they ought to have done and who have consumed the things they ought not to have done.”

This week, “environmental issues” appeared on a list of “new sins” mentioned by a Vatican prelate, along with genetic experimentation, drug abuse and economic inequality. But when Msgr. Gianfranco Girotti was asked by a reporter which moral questions were drawing his attention, he cited the more traditional sins of fornication, abortion and sacrilege. So environmentalists hoping for the papal excommunication of polluters are likely to be disappointed.

Yet even if no anathemas are hurled at the creation-careless, believers and nonbelievers tempted to ignore global warming should ponder an observation by the American writer Elbert Hubbard: “We are not punished for our sins, but by them.”