Best progressive Rhode Island headline of the day comes courtesy of the Huffington Post: “Sheldon Whitehouse: God Won’t Save Us From Climate Catastrophe” Michael McCauliff’s lede was pretty great too.
WASHINGTON — God will not save us, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) declared in a Senate floor speech on climate change Wednesday that sounded more like a sermon than a political appeal.
It’s great not only because because it’s pretty undeniable logic – “If we believe in an all-powerful God, then we must then believe that God gave us this earth, and we must in turn believe that God gave us its laws of gravity, of chemistry, of physics,” he said – but also because it turns the entire debate around:
“Hope for a nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly — that’s not aligned with either history or the text of the Bible. How arrogant — how very far from humility — would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us God will come and clean up our mess?”
You can watch the whole speech below, but make sure you read and/or watch MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tie Sheldon’s speech in with the GOP effort to block Obama’s appointment to head the EPA.