Catholics in the United States are "excited" and "pleased" with the "hopeful" document, though some doubt much will change.
Georgetown University is cutting coal from its $1.5 billion endowment, after its board of directors passed a resolution Thursday to cease all current and future direct investments.
The decision came after a more than yearlong conversation at the Washington, D.C.-based university, one largely prompted by students concerned with connecting the school’s Jesuit roots with the issue of climate change. It is the second U.S. Catholic college to divest from fossil fuels in some capacity, after the University of Dayton made the move last June.
Catholic organizations welcomed President Barack Obama's veto Tuesday of a bill approving an oil pipeline through the country's midsection, saying that it allows more opportunity to consider moral questions about the environment and climate change.
The founding director of the Catholic Climate Covenant told a Washington audience Feb. 9 that he hopes people can find unity around the need to stop and reverse climate change "because we are in deep trouble."
Analysis: Climate change has raised environmental activism from the category of "nice" things to do to that of "must do" for the sake of life itself.
Catholic working on environmental issues and climate change in the U.S. are eagerly awaiting the encyclical by Pope Francis on the environment.
Negotiators from nearly 200 countries struck a deal early Sunday morning in Lima, Peru, marking the first time that nations, large and small, developed and developing, agreed that each will make pledges aimed at cutting global greenhouse gas emissions.
The agreement, known as the Lima Accord, concluded two days after the scheduled end of the two-week (Dec. 1-12) negotiations, held among delegates representing 196 countries at the United Nations’ annual climate change conference, formally known as the 20th Conference of the Parties.
About the time in June that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency introduced a plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, Martha Huckabay and her neighbors in St. Rose, La., began to smell a foul odor from a chemical storage facility near their home.
Ten years ago Marianist Sr. Leanne Jablonski experienced a “face to face” epiphany about the realities of climate change. She was teaching at Chaminade University of Honolulu, one of her religious community’s schools.
“We already knew the ice was melting,” recalled Jablonski, who holds a doctorate in global climate change and plant physiological ecology from McGill University in Montreal.
Collection baskets, fish fries and charity auctions are common ways Catholics financially support their parishes. In Stockton, Calif., they can now add solar power to the list.
On Saturday, the Stockton diocese officially launched a new project aimed at spreading solar energy in the community, while at the same time reducing electricity bills and raising funds for the local church.