The non-binding plan promises a federal jobs guarantee, as well as other Democratic goals like a family wage, adequate family leave, paid vacations and a secure retirement as well as universal health care.
Any proposal is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate. The resolution could play a role in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not give Green New Deal backers the committee leadership they wanted. She told Politico their proposal is "one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive."
For Capizzi, environmental politics should be motivated by the goodness of creation.
"The starting point for Jewish-Christian approaches to the environment is the Hebrew Bible's teaching that God created the world, and then, at different stages but before humans are created, we are told he viewed his creation as 'good'."
These things that God names "good" include "the creation of land and gathering of waters, the fecundity of the earth, (and) the creation of sea and land and flying creatures." The creation of humans is "a part of the story of God's creation of a universe he names as good and within which humanity lives."
"This is the starting point for Christian reflection," Capizzi told CNA. To this is added the "classic notion of justice" expressed in the imperative "give to each what he or she is due."
"We are to give God his due by giving his good creation its due. We do this in our relationships as human beings, but we do this as well in our relationship with the creation of which we are a part – even if a special part."
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have an Environmental Justice Program, under the conference's Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development. It draws from St. John Paul II's 1990 World Day of Peace message, the U.S. bishops' Nov. 14, 1991 pastoral statement "Renewing the Earth," as well as encyclicals such as Pope Francis' 2015 Laudato si'.
The bishops make some policy recommendations about environmental laws and regulations. They opposed the Trump administration's June 2017 withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, which aimed to combat climate change and global warming through reducing carbon dioxide emissions. They said they objected to a March 2017 executive order from President Donald Trump that rescinded and weakened many environmental protections.
They have backed a national carbon emission standard and other carbon mitigation goals.
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Kevin J. Jones is a senior staff writer with Catholic News Agency. He was a recipient of a 2014 Catholic Relief Services' Egan Journalism Fellowship.