By Joseph Bonasia
Pope Francis wrote in “Laudato Si’,” his encyclical about humankind’s relationship with the natural world, “We must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures.”
I wonder if members of the Endangered Species Committee have read the pope’s landmark document.
The committee met March 31 to unanimously approve an exemption for the oil and gas industry to drill in the Gulf of Mexico and knowingly placed the critically endangered Rice’s whale (and other species) at grave risk of extinction.
It is because of fateful decisions like this that the committee is often referred to as the God Squad.
“In our time, the Church does not simply state that other creatures are completely subordinated to the good of human beings, as if they have no worth in themselves,” Pope Francis taught.
Yet this is what the God Squad did. Until it met, the Endangered Species Act required all federal agencies to ensure activities in the Gulf were not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of endangered species or destroy or adversely modify habitats critical to their survival.
The committee — composed of the secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture departments and the Army, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, and the administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — determined the exception to the Endangered Species Act was needed for national security.
Department of War (formerly the Department of Defense) Secretary Pete Hegseth said America needs the energy oil provides and the act threatens oil and gas exploration in the Gulf. But President Doanld Trump has been dead set on undermining the act and promoting “Drill, baby, drill” policies since the first day of his current term. These policies will worsen our climate crisis.
The claim of national security is a transparent excuse for circumventing one of America’s most effective environmental laws for protecting species and the ecosystems they depend upon. There are only 51 Rice’s whales left, and they reside year-round in the Gulf.
Because of human beings, Pope Francis said, “thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence or convey their message to us. We have no such right.”
But the God Squad, which did not gather information from experts as past committees did, exercised its authority to potentially cast a species into extinction. The meeting lasted a mere 30 minutes.
“Is it realistic,” Pope Francis asked rhetorically, “to think that those who are obsessed with maximizing profits will stop to reflect on the environmental damage which they will leave behind for future generations?”
No one should be surprised by this decision. President Trump has dramatically rolled back environmental protections on “a record-breaking pace to wreck the planet.”
“Each creature,” Francis emphasized, “has its own purpose. None is superfluous. God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel … the extinction of species as a painful disfigurement” of Creation.
Last year’s bestselling novel “Wild Dark Shore,” by Charlotte McConaghy, is set in the not-too-distant future when irreversible impacts of climate change have set in. But the tragedy of this global crisis is most keenly expressed through a past event, not a future one.
“We all feel it here. The blood spilled,” one character tells another, referring to the ungodly slaughter of millions of penguins, which were easily clubbed to death and boiled in giant digesters that extracted oil from their blubber, muscles and bones. (Many were likely boiled alive.)
The incident is based on operations that occurred in the late 1800s and early 1900s. For Joseph Hatch, the man mostly responsible, it was all about making money, and his greed drove king penguins to the brink of extinction. Only an international outcry stopped the slaughter.
“Don’t you think there should be a price to pay?” the outraged character asks.
Disregarding overwhelming scientific evidence, the Trump administration pursues short-sighted, greed-driven, disastrous environmental policies for which we, unfortunately, are already paying a bitter price and for which future generations will pay more so.
In his declaration making May 1 National Prayer Day, President Trump says he “will never waver … in protecting God in our public square.”
God doesn’t need Donald Trump’s protection. But the natural world needs protection from Donald Trump. Voters can provide that protection in the midterm elections.
Joseph Bonasia is a board member of the SWFL RESET Center. Banner photo: An offshore drilling platform at sunset in the Gulf (iStock image).
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