Peace & Life Connections Fall 2011

Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, September 26, 2011

You’re hard to figure out...I mean, you’re pro-life, yet – [clip showing debate where Brian Williams says to Rick Perry: “Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times” and gets vigorous applause]. What was that? You’re afraid of death panels. Yet for uninsured coma patients – [clip of Wolf Blitzer asking “Are you saying society should just let him die?” and audience response of some people yelling “yeah!”]...It’s like the Republican base is at war with its own talking points.

E.J. Dionne Jr., Only conservatives can end the death penalty, Washington Post online editorial

A survey last year...showed that if a variety of alternatives were offered (including life without parole plus restitution to victims’ families), respondents’ hard support for the death penalty was driven down to 33 percent. If a majority is open to persuasion, the best persuaders will be conservatives, particularly religious conservatives and abortion opponents, who have moral objections to the state-sanctioned taking of life... Despite the cheering for executions at a recent GOP debate, there are still conservatives who are standing up against the death penalty. In Ohio this summer, state Rep. Terry Blair, a Republican and a staunch foe of abortion, declared flatly: ‘I don’t think we have any business in taking another person’s life, even for what we call a legal purpose or what we might refer to as a justified purpose.’...Political ideology has built a thick wall that blocks us from acknowledging that some of the choices we face are tragic. Perhaps we can make an exception in this case and have a quiet conversation about whether our death-penalty system really speaks for our best selves. And I thank those conservatives, right-to-lifers, libertarians and prison officials who, more than anyone else, might make such a dialogue possible.

Daniel Berrigan, 2007, Signing an online petition in opposition to Amnesty International’s move to endorse abortion as a “right”

My moral conviction on abortion and the rights of the unborn are more serious than 'a point of view'...It's as close to my conscience as war and the death penalty.

Mother Teresa

Any country that accepts abortion, is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what it wants.

Stephen Zunes, Consistently Opposing Killing, p, 183

Using nonviolence to overthrow dictatorships and establish democracy appears to impact popular attitudes towards violence overall. In virtually every country with a successful nonviolent insurrection against an autocratic regime, the new democratic government has abolished the death penalty, dramatically reduced military spending and passed stronger environmental laws. In former dictatorships where minority groups were legally discriminated against, such laws were overturned. Some of these new democracies have imposed greater restrictions on abortion, while virtually none have liberalized abortion laws.

Dennis DiMauro, Lutherans for Life, Devotional for Day 23 of 40 Days for Life, October 20, 2011

God doesn’t value people and things like we do. Jonah loved a shade tree more than an entire city of sinful people. We love our dogs more than a terrorist. We love our cars more than a beggar on the side of the road. And sometimes, we love our money more than a child growing in a desperate teenager’s womb. But God isn’t like us...And the book of Jonah tells us that He loves even the most sinful people and seeks to bring them into His merciful arms. And it’s a love that seeks to touch all of his created children: that desperate teenager, the baby growing in her womb, even tyrants and terrorists.

Terri Herring, discussing the Nov. 8 Mississippi “personhood amendment” ballot measure

In Mississippi, we have the opportunity to lead the way on a social justice issue. We may have been behind on civil rights, but we can be ahead on human rights, and that's what personhood is really all about.

Charles J. Chaput, Being Human in an Age of Unbelief, November 8, 2011

The pro-life movement needs to be understood and respected for what it is: part of a much larger, consistent, and morally worthy vision of the dignity of the human person. You don’t need to be Christian or even religious to be “pro-life.” Common sense alone is enough to make a reasonable person uneasy about what actually happens in an abortion. The natural reaction, the sane and healthy response, is repugnance.

Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963, Letter from a Birmingham Jail

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, “Abortion and War,” Center for Christian Nonviolence

As I read the triumphant headlines in the newspapers day after day—‘U.S. Pounds Iraq from Air’—and saw the pictures of missiles streaking into Iraq, I could not help but hear the silent screams of all the little Iraqi children in utero who were having their lives ripped from them. The lucky ones were the ones who took a direct hit. The ones, who were aborted because of percussion, vibration or because of the terror, trauma, malnourishment and/or exhaustion visited upon their mothers by war, would probably have suffered less agonizing deaths at the wrong end of a suction machine in an abortion clinic.

Robert Arner, Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity

In this study, I have traced the ethic of the pre-Constantinian church through a series of individual moral issues related to the taking of human life, and have found that, without exception, the church strongly condemned the taking of human life in any form whatsoever. Neither homicide, nor feticide, nor infanticide, nor suicide, nor capital punishment, nor killing in war were considered acceptable to a church fiercely committed to following the teaching and moral example of the incarnate Lord.

Four Degrees of Separation (from reality)

Over the weekend, the big news from Durban, South Africa is that the international community reached a compromise about what the world economies should do to curtail climate change. While politicians celebrate the victory of agreeing on a deal, scientists are shaking their heads.


It is not a surprise that this "deal" was reached after the embarrassing failures at Copenhagen and Cancun.


The majority of climatologists agree that in order to prevent significant climate change, the Earth can only tolerate about 350 ppm of greenhouse gases in order to keep the average global temperature from rising beyond 2 degrees Celsius. Currently, we will be approaching 500 ppm soon and the events of this past weekend indicate that we are going to be reaching about 4 degrees within the next half century. In fact, in order to get to the 350 ppm mark before it is too late, greenhouse gas emissions will need to reach their peak in the next five years and by the end of the decade will need to decrease by at least 40% (from 1990 levels).


Even though mitigating climate change is now a political impossibility, there are still ways we as an international community can adapt to the effects of climate change. This will not be any easier than mitigating climate change, because as The Guardian reports, a world that averages a rise of 4 degrees Celsius can expect the following: 

...the Arctic permafrost enters the danger zone. The methane and carbon dioxide currently locked in the soils will be released into the atmosphere. At the Arctic itself, the ice cover would disappear permanently, meaning extinction for polar bears and other native species that rely on the presence of ice. Further melting of Antarctic ice sheets would mean a further 5m rise in the sea level, submerging many island nations. Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey become deserts and mid-Europe reaches desert temperatures of almost 50C in summer. Southern England's summer climate could resemble that of modern southern Morocco.

There is also an interactive map that the Met Office has developed that you can check out here. It shows that in California, we can expect about a 3-degree increase from pre-industrial levels, but what does this mean?

1. Less snow in the Sierra Nevadas and more rain for the rest of California.
   At first, this sounds like a good thing, because it can reduce the times we are in drought. However, our current infrastructure is built to handle the gradual melting of snow and not intense periods of rainfall. All the additional rainfall will also cause more flooding, especially if we do not retrofit our ageing levies. We will also need to accommodate for the increase in demand for potable drinking water in the next several decades.
2. Increases in public health hazards
   More extreme heat will naturally lead to more deaths due to heat stroke and other conditions that the infirm may develop due to inability to handle high temperatures. It also means that diseases that thrive in warmer temperatures south of the border will progressively find a natural habitat in California. Finally, there will be increased risk of wildfires and worsening air pollution.
3. Increases in energy demand and decreases in energy supply
   The obvious result of warmer weather is that people use the AC more often, but climate change causing less snow-melt is that there will be a reduction in hydro-power. This means that we will need to offset that with other energy sources, whether it be renewable or conventional sources.
4. Dwindling bread basket of America
   Crops that are not adjusted to the changing climate will naturally die off, which poses a problem for the economy of the Central Valley and California as a whole. All the hazards that affect humans will affect plants too, such as flooding, new diseases, etc.

It is time that the leaders of our country focus more on adapting to climate change as part of economic recovery instead of seeing it as something that hinders economic recovery.