Lawmakers
passed an anti-environmental bill right after the pope urged Congress to
protect nature.
With his gentle grace, disarming humility, and penchant for
saying “God bless America” like he means it, Pope Francis appeared to sweep
Washington off its feet. Cheering throngs accompanied his every move. The
powerful and powerless alike made a fuss.
Take Senator Lisa Murkowski, an
Alaska Republican who cherishes the oil industry. She swooned over “the love that this man radiates”
after Francis blessed her rosary beads.
Francis had just counseled Murkowski and her colleagues to safeguard “our
common home” and “avert the most serious effects of the environmental
deterioration caused by human activity.” The pontiff also told U.S. lawmakers:
“I am convinced that we can make a difference and I have no doubt that the
United States — and this Congress — have an important role to play.”
Translation: Please fight climate change.
After mopping up the tears he cried in the pope’s presence a day
before he would say Francis inspired his resignation, John Boehner sounded constructive. “With great blessings, of course,
come great responsibility,” the House Speaker said. “Let us all go forth with
gratitude and reflect on how we can better serve one another.”
So what did lawmakers do that day in the House of
Representatives?
This measure would arbitrarily restrict environmental reviews
for pipelines, dams, and other big federally funded infrastructure while
choking off input from the general public. The bill would also bar federal authorities
from considering the “social cost of carbon” — climate change — when deciding
whether to greenlight these projects.
President Barack Obama has said he’d veto this ploy if it ever
cleared both chambers, and experts don’t expect it to become law. Yet when
Representative Thomas Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican and a Catholic, took
the House floor to urge RAPID’s passage “to get this country working again,” he
sounded serious.
Representative Hank Johnson was aghast. “Not only would this
Republican bill have the fox guard the henhouse, it would have him install the
chicken wire as well,” Johnson said. The Georgia Democrat, who happens to be
Buddhist, reminded his colleagues that the pope had just asked them to protect
the environment a few hours earlier.
The House passed the bill the next day in a vote largely split along party lines. A
related Orwellian-named measure, the Federal Permitting Improvement Act, awaits
Senate action. Technically, both bills would undermine the National
Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA.
Congress couldn’t have chosen a worse way to snub Francis.
After the address and before the pope floated off to his next
engagement — lunch with 300 homeless people — the pontiff stood on the Capitol
balcony, Evita-style. As he blessed everyone gathered before him in Spanish, I stood there thinking that we must have looked
like a mass of multi-colored specks.
Yet Francis expressed a belief in our collective power by asking
us all to pray for him. Sensitive to the existence of America’s growing
population of non-believers, he suggested that people “send good wishes” his way if
praying wasn’t their thing.
Maybe the pontiff should have asked us to pray for something
else: that Congress might actually listen to a word he’d just said.
Columnist
Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit
national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords.org.
