The White House is getting ready to ease restrictions on industries designed to lower mercury rates and other toxins in the environment.
"It looks as if the administration is going totally in the tank with the utility industry, in a flat-out violation of the law," said David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We know this stuff is bad for kids, but they don't care."S. William Becker, executive director of two bipartisan associations of state environmental officials, called the administration proposal "an insult to public health and the environment."
"At a time when 41 states have fish-consumption advisories due to mercury poisoning, it is unconscionable that EPA is proposing to postpone and weaken regulatory protection," Becker said.
The United Methodist Social Principles offer one very good view of the shared responsibility we all have for God’s creation.
All creation is the Lord’s, and we are responsible for the ways in which we use and abuse it. Water, air, soil, minerals, energy resources, plants, animal life, and space are to be valued and conserved because they are God’s creation and not solely because they are useful to human beings. God has granted us stewardship of creation. We should meet these stewardship duties through acts of loving care and respect. Economic, political, social, and technological developments have increased our human numbers, lengthened and enriched our lives. However, these developments have led to regional defoliation, dramatic extinction of species, massive human suffering, overpopulation, misuse and over-consumption of natural and nonrenewable resources, particularly by industrialized societies. This continued course of action jeopardizes the natural heritage that God has entrusted to all generations. Therefore, let us recognize the responsibility of the church and its members to place a high priority on changes in economic, political, social, and technological lifestyle to support a more ecologically equitable and sustainable world leading to a higher quality of life for all of God’s creation.
