{"id":11234,"date":"2015-06-18T17:08:46","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T00:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=11234"},"modified":"2015-06-18T17:07:44","modified_gmt":"2015-06-19T00:07:44","slug":"an-evangelical-response-to-the-popes-landmark-climate-change-encyclical-bradcast-6182015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=11234","title":{"rendered":"An Evangelical Response to the Pope&#8217;s Landmark Climate Change Encyclical: &#8216;BradCast&#8217; 6\/18\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/BradCast_PopeFrancis_Hands_061815.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">We start today&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/BradCast\"><i>BradCast<\/i><\/a> with the latest grim news out of Charleston, South Carolina after Wednesday night&#8217;s horrific gun massacre at the historic African Methodist Episcopal Church &#8212; and word that the suspected gunman has now been apprehended.<\/p>\n<p>Then, things brighten up a bit with our coverage of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/06\/19\/world\/europe\/pope-francis-in-sweeping-encyclical-calls-for-swift-action-on-climate-change.html?_r=0\">landmark encyclical<\/a> on the environment, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/acts-of-faith\/wp\/2015\/06\/18\/10-key-excerpts-from-pope-franciss-encyclical-on-the-environment\/\">issued today by Pope Francis<\/a>, who calls for &#8220;a bold cultural revolution&#8221; in response to the moral imperative of fighting climate change &#8220;due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases released mainly as a result of human activity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My guest to discuss it is Rev. Mitchell C. Hescox, President and CEO of the <a href=\"http:\/\/creationcare.org\">Evangelical Environmental Network<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Hescox, a Republican who has testified before Congress and spoken at the White House, offers his key takeaways from the Pope&#8217;s historic <a href=\"http:\/\/w2.vatican.va\/content\/francesco\/en\/encyclicals\/documents\/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html\">184-page teaching letter<\/a> and explains his organization&#8217;s fight for climate action, and how other evangelicals and fellow Republicans must once again join the fight. &#8220;We see ourselves as a bridge between many Republicans,&#8221; he tells me, &#8220;to help them understand that climate change is not about polar bears. It&#8217;s about our children. It&#8217;s not about a future event. It&#8217;s about what&#8217;s happening now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We do have to have a price on carbon,&#8221; Hescox explains. &#8220;There is no ifs, ands or buts in anybody&#8217;s mind that the fossil fuel industry has put the cost of fossil fuel energy into the lives of each of our children and they&#8217;ve taken the profits. And, as a conservative, that&#8217;s not fair. That&#8217;s not even true market economics.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He believes &#8220;a Republican cannot win the White House unless he talks about climate change&#8221; and that it&#8217;s &#8220;something which the Republican Party has to deal with.&#8221; Hescox tells me he hopes (&#8220;prays&#8221;, actually) that the Pope&#8217;s encyclical &#8220;will be another step forward in empowering the world to act together to solve what we like to say is the greatest moral challenge of our generation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Plus: After Rush Limbaugh pathetically attempts to smear Pope Francis as a &#8220;Marxist&#8221; for hoping to save humanity, we offer definitive, irrefutable, water-tight evidence that the extremist rightwing radio host is an unrepentant liar and hypocrite on the topics of both climate change <i>and<\/i> &#8220;Marxism&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_PopeEncyclical_RevMitchHescox_SCChurchShooting_061815.mp3\">Download MP3<\/a> or listen online below&#8230;<\/i><br \/>\n[audio:http:\/\/bradblog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_PopeEncyclical_RevMitchHescox_SCChurchShooting_061815.mp3]<\/blockquote>\n<p><center><b>* * *<\/b><\/center><i>While we post <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><\/i>The BradCast<i><\/a> here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they&#8217;re available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/id803467610\">iTunes<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/stitcher.com\/s\/player.php?fid=25838&#038;src=psl\">Stitcher<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/The-BradCast-with-Brad-Friedman-p477565\/\">TuneIn<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/podcastgen\/bradcast\/feed.xml\">our native RSS feed<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-START--><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f0e0; border:2px solid #6b5a2e; border-radius:6px; padding:10px 14px; text-align:center; font-family:Georgia,serif;\"><span style=\"display:block; margin:0 0 8px 0; color:#3a2e0e; font-size:0.95em; line-height:1.5;\"><strong>The BRAD BLOG<\/strong>, <em>The BradCast<\/em> and <em>Green News Report<\/em> are all 100% independent and 100% listener and reader supported!<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\" style=\"display:inline-block; background:#6b5a2e; color:#ffffff; padding:6px 18px; border-radius:4px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:0.9em;\">Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-END--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We start today&#8217;s BradCast with the latest grim news out of Charleston, South Carolina after Wednesday night&#8217;s horrific gun massacre at the historic African Methodist Episcopal Church &#8212; and word that the suspected gunman has now been apprehended. Then, things brighten up a bit with our coverage of the landmark encyclical on the environment, as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,675,543,200,477,551,762,300,126,307,248],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-11234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-climate-change","category-environment","category-kpfk","category-nra","category-pope-francis","category-republicans","category-rights-and-freedoms","category-rush-limbaugh","category-south-carolina"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11234"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=11234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}