ENERGY AND CLIMATE DEBATE -

After a busy week with Yom Kippur and visits from Pope Francis and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Congress is focusing this week on finalizing a continuing resolution and preparing for new House Republican leadership in the wake of Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) retirement announcement.

While in D.C. last week, Pope Francis addressed a joint session of Congress Thursday morning during which he delivered a strong climate message. He also met with President Obama, and made an address from the White House, applauding the Administration’s clean air efforts and discussing the moral imperative to be good environmental stewards, before traveling to New York to speak to the United Nations. He urged global leaders to negotiate an effective climate agreement in Paris at the end of the year and said that failure to protect the environment could threaten the existence of the human species, as the two are so tightly tied together. He reiterated many of the themes of Laudato Si, calling on humans to protect “our common house” by aggressively addressing climate change, which is key to lifting citizens around the world out of poverty.