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Many religious and indigenous traditions express the need for humanity’s care for creation and concern about the dangers of climate change. They call upon “respect for the ecological integrity and the sacredness of the natural world” and for humanity “to relate to Earth as God’s creation in ways that sustain life on the planet and provide for the needs of all humankind”, for “irresponsible stewardship of the Earth and global warming threaten the pacific coexistence of mankind.”

Climate change is harming peoples and communities now, and will have severe impacts upon our children and future generations and national security. As such, it is far more than just an environmental issue, but one in which we all share. Such impacts will become more severe and in some cases irreversible, if our nation’s leaders chose not to discuss the issue, much less propose and enact the necessary solutions needed to unleash the human potential capable of solving this preventable crisis.

This coming fiscal year, the United States is set to spend more than $640 billion dollars on the Pentagon and war, accounting for more than 60 percent of federal domestic spending. In excess of $85 billion of that will be spent on the war in Afghanistan alone.

This unfathomable amount of money was approved by the House of Representatives in the National Defense Authorization Act. These funds will serve to bring suffering and pain to innocent people, further militarize the world and undermine peace and stability for generations to come—all on the backs of those who struggle at home.

All 535 members of Congress are now on the record declaring that they have not authorized the use of military force against Iran in the latest round of legislation passed in the House and the Senate. This unanimous 'un-declaration' of war from Congress is a crucial victory, with particular significance given its passage on the eve of the U.S.-Iran talks in Baghdad.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed its plan to spare the Pentagon from mandatory cuts by instead slashing food stamps, Medicaid, and other programs for people in the U.S. who are struggling.

In order to stave off the first $50 billion in reductions to Pentagon growth required under the Budget Control Act, the House proposed to slice $261 billion from investments in our communities over the next decade. Our budget lobbyist, Ruth Flower, has more analysis of what was in the House proposal.

Last night, the House Rules Committee ruled the McGovern/Jones amendment out of order, preventing it from coming to the House floor today as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The amendment would have required the U.S. to expedite transition plans, end combat operations no later than December 2013 and ensure a limited or nonexistent U.S. military presence in Afghanistan after December, 2014. Last year, Representatives Jim McGovern (MA) and Walter Jones (NC) offered a similar amendment, which failed by a hair: 204-215. It was the most impressive display of congressional opposition to the war to date. This year, the amendment’s rejection by the Rules Committee was an indication that it would have likely passed had it seen the House floor. Rep. McGovern, a member of the Rules Committee, protested the decision for over an hour at the Rules Committee meeting late last night.

Despite poll after poll showing overwhelming public support for ending the war in Afghanistan across all party affiliations, the Rules Committee made the political choice to avoid this telling vote during an election cycle. Representatives whose constituents have been calling for the war to end now won’t have to make the choice between representing their war-weary constituents and acquiescing to a powerful, over-funded Pentagon.

When Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff for Secretary Colin Powell, and I were visiting with members of Congress and their staff to jointly oppose a resolution that would lower the threshold for war with Iran (H.Res. 568), he warned that “this resolution reads like the same sheet of music that got us into the Iraq war”.

One of the chief difficulties in addressing climate change is that we are all complicit in the propagation of the warming of our world. Even those of us who are seriously concerned about this issue play a substantial role in the problem.

I ride my bike to work as often as I can, but my bike tires and even much of my clothing comes from foreign factories powered by coal fired furnaces. According to Scientific American, Producing the annual beef diet of the average American emits as much greenhouse gas as a car driven more than 1,800 miles. Just being alive in the first world and reaping the benefits of the free market and all of the infrastructure that supports it makes it dang near impossible to live a life that is entirely removed from industrial carbon cycles.

We must act humbly, but with purpose. None of us are innocent, but the whole of humanity is charged with the responsibility of doing better. The hard fact is that the world will become warmer. Retroactively reducing atmospheric CO2 content to preindustrial levels is no longer an option. People will die of hunger, thirst, heat exhaustion, extreme weather events and in myriad resource shortage conflicts. People already do worldwide, everyday. But the frequency and severity of these events will increase in direct proportion with warming trends.