Mid-City Christian: nuclear weapons are a climate justice issue

Thursday, September 8, 2022

nuclear weapons are a climate justice issue

Threatening all creation, nuclear weapons are a climate justice issue, too

Last week marked the beginning of the 2022 Season of Creation, the ecumenical period of prayer, reflection and action that begins on Sept. 1 and continues until the feast of St. Francis of Assisi on Oct. 4. While reflecting on the importance of this season, columnist Dan Horan, OFM found himself returning to the words of Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico in his pastoral letter, "Living in the Light of Christ's Peace: A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament," penned at the beginning of this year and centered on the ever-threatening reality of nuclear weapons in the United States and abroad.

Inspired by Wester, Horan sees the need to work toward nuclear disarmament as related to the need to address global climate change. “If global climate change is the slow-motion destruction of habitable conditions on this planet,” he writes, “then nuclear war is just that accelerated to an incomprehensible speed. They are also both the responsibility of humanity, for it has been our anthropocentrism and hubris, our greed for wealth and power, our obsession with control and domination that have led to these twin catastrophes. They are two species of the same destructive genus.”