Sustainable Decisions: Catholic Perspectives on Enforcing American CO2 Laws

One of my 3L students, Ivan London, a non-Catholic, wrote an interesting paper (title above) applying – as an academic exercise – Catholic perspectives to questions surrounding the environment and economic growth.  He focused on the controversy surrounding Sunflower Electric’s plan to build new coal-fired plants (the Holcomb Expansion) in western Kansas. Kansas’ governor three times vetoed legislative action to approve the project.  His paper

focuses on the difficult decisions facing legislators and adjudicators who seek to regulate or to willfully refuse to regulate the pollution caused by energy production. Legislators and adjudicators not only will make many tough decisions, but also they must make these decisions. On the one hand, modern society demands production and consumption of energy and energy should not only be available to the wealthiest members of society. On the other hand, the processes that create energy often also create pollution. This paper will provide a decision framework that is founded upon “the transcendent and common nature of humanity,” giving primary consideration to the Catholic Church’s recent commentary.

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The Catholic Church has frequently commented on economic development and environmental protection in the past two years. In October 2007 and February 2008, Archbishop Celestino Migliore addressed sustainable economic development before the United Nations General Assembly. Pope Benedict XVI included a discussion of environmental protection in his “Papal Message for ’08 World Peace Day.” … Recently, Pope Benedict Addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations on his apostolic journey to the United States, and the Holy See submitted a Note to the United Nations Trade and Development Conference in Accra, Ghana. While not exhaustive, this list shows that environmental protection and economic development stand at the forefront of modern Catholic dialogue.

A fundamental approach to solving [the Holcomb Expansion question] pervades the Catholic Church’s commentary. The approach requires that the parties involved remove the antagonism from the problem. Too often, as illustrated in Kansas, parties embrace either economic development or environmental protection as warring opposites. “Protecting the environment implies a more positive vision of the human being, in the sense that the person is not considered a nuisance or a threat to the environment, but one who holds oneself responsible for the care and management of the environment.” Statement by H.E. Archbishop Celestino Migliore Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy See, 62nd Session United Nations General Assembly ¶2 (Oct. 29, 2007). Legislators and adjudicators must approach economic development and environmental protection in human terms.

Economic development and environmental protection do not compete solely to the battlegrounds of reason; they are matters of love for humanity. See Randy Lee, Epilogue, in Recovering Self-Evident Truths: Catholic Perspectives on American Law, supra 341.

More specifically, environmental protection and economic development reflect integral components of the human being, the family, and the community. In the Catholic legal tradition, legal analysis should start with the proposition that “the infinite value of the human person” is the keystone self-evident truth. Lorenzo Albacete, A Theological Anthropology of the Human Person, in Recovering Self-Evident Truths. In this light, “economic development” is a misnomer. “Economic development” is not about developing an economy. Rather, economic development “is about the development of the human being” in the families and communities in which the human lives. Holy See Secretariat of State, Note to U.N. Trade and Development Conference 5 (Apr. 24, 2008). “[D]evelopment is not a target to reach; it is rather a path to follow: we can say that there is true development when persons are put in a position to follow their most important desires and ends.”

Id.

London continues his analysis applying the doctrines of solidarity and subsidiarity, recognizing the need for state-wide and regional coordination while rejecting the Kansas legislature’s unsuccessful attempt at a cram-down.  In his view Rod Bremby’s (Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment) “decision, after long deliberation with the Holcomb Expansion’s proponents, the KDHE staff, the Kansas governor, and the Kansas attorney general, represents the careful weighing of economic development and environmental protection urged by both the Catholic Church and the U.S. Supreme Court [Mass. v. EPA, 127 S.Ct. 1438, 1463 (2007)]. The Kansas legislature’s kneejerk, bullying reaction is the opposite.”

Any reaction?