NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER
OUR ENVIRONMENT NCRonline.org
APRIL 11-24, 2014
—Newscom/Everett Collection/Warren K. Leffler
Cars wait in long lines for gasoline in the Washington, D.C., area on June 15, 1979.
Time for a tuneup
With updates for today’s context, bishops’ 1981 message on energy could have renewed impact
I
By BRIAN ROEWE
t was 1981. Only two years separated the United States from its second oil crisis in a decade. In 1979, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini had slashed oil shipments to the U.S. to fewer than 500,000 barrels a day. Prices at the pump had soared and gas lines lengthened. In this context, the Committee on Social Development and World Peace of the U.S. Catholic Conference drafted “Reflections on the Energy Crisis,” a statement addressing energy policy. Though never endorsed by the full assembly, it remains, 33 years later, the most comprehensive engagement by U.S. bishops into the moral implications of energy decisions. Recently, it has become the subject of a three-year study by a task force within the Catholic Theological Society of America that will apply the ’81 energy statement to current realities. Eight theologians will explore the various themes of the letter at their second meeting in June, during the society’s annual conference. They aim to eventually publish a paper on energy justice that will update the document with new research and a new context — climate change. “It’s the critical ethical issue of our time, with so many implications,” said Erin Lothes, an assistant theology professor at the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown, N.J. She convened the task force, known as the Interest Group on Discipleship and Sustainability. Lothes described the statement as “amazingly present,” even after
33 years. “This letter was noting the importance of energy to fair development, to peace and social stability around the world,” she told NCR. “It talked about the risks of waiting while the situation worsened.” Development of the document began in January 1980. That month a conference, “Religion and Energy in the ’80s,” brought religious leaders to Washington, with President Jimmy Carter asking their help in addressing the energy crisis, saying that “conservation of oil has religious connotations,” particularly in a nation of “profligate wasters.” Among the participants was Bishop William Cosgrove of Belleville, Ill., chair of the subcommittee on energy, who said religion’s greatest contribution “is to communicate some of the human reality of the energy situation and motivate a human response to it.” Just six days after the social development committee published its statement on April 2, 1981, Walt Grazer began with the bishops’ conference as policy adviser for food and agriculture. One of his first duties became selling the document across the country. “There was a lot of debate at that time about this energy question,” said Grazer, who headed the conference’s Environmental Justice Program from 1993 until 2007. The bishops provided him plenty of material to enter the conversation. “The fading of the petroleum age disquiets the entire world,” the committee began. “Now it is only a matter of time until oil and gas production peaks and starts to drop,” it continued. “In the
—Getty Images/AFP/Nicholas Kamm
Students protesting the proposed Keystone XL pipeline lie on a black plastic tarp representing an oil spill in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., March 2.
years ahead, the nations of the earth, both rich and poor, must learn to conserve what supplies they can obtain. They must also find some way of switching over to dependence on alternative sources of energy without sinking into economic chaos.” Fearful of future oil crises further destabilizing an American economy, the bishops perceived a “special moral urgency” for the U.S. to lead the world toward its energy future. Failure to do so would instead lead
the world toward destruction, they said, warning, “The black seed of the final holocaust may lie beneath the sand of the Middle East.” Out on the road, Grazer highlighted the moral and ethical dimensions the bishops saw in energy decisions: its production, distribution, and impact upon the health of both people and ecosystems. Often, voices of opposition would question the bishops’ involvement in technical matters. Anticipating such retorts, the committee outlined the principles of Catholic social teaching — energy is a life issue in a just society, conservation of creation an obligation — that formed a framework for moral reflection and action. “The fundamental problem, simply put, is the need to effect a transition from primary dependence on oil and natural gas to primary dependence on something else in the fairly near future,” the committee said. It examined in detail six energy options: oil and natural gas, coal, nuclear fission, geothermal energy, synthetic oil and gas, and solar power. “America moves on petroleum,” they observed, and a transition could not occur overnight. However, they concluded, “As long as oil remains our primary fuel, we are on a collision course with nature.” In coal, they saw a “key transitional fuel,” but worried about dangers it posed to workers and the land and air. They supported a cautious, continued development of nuclear energy, aware of the “great evil” of its misuse and accidents, such as the 1979 Three Mile Continued on Page 2a