Remember 2003? What a whimsical time it was. Dictators were removed from power, missions were accomplished and, according to our government, the U.N. was a relic-slow to rise to the occasion and face the problem at hand in today’s day and age. I remember it like it was yesterday: The U.N. was holding us back, and we had to take action over the head of the delegation or be in danger of another catastrophe. The United States’ unprecedented preemptive action was the wave of the future.

My fellow Americans, consider yourselves lapped.

In an effort aimed at global action on the climate-change crisis, the United Nations held a summit this week regarding the issue at its headquarters in New York. The U.N. joins the long line of national and international organizations to meet and support a solution to the causes of climate change. In a similar effort earlier this month Pope Benedict XVI spoke out encouraging world leaders to take action on environmental issues “before it is too late.”

If you know anything about church history, you know that the church rarely embraces new and risky science, so that means that either this pope is taking a new and dangerous stance-which isn’t likely-or that global warming has reached a point of such scientific consensus that Benedict could be playing it safe and still speak out against global warming causes-which is more likely and particularly embarrassing for the situation here.

Meanwhile in the United States, governmental action is essentially non-existent, except for an increase in fuel standards by 2020. Furthermore, there is “debate” over the very reality of climate change; some still contend that it is not the result of human action or that it’s a hoax altogether. So, it has finally happened. The U.N. and the Vatican have both taken a more progressive stance on an issue than the U.S. government. An organization with so many voices and councils-by nature slow and cumbersome-and the head of a religious body whose role is essentially to be the orthodox voice in Western Christianity came out before our government in support of stopping global warming. Hell would freeze over, if everything else wasn’t already warming.

Granted, making these statements won’t harm the U.N. or the pope; they have no industries to be hampered by carbon restrictions. And granted, it is easier for me to say this since my family doesn’t work for auto or oil companies-although if my family worked for an American auto industry and my last name wasn’t Ford, I doubt I’d be able to pay SLU’s tuition. But doesn’t a conviction previously reached by numerous scientific organizations, now agreed upon by both the global representation of 192 countries and God’s appointed head of roughly one billion Catholics worldwide speak volumes about how far behind we are here?

The ranking member and former chairman of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), is a man who has publicly asserted that claims of climate change are a diabolical conspiracy, promoted by the scientific community and groups such as the Weather Channel; he has even gone so far as to compare it to the “Big Lie” of Nazi Germany. Shouldn’t we as Americans question whether we get our information regarding science from scientists or congressmen and pundits? Who would you rather trust: the pope or congressmen who get (in Inhofe’s case) $304,156 in contributions for the 1999-2004 election cycle from oil and gas companies?

My point is this: There was a time in our recent history when the Bush administration, Congress and the majority of U.S. citizens believed it was important for us to supersede the U.N., for our safety. Yet now, we are behind the U.N., Vatican, scientific organizations worldwide and the 175 nations that signed the Kyoto Protocol on an issue that affects not only our safety but the safety of the entire world. The worst part is that we have long been the world’s largest greenhouse-gas producer. It scares me that we are so willingly behind the rest of the world on an issue that is potentially so catastrophic. It should probably scare you, too.

Brian Laczko is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences.