Ian Ellis: The US must be part of urgent response to climate crisis

Now that Mr Trump has declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, and in the wake of decidedly lacklustre results for the Republican party in the November mid-term congressional elections, it is clear that his appeal has declined.

That in turn has given rise to speculation that former Vice-President Pence may be one of his challengers, along with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

It is difficult to see how Mike Pence could have been truly at ease with Donald Trump.

Indeed, it did come to a crunch day, when the vice-president went his way and left the president to his own devices.

That day was January 6, 2021.

Speaking recently to the American CBS on the subject of his new book, 'So Help Me God', Mike Pence was blunt.

He said: “The president's words and actions in and around January 6 were reckless.”

The former vice-president said that his family and other people in the Capitol building had been endangered by an “indefensible” tweet Mr Trump had sent that day.

Election-denying Donald Trump had tweeted at 2.24pm, while the riot at the Capitol was in progress, that “Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution”.

In fact, Mr Pence had believed, before January 6, that Donald Trump might change his approach and accept the results of the election.

The former vice-president recalled a meeting at the White House on the night of January 4 and pointed out: “I did tell the president many times that after he exhausted every legal challenge that the campaign had every right to pursue, that he should simply accept the results. My hope was that at the end of the day he would come around.”

However, perhaps more ominously for Mr Trump, the former vice-present went on to say he believed that in due course the American people would “hold accountable those that permitted circumstances around which January 6 was able to flourish into violence”.

It is not entirely clear how, if he were to become the next US president, Mr Pence would approach the current climate crisis which is the subject of annual COP meetings (Conference of Parties of the 197 nations agreeing to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).

When Mr Trump was president and Mr Pence was vice-president, the Trump administration withdrew the US from the crucial 2015 COP Paris agreement on climate change mitigation.

However, swiftly after his election as president in 2020, Joe Biden signed up the US once more to the Paris accord.

It seems unlikely that Mr Pence would withdraw again as he has acknowledged both the reality of climate change and the need to follow the science.

The latest COP meeting at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt ran into serious difficulties and, after overrunning by two days, failed to make a clear commitment to the phasing out of all fossil fuels, although it did agree to the establishment of a fund through which developed countries will pay the poorer nations for damage and losses caused by climate change.

Peter Pavlovic, a staff member of the Conference of European Churches, of which the Church of Ireland and the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches in Ireland are full members, has commented on the role of religion in helping forward the climate rescue effort.

He writes: “Churches and faith communities are increasingly visible in the process. Climate change and a sustainable future are not limited to tasks for politics, business and industry.

"These are existential concerns, determined also by ethical choices and preferences. Religions have much to contribute.”

Mr Pavlovic sees the joint voice of the churches, “comprising of the diverse experience of all continents, as well as concerns of indigenous communities”, as part of a concerted effort presented at Sharm el-Sheikh.

Many in the American Republican party are outright climate sceptics, but there is a growing number of Republican politicians supporting moves to protect the environment by tackling the climate issue.

In a recent report, Robinson Meyer, a writer with The Atlantic, pointed out that a group known as the American Conservation Coalition has helped establish new “pro-climate efforts” in the Republican party in view of the need to reach the voters of the future.

Then again, the Washington based Pew Research organisation has found that most US adults, including “a solid majority of Christians”, consider the Earth to be sacred and believe that humanity has a God-given duty to care for it.

That is a reassuring finding but there still remains an immense global challenge to take the necessary steps to care for the environment.

According to UNICEF, Pakistan's severe flooding last June, which killed over 1,700 people, washed away villages and left “almost 10 million children in need of immediate, lifesaving support” and hundreds of thousands of homes, along with many public health facilities, destroyed or damaged.

Tearfund reported that a third of the country was under water.

Whatever the future holds in America, the world needs it to be part of an urgent international response to today's deeply concerning climate crisis.

l Canon Ian Ellis is a former editor of The Church of Ireland Gazette.