Ecology

Students from Loyola Marymount University and the University of California at Los Angeles form a giant “350” on the lawn of the Los Angeles Federal Building on Oct. 24, a day of international actions calling for substantive climate legislation before the world gathers in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December for the U.N. Climate Change Conference. In addition to forming slogans, students created a banner listing “350 reasons for 350.” Three hundred fifty is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide -- measured in “parts per million” in our atmosphere. Scientists say humanity needs to get back to 350 parts per million as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. (Zak Cook)

A recent issue of Sierra, the bimonthly magazine of the Sierra Club, the nation’s largest environmental organization, featured an article titled “My school’s greener than your school.” The article featured an “honor roll” of the nation’s most environmentally savvy colleges and universities. The University of Colorado at Boulder led the pack, followed by other secular universities, such as the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Washington at Seattle. There were no Catholic campuses on the list.

But Catholic colleges and universities are joining their public counterparts in efforts at greening their campuses in a wide variety of ways.

Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople speaks on the New Orleans riverfront at the opening address of a weeklong symposium on “The Great Mississippi River: Restoring Balance.” (CNS/Frank J. Methe/Clarion Herald)

Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS -- It is the religious duty of Orthodox Christians to protect an environment harmed by natural disasters and society’s modern way of life, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I said here Oct. 21.

“We are living in a moment in history when we must work for solutions in faith, in love, in hope, and in responsibility,” said Bartholomew, who is spiritual leader of nearly 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.

Speaking from a balcony overlooking the Mississippi River, the subject of a weeklong conference of religious, political and academic leaders convened by the patriarch, Bartholomew kicked off the event by saying that the river is in need of repair -- just as the city is.

“The river is a microcosm of our planet,” he said. “In the water we observe many of the world’s ecological issues.”

Splinters of ice peel off from one of the sides of the Perito Moreno glacier during the Southern Hemisphere's winter months in early July 2008 near El Calafate, Argentina (CNS photo)

NEW YORK

When President Barack Obama addresses the United Nations Summit on Climate Change on Sept. 22, an environmental delegation led by Catholic bishops from Europe, Africa and Latin America will not be listening for his soaring rhetoric or refreshing good will. They want to hear numbers.

“We want to hear him say the United States is committed to a 40 percent reduction in emissions by 2020,” says Bernd Nilles, secretary general of CIDSE, an international alliance of Catholic development agencies that coordinated the delegation along with Caritas Internationalis. “And an 80 percent decrease by 2050, which he has already stated as his goal. But a 40 percent reduction in the near term would protect human lives. We in the developed world have an obligation to do that.”

Pope Benedict XVI walks a path while on vacation in Les Combes, Italy, July 21. (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

Though few might have cast him in advance as a "green pope," Pope Benedict XVI has amassed a striking environmental record, from installing solar panels in the Vatican to calling for ecological conversion. Now the pontiff has also hinted at a possible new look at the undeclared patron saint of Catholic ecology, the late French Jesuit scientist and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.