Letters to the Editor: Why knowingly contributing to climate change is a ‘mortal sin’

To the editor: In Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, at least we have a politician bold enough to invoke religious support for countering climate change.

The mayor of South Bend, Ind., suggests that the biblical mandate to do unto others as you would have them do unto you should apply to contemporaries as well as future generations. But Buttigieg only goes so far as to say that contributing to climate change is “a kind of sin.”

Shouldn’t those who abide environmental destruction in pursuit of boundless economic growth be charged with committing a “mortal sin”? Verily, their descendants -- those who survive the ecological devastation wreaked in the furtherance of fanciful biblical notions -- will condemn them for exalting a deity that wants humans to plunder Earth’s non-renewable resources so selfishly.

Let’s pray that our political and religious leaders hesitate no longer to condemn manifold mortal sins that contribute to climate change.

Roberta Helms, Santa Barbara

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To the editor: Asher Price’s op-ed article on the environmental “dominionists” versus the environmental “stewards” reads like a parody of people trying to ground their convictions on religious faith rather than reason.

In this case, both sides are convinced that God has told them that they are right and the opposition is wrong. In fact, both have forsaken actual evidence. What we’re left with is a schoolyard dispute in which each side says, “My revelation is better than your revelation.”

Once you decide to rely on revelations, thereby ignoring rational evidence, anything goes. Faith “justifies” any and all contradictions, but in fact it justifies nothing.

Mike Berliner, Los Angeles