“the United States’ shunned the opportunity to take on any sort of leadership role over the looming problem of climate change, a reality so problematic that the Department of Defense is openly worried about the consequences.  Instead, the U.S. banded with a small cadre of four oil-dominated nations (including Saudi Arabia) and objected to the recent damning UN climate report. The U.S. then led a well-publicized event at the negotiations, in which it promoted the continued burning of coal — the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. Protestors laughed and booed during the presentation. “We’re clearly losing the position of leadership in relation to climate,” Paul Sabin, an associate professor of environmental history at Yale University, said in an interview. “My impression is that the global community is deeply mystified and greatly shocked by the U.S.’s position.”” https://buff.ly/2Q2asF5

Notice the qualifier “ANY SORT of” on leadership, since the U.S. has long held a “sort of -kind of” style of leadership in that SOME Presidents have paid lip service to promising “necessary” action on our predicament, all the while continuing on its merry way in promoting further fossil fuel extraction and burning. It is , indeed, CRIMINAL to also eschew the predicament to the extent of denial. To ridicule the notion of urgent action is simply ideological dogma now. That so many church folks are joining in on that ridicule is actually blasphemous. To reject the God given purpose for humanity : “To till and to keep” (Genesis 2:15) is to reject God’s purposes from the get-go.