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steps to overcome the legacy of injustice, including vigorous action to remove
barriers to education, protect voting rights, support good policing in our com-
munities, and ensure equal employment for women and minorities.
Care for Our Common Home
86.
Care for Creation
is a moral issue. Protecting the land, water, and air we
share is a religious duty of stewardship and reflects our responsibility to born
and unborn children, who are most vulnerable to environmental assault. We
must answer the question that Pope Francis posed to the world: “What kind
of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are
now growing up?” (
Laudato Si’
, no. 160). There are many concrete steps we
can take to assure justice and solidarity between the generations. Effective ini-
tiatives are required for energy conservation and the development of alternate,
renewable, and clean-energy resources. Our Conference offers a distinctive
call to seriously address
global climate change
, focusing on the virtue of pru-
dence, pursuit of the common good, and the impact on the poor, particularly
on vulnerable workers and the poorest nations. The United States should lead
in contributing to the sustainable development of poorer nations and promot-
ing greater justice in sharing the burden of environmental blight, neglect,
and recovery. It is important that we address the rising number of migrants
who are uprooted from their homeland as a consequence of environmental
degradation and climate change. They are not currently recognized as refugees
under any existing international convention and are thus not afforded legal
protections that ought to be due to them.
Our nation’s efforts to reduce poverty should not be associated with
demeaning and sometimes coercive population control programs. Such an
approach is condemned by Pope Francis:
Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking
of how the world can be different, some can only propose a
reduction in the birth rate. At times, developing countries
face forms of international pressure which make economic
assistance contingent on certain policies of “reproductive
health.” Yet “while it is true that an unequal distribution of
the population and of available resources creates obstacles
to development and a sustainable use of the environment,