Theology of Catholic Environmentalism, Part 1

Rick Santorum
on Face the Nation

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who is a fellow Catholic, recently spoke out nationally on CBS's Face the Nation against President Barack Obama’s stated climate concerns, claiming they expose the president's “phony theology.” According to this post at ThinkProgress Green, Santorum said on the CBS Sunday morning program that Obama's acceptance of climate scientists' warnings about the danger of global warming is a "worldview that elevates the Earth above man."

Santorum's full quote is:

When you have a worldview that elevates the Earth above man and says that we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the Earth; by things that frankly are just not scientifically proven, for example, the politicization of the whole global warming debate — this is all an attempt to, you know, to centralize power and to give more power to the government.

I object to what Santorum said on factual grounds as well as on practical grounds, but most importantly I dissent from him on theological grounds.

Re: my objections on factual grounds, see Global Warming Real After All, Says Former Scientific Skeptic to learn why even scientists who have been climate skeptics are coming around to the view that man-made global warming is not a bogeyman concocted by liberals as an excuse to give the government more power.

As for practical considerations, consider for example the ultra-deep Texas Drought of 2011. It was, I believe, an example of "global weirding," in which global warming is causing major changes in normal weather patterns. Some regions are getting heavier floods, others deeper droughts, others vanishing snowpacks and ice sheets, and yet others hurricanes and tropical storms in greater quantity and severity than ever before. Whatever God one believes in — if any — one would be foolish to ignore the practical problems climate change will pose for us all.

Basics of a Theology of Catholic Environmentalism

But I want to talk now mostly about the theology of climate change and environmental concern.

First of all, let me admit that many environmentalists often seem to "elevate the earth above man." I think the debate, though, is truly about the relationship that humankind has, or ought to have, with the earth — where "the earth" is taken to be synonymous with "nature" in general. My interest is in what Catholic theology has to say about this relationship. It is a relationship that depends, first and foremost, on humankind's relationship with our Creator, God, since God made the natural world and (through biological evolution) us.

Right away I want to register my skepticism that "elevating the earth above man" is really the aim of most environmentalists, as Santorum seems to suggest. Rather, my belief is that they — we — want to keep man's dominion over nature from turning into a disaster for both nature and man. That requires us to revolutionize our present stance with respect to nature, it is true. But it does not require us to elevate nature above legitimate human concerns. And it does not require us to replace standard religious doctrine with "phony theology."

As I begin investigating Catholic ideas about our proper relationship to nature, I hope to find support for my idea that it contradicts our basic theological commitments as Catholics if we ignore, sidestep, or minimize pressing environmental concerns. In particular, I'm hoping to discover through this inquiry that our Church's doctrine, with its customary grounding in natural law à la the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, furnishes a solid basis for a truly Catholic environmentalism.

However, before turning to Aquinas, I'd like to examine the basics.

Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Holy Bible

I'll start with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Under the heading "Respect for the Integrity of Creation" we find:

2415 The seventh commandment ["You shall not steal"] enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future humanity.[194] Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Man's dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation.[195]

Footnote 194 refers to Genesis 1:28-31 in the Holy Bible. For the sake of context, I'll cite those verses preceded by the previous pair:

26 

Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth. 

27 

God created mankind in his image;
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them. 

28 

God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth. 

29 

God also said: See, I give you every seed-bearing plant on all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food; 

30 

and to all the wild animals, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the earth, I give all the green plants for food. And so it happened. 

31 

God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed—the sixth day.

(This citation is from The New American Bible, Revised Edition, online here at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops website.)

"Being fertile." "Multiplying." "Filling the earth." "Subduing" it. "Having dominion" over it. It is here in scripture that these well-known divine commands are laid down. Clearly, humankind is given certain rights and responsibilities as the stewards of creation.

This, then, is not the same as viewing humanity as immersed in and indistinguishable from the natural order. Words like "subdue" and "dominion" make clear that other living things are not our equals. They are not at all the brother and sister creatures that some spiritual outlooks other than the Judeo-Christian may posit.

Yet, as the passage from the Catechism shows, there is a high level of respect due from us to other living things and toward nature. We have moral imperatives here, and our right of dominion is "limited by concern for the quality of life of [our] neighbor, including generations to come." If we abuse the gifts of nature, we harm our "neighbor," our posterity, and by extension our own selves.

Centesimus Annus

Footnote 198 of the Catechism passage refers to Centesimus Annus, Latin for "Hundredth Year," an encyclical written by Pope John Paul II in 1991 on the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum. (The latter means "Of New Things." It is an encyclical written by Pope Leo XIII and issued on May 15, 1891.)

According to Wikipedia, Centesimus Annus "specifically examined contemporaneous political and economic issues" — most notably by presenting "a refutation of Marxist/communist ideology and a condemnation of the dictatorial regimes that practiced it" — and it "also expound[ed] on issues of social and economic justice."

John Paul II used Centesimus Annus to object to the rampant consumerism he abhorred in capitalist societies. In the passage cited by the Catechism footnote, he continued that thought by saying:

37. Equally worrying is the ecological question which accompanies the problem of consumerism and which is closely connected to it. In his desire to have and to enjoy rather than to be and to grow, man consumes the resources of the earth and his own life in an excessive and disordered way. At the root of the senseless destruction of the natural environment lies an anthropological error, which unfortunately is widespread in our day. Man, who discovers his capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through his own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of the things that are. Man thinks that he can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to his will, as though it did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which man can indeed develop but must not betray. Instead of carrying out his role as a co-operator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by him. 

In all this, one notes first the poverty or narrowness of man's outlook, motivated as he is by a desire to possess things rather than to relate them to the truth, and lacking that disinterested, unselfish and aesthetic attitude that is born of wonder in the presence of being and of the beauty which enables one to see in visible things the message of the invisible God who created them. In this regard, humanity today must be conscious of its duties and obligations towards future generations. 

38. In addition to the irrational destruction of the natural environment, we must also mention the more serious destruction of the human environment, something which is by no means receiving the attention it deserves. Although people are rightly worried — though much less than they should be — about preserving the natural habitats of the various animal species threatened with extinction, because they realize that each of these species makes its particular contribution to the balance of nature in general, too little effort is made to safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic "human ecology". Not only has God given the earth to man, who must use it with respect for the original good purpose for which it was given to him, but man too is God's gift to man. He must therefore respect the natural and moral structure with which he has been endowed. In this context, mention should be made of the serious problems of modern urbanization, of the need for urban planning which is concerned with how people are to live, and of the attention which should be given to a "social ecology" of work. 

Man receives from God his essential dignity and with it the capacity to transcend every social order so as to move towards truth and goodness. But he is also conditioned by the social structure in which he lives, by the education he has received and by his environment. These elements can either help or hinder his living in accordance with the truth. The decisions which create a human environment can give rise to specific structures of sin which impede the full realization of those who are in any way oppressed by them. To destroy such structures and replace them with more authentic forms of living in community is a task which demands courage and patience.

(Underlined phrases above reflect italics in the original document.)

Environmentalists will generally agree with the late John Paul II that each of us typically "consumes the resources of the earth ... in an excessive and disordered way." We simply mustn't, says John Paul II, "make arbitrary use of the earth" in that way, because in doing so we traduce "God's prior and original gift of the things that are."

When this distinguished pope says, "Instead of carrying out his role as a co-operator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by him," he sounds like a radical environmentalist. This impression is augmented by his insistence on a "human ecology" which includes, he says, the need to offset the ravages of modern urbanization via urban planning. It also includes due concern for the "social ecology" of work.

Therein, possibly, lies a problem for the theology of Catholic environmentalism. "Work" includes, first and foremost in a modern capitalist economy like ours, what we do for a living: our jobs. Our jobs, many of them, help produce and deliver economic goods and services to feed our consumerist inclinations.

If we are to construct a "human environment" which would satisfy the ideals of Centesimus Annus, one thing we must do is to stop destroying and exhausting the "resources of the earth" — we must, in today's phrase, "go green." But doing so threatens our gross domestic product and our jobs. Car engines, to take one fairly recent example, once used carburetors. Today's engines use fuel injection, by virtue of which they burn less fuel. The switchover, which thankfully has already taken place, put people who made carburetors out of work. The GDP no longer includes carburetor production.

There are a lot of switchovers like that still to come, though, if we go green.

If "the truth" is that we need to go green, our being wedded to jobs and ingrained consumption patterns that "hinder [our] living in accordance with the truth" is a tall hurdle we'll need to leap. Yes, indeed, Your Late Holiness, there's no getting around it: "To destroy such structures and replace them with more authentic forms of living in community is a task which demands courage and patience."

One aspect of the courage that is needed is for us Catholics, Rick Santorum included, to accept that due concern for climate change is anything but "phony theology." In no way does it "elevate the Earth above man." In no way do we, if we are good Catholics, have the right to look the other way as humankind impoverishes Mother Nature.

Catholics, Contraception, and Conscience

Now that we've had — and are still having — the brouhaha over whether quasi-religious institutions — Catholic-run schools, hospitals, universities, charities — ought to be exempt from the federal mandate to provide employees with health insurance that covers contraception without copays or deductibles, I'd like to look at what the brouhaha was all about in the first place.

Particularly, why do Catholic bishops oppose contraception? I've seen little in the standard news coverage and opinion writing that tells that story at its fullest.

Unfortunately, I myself am no authority on the matter. I can offer but a partial answer to readers, so check me on all I am about to write.

As a person who came into the Catholic Church in middle life from a Protestant/secular background, I was not immediately affected in 1968 when Pope Paul VI issued his famous encyclical Humanae Vitae (literally, "On Human Life"), whose alternate title is "On the Regulation of Birth." Humanae Vitae (pronounced Who-mah'-nay Vee'-tay) reaffirmed the Catholic Church's traditional view of marriage and conjugal relations and condemned (not for the first time!) artificial methods of birth control. Catholics were not permitted to use the then-new oral birth-control pill. Nor were condoms allowed — which reaffirmed the existing teaching on those devices.

According to Wikipedia's discussion of Pope Paul VI's various encyclicals:

Paul VI teaches in the first sentence of Humanae Vitae that the transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator. This divine partnership [between a married couple and God] ... does not allow for arbitrary human decisions, which may limit divine providence.

Later on, the same Wikipedia discussion adds:

Pope Paul was concerned but not surprised by the negative reaction [to Humanae Vitae] in Western Europe and the United States. He fully anticipated this reaction to be a temporary one: "Don't be afraid," he reportedly told [Canadian Cardinal Édouard Gagnon] on the eve of the encyclical, "in twenty years time they'll call me a prophet."

It has, quite obviously, taken more than twenty years for that to happen. We're still up in arms over contraception and its concomitants as they affect women's rights and women's health insurance coverage.

The Catholic Church's Reverence for Conception

What, from a Catholic perspective, underlies this dispute? It needs to be noted, first of all, how very, very highly the Catholic Church reverences conception. Conception is more than just the uniting of a man's sperm with a woman's egg, even more than the start of a human life. In addition to those, it is an occasion for calling to mind and honoring the entire gamut of joys, interpersonal relationships, and lifetime commitments that the idea of biological conception is meant to activate within us — including the consecrated relationship of a loving couple to God.

For the married couple, conception (once the pregnancy test turns out positive and an embryo is known to be present in the womb) is meant to be an occasion for great joy. In anticipation of the possibility of conception and pregnancy, each conjugal union is meant to be an act of physical pleasure and spiritual affirmation. Once a child is on its way, the couple is meant to reaffirm in attitude, thought, and deed its commitment to bringing him or her into the world and raising him or her to adulthood with mutual dedication and love.

The demand on the woman who must carry the pregnancy to term; go through the prolonged gestation period; then endure labor and childbirth; and then provide nutrition and nurture to the newborn child is a great one. The man has less to do early on, but he must faithfully persevere in supporting the family unit and being true to his marriage vows. Dad's contribution to the child-rearing process will increase as time goes on, and the youngster becomes less dependent on Mom.

That's the ideal. I think the insistence of the Church on the sacredness of human conception is meant to bring the whole of that ideal, including but not limited to biological conception per se, into the sharpest possible focus.

Put bluntly, then, sexual gratification all by itself is never front-and-center. Sex severed from reverence for conception is, the Church says, "intrinsically disordered."

We need to keep in mind that this reverence for conception does not limit sex by married couples to couples who are capable of conceiving a child. Married couples in which the woman is past the age of menopause can legitimately enjoy sex, as can married couples in which a partner is infertile. The same is true when a mother, breastfeeding her baby and not ovulating each month, cannot get pregnant.

The Catholic Church Says All Acts of Conjugal Love Must Be "Open to Conception"

The Catholic reverence for conception is why it is said by Catholic authorities that every sex act engaged in by a married couple must be "open to conception." That phrase echoes "open to the transmission of life" in paragraph 11 of this translation of the Latin in which Paul VI wrote Humanae Vitae. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, for its part, uses the phrase "openness to fertility" to head sections 1652-54.

How exactly is this phrase "openness to conception/fertility/transmission of life" to be construed?

In Humanae Vitae, Paul VI expressly insists on "safeguarding both ... essential aspects [of conjugal love], the unitive and the procreative." These two aspects of conjugal love, unitive and procreative, are said by the pope to be crucially bound up with one another. The pope writes:

11. These acts, by which husband and wife are united in chaste intimacy, and by means of which human life is transmitted, are, as the [Second Vatican] Council recalled, "noble and worthy," and they do not cease to be lawful if, for causes independent of the will of husband and wife, they are foreseen to be infecund, since they always remain ordained towards expressing and consolidating their union. In fact, as experience bears witness, not every conjugal act is followed by a new life. God has wisely disposed natural laws and rhythms of fecundity which, of themselves, cause a separation in the succession of births. Nonetheless the Church, calling men [and women] back to the observance of the norms of the natural law, as interpreted by their constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act ... must remain open to the transmission of life.

12. That teaching, often set forth by the magisterium [the teaching authority of the Church], is founded upon the inseparable connection, willed by God and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning. Indeed, by its intimate structure, the conjugal act, while most closely uniting husband and wife, capacitates them for the generation of new lives, according to laws inscribed in the very being of man and of woman. By safeguarding both these essential aspects, the unitive and the procreative, the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the sense of true mutual love and its ordination towards man's most high calling to parenthood. We believe that the men [and women] of our day are particularly capable of seeing the deeply reasonable and human character of this fundamental principle.

It's fair to assume that "openness to conception/fertility/transmission of life" is, in the papal view, the procreative meaning of sex. Put simply, it can never be legitimately severed from the unitive aspect by which sex binds two spouses closer together, thereby "expressing and consolidating their union." If the two inseparable aspects of sex are in fact distanced from one another by means of artificial birth control, the married couple fails (per paragraph 10 of Humanae Vitae) to "conform their activity to the creative intention of God, expressed in the very nature of marriage and of its acts, and manifested by the constant teaching of the Church."

In paragraph 13 of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI adds to that:

To use this divine gift [of conjugal love] destroying, even if only partially, its meaning and its purpose is to contradict the nature both of man and of woman and of their most intimate relationship, and therefore it is to contradict also the plan of God and His will.

So conjugal acts which are "foreseen to be infecund" do not destroy the "meaning and purpose" of the conjugal acts themselves, "since they always remain ordained towards expressing and consolidating" the union of the married pair. That's why natural family planning — the "rhythm method" — is legitimate. But, in the view of Paul VI, if the infecundity is artificially produced, the "meaning and purpose" of the conjugal acts is illicitly corrupted.

The Ongoing Dispute within the Church over Contraception

"Contraception," says Fr. Richard P. McBrien in his thick compendium of the Catholic faith, Catholicism, is what Church teaching specifically forbids — not "birth control" per se. Natural family planning (formerly called "the rhythm method") is allowed, after all, and clearly it counts as a method of "birth control." "Contraception" per se, though, is "the intentional placing of a material obstacle to the conception of a child: e.g., a contraceptive pill, an intrauterine device, contraceptive foam, a condom" (p. 982), and it is what is not allowed.

I gather that a pharmacological method such as the well-known oral birth-control pill counts as "a material obstacle" in this respect, and it is officially deemed as objectionable as a condom is.

McBrien talks (pp. 982-992) about the strict official teaching of the Church concerning contraception, and also about "the other side" in this debate, which

... argues that contraception may not only be legitimate under certain circumstances but even mandatory. This side speaks in terms of "responsible parenthood."

The "other side" consists of faithful Catholics who dispute the position taken by Paul VI in Humanae Vitae. Non-Catholics reading this should accordingly realize that there does exist within the Church an ongoing internal dispute about contraception. However, the strict official teaching of the Church insists that contraception, as McBrien has specifically defined it, is forbidden to Catholics.

McBrien alludes to three main areas of dispute. He says the two sides differ in their respective understandings of:

• natural law
• the binding force of official Church teachings
• the development of Church doctrine

Non-Catholics who are reading this simply to comprehend the current controversy over federally mandated contraception coverage need not examine the two sides' respective cases in depth. They represent an "internal family dispute" among Catholics, after all. The "official" position of the Church is what counts, I'd say, in the mandated contraception coverage debate. Why? Because the bishops' objection to such coverage is that it forces them to violate their Church's official position — and thus it violates the "conscience" of the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church's Heavy Reliance on "Natural Law"

Still, some of the basic ideas fueling the internal dispute are important for anyone trying to see what underlies the current argument over federally mandated contraception coverage. First, and most importantly, the teachings and doctrinal history of the Catholic Church place heavy emphasis on "natural law." According to Wikipedia:

The Roman Catholic Church holds the view of natural law set forth by Thomas Aquinas particularly in his Summa Theologica ... 

The Summa Theologica was written by Thomas Aquinas in 1265–1274. It established a theological/philosophical basis by which most imaginable questions about God-given human nature could be answered. The Summa Theologica, says Wikipedia, "presents the reasoning for almost all points of Christian theology in the West."

According to Aquinas's formulation of natural law, says Wikipedia:

Humans are capable of discerning the difference between good and evil because they have a conscience. There are many manifestations of the good that we can pursue. Some, like procreation, are common to other animals, while others, like the pursuit of truth, are inclinations peculiar to the capacities of human beings. 

"Common to other animals"? How is this commonality important? Well, notice that in reasoning about natural law, we can understand our human capacity for conjugal love, at least in part, by examining what animals use sex for: reproduction. Accordingly, if we humans use artificial means of contraception to sever sex from reproduction, then the sex act can be called intrinsically disordered: against God-given human nature, as ordered by the principles of natural law.

To the best of my understanding, this appeal to natural law is a peculiarly Catholic way of discerning right from wrong. I am not aware that any other religious denomination considers its faithful to be bound by Aquinas-style natural-law reasoning in this way. I do not mean that all other faiths endorse artificial contraception, but if they do not, they may have other ways of reasoning to that conclusion.

Lay Catholics Respond to the Mandated Contraception Controversy

In her letter to the editor of The Washington Post (Feb. 5, 2012) Falls Church, Virginia, resident Mary Clare Murray states the official Catholic view of contraception in this elegant way:

In her Feb. 12 column, “A new front in the culture wars,” Lisa Miller said that “birth control is noncontroversially good for families and children.” Since this conversation arises because of the Catholic Church’s reaction to current events, this might be a good time to explain what the church teaches regarding birth control. 

It is not just that using birth control closes a man and woman off from sharing in God’s creation of life, it is also that using birth control closes the couple off from a full expression of love, which is total self-giving and the commitment to stay together, regardless of what life brings. 

Sexual intimacy is not meant to be entertainment. It is meant as something beautiful that will bind two people in a permanent union of selflessness, which is really what is “good for families and children.” The misuse of this is not “noncontroversially good” but rather a sound explanation for the devastating divorce rate, sexually transmitted diseases, depression and other illnesses; the couple’s bodies are sharing a commitment, but their minds aren’t. That’s not good for anybody.

I'd say this expresses quite beautifully the official teaching of the Catholic Church about marriage, sexual union, birth control, pregnancy, and the mutual sharing of long-term family responsibilities. The basic point is that sex should open us up, not close us off. A "permanent union of selflessness" on the part of the married couple is a sine qua non of sex ... but so too is the sex act's fundamental "openness to conception."

I would add that the couple's underlying attitude toward conception is a litmus test for the quality of the marital union, or so the Catholic Church would say.

But not all conscientious Catholics agree. This published response to Ms. Murray's letter came from Angela Corigliano Murphy of Bowie, Maryland:

Ms. Murray stated that contraception, which is a temporary inducement of infertility, “closes the couple off from a full expression of love, which is total self-giving and the commitment to stay together regardless of what life brings.” Let’s carry this idea through to its logical conclusion. What happens when infertility is biological and permanent, such as when the wife goes through menopause? Are the husband and wife now closed off from a full expression of love? When I went through menopause, some 20-plus years ago, should my husband and I have stopped expressing our love for each other physically because we could no longer have children? I find that notion highly risible.

No, sexual intimacy is not entertainment, but neither does it cease to be “a full expression of love” when it cannot result in procreation, whether temporarily or permanently. 

I myself would argue that Ms. Murphy is somewhat mistaken in her logic, in that the official position of the Church carefully distinguishes between natural and artificial inducements of infertility. Menopause is natural, and post-menopause sex between husband and wife indeed serves the remaining — i.e., unitive — purpose of conjugal relations. For natural reasons, "a full expression of love" after menopause cannot produce a baby. Yet it is fully in accord with natural law for husbands and wives of post-fertility age to continue to relish sex.

It's not just about the physical possibility of conception, then. It's about all the things associated with conception, when conception is possible and is taken in its broadest, most abstract sense — and it's especially about what those things "truly mean."

The Church endorses natural family planning methods (the rhythm method, which amounts to abstaining from intercourse during certain parts of the menstrual cycle) since they take advantage of what Humanae Vitae calls "a faculty provided by nature." As with post-menopause sex, this is a case in which conjugal sex is legitimate, even if apart from the possibility of purely biological conception.

I have to conclude, then, that the Church wants Catholics to reverence conception in the abstract — even when "faculties provided by nature" happen to prevent the biological union of sperm with egg.

So, when the bishops balk at covering contraception in health insurance paid for by Catholic-run institutions, they're standing fast for a time-honored worldview that Pope Paul VI in 1968 thought would reassert itself "in twenty years time."

The Official Catholic Teaching vs. Pro-Contraception Belief

It's a worldview that is quite clearly at odds with the one that predominates in our culture today. In today's dominant worldview, women have the right to contraception, to free coverage thereof in their health insurance plans, and even to discretionary abortions when needed and as desired.

There are excellent arguments to be advanced in favor of this dominant worldview. One is the who's-fooling-whom argument: the vast majority of Catholic women use artificial contraception at some point in their lives. I've read that the figure is fully 98 percent, but this article in The Washington Post says it's lower.

I dug into the matter and found that, according to "Countering Conventional Wisdom: 
New Evidence on Religion and Contraceptive Use," an April 2011 report by Rachel K. Jones and Joerg Dreweke for the Guttmacher Institute, 68 percent of Catholic women "at risk of unintended pregnancy" use "highly effective methods" of birth control — sterilization, the pill or other hormonal pharmaceuticals, or IUDs. Fifteen percent rely on condoms. Two percent use natural family planning/the rhythm method. Four percent use other means of birth control. And eleven percent use no method at all.

That data can be found in the table "Supplementary table to Figure 3. Current contraceptive use among women at risk of unintended pregnancy, by religious affiliation, 2006–2008 NSFG" at the very end of the report, and can also be seen as the second table here. ("NSFG" refers to the National Survey of Family Growth, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) The controversial 98 percent figure comes from the first of the two tables on that same page, and is shown as derived from "Unpublished tabulations of the 2006-2008 National Survey of Family Growth." It refers to surveys of all women who have ever had sex, not just women who are "at risk of unintended pregnancy."

However the numbers are to be parsed, one argument in favor of mandated contraceptive coverage is that large numbers of Catholic women use contraceptives. Contraception-tolerant arguments are also heard, within the Church itself, from a number of its opinion leaders both ordained and lay. Father Richard P. McBrien notes in Catholicism that a "Papal Commission for the Study of Population, the Family, and Birth" produced, in 1966, just two years prior to Humanae Vitae, two reports: a majority report favoring a reconsidered view of contraception and a minority report insisting on the traditional view that artificial contraception is intrinsically disordered.

When Pope Paul VI promulgated Humanae Vitae in 1968, he sided with the minority, not the majority.

The promulgation of Humanae Vitae triggered a hue and cry from liberal Catholic opinion leaders who had imagined that the pontiff's much-anticipated encyclical was going to affirm the perspective of the commission's majority, not that of the minority. Per McBrien:

According to the majority opinion, the argument [of the minority] in favor of the traditional teaching based on [the Church's longstanding] authority fails to recognize the evolutionary character of that teaching.

The Catholic Church has traditionally maintained that its hierarchy possesses a magisterium — a teaching authority — that illuminates what Catholics believe. In addition to dogma, opposition to which constitutes heresy, there is a much vaster body of official doctrine which the magisterium urges on Catholics. The teaching of Humanae Vitae is a matter of such doctrinal teaching, and must be taken very seriously by Catholics — yet it is not to be considered the infallible teaching of the pope. Catholics may dissent from it in good conscience.

The dissenting faction against Humanae Vitae in 1968 asserted that Paul VI had failed to recognize that Catholic doctrine has evolved significantly in the past and must be allowed to evolve concerning contraception in the present. For example, in the past, usury — the lending of money at interest — had been disallowed. Times changed, and modern banking emerged. Lending of money at interest became the norm in secular society ... and the Church changed its doctrine to permit it.

In the modern world, the liberals' thinking went in 1968, the traditional doctrine against contraception needed to change. Why? In part, because (as the liberals writing the 1966 majority report had urged) a principle of totality dictates that (per McBrien):

... the conjugal act itself must be viewed not as an isolated reality but in the larger context of human love, family life, education, etc. ... Sexuality is not ordered only to procreation. Sacred Scripture says not only "Be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28) but also "they become one flesh" (2:24), portraying the partner as another helpful self (2:18). [The majority report stated that] "In some cases intercourse can be required as a manifestation of self-giving love, directed to the good of the other person or of the community, while at the same time a new life cannot be received. This is neither egocentricity nor hedonism but a legitimate communication of persons through gestures proper to being composed of body and soul with sexual powers."

McBrien says that the liberals' posited principle of totality was flatly "declared erroneous" by Paul VI in Humanae Vitae.

Looking back at Angela Corigliano Murphy's objection to the traditional view of contraception expressed by Mary Clare Murray in the Washington Post opinion section, I'd say it implicitly endorses the principle of totality. Crucially, to Murphy, sexual intimacy does not "cease to be 'a full expression of love' [even] when it cannot result in procreation." Her letter to the editor would seem to show that the liberals' posited principle of totality in 1968 is still at work in Catholic lives and minds, even today.

Yet, the ghost of Paul VI would argue, the liberal position actually fails in its mission to ensure complete "totality." If a married couple is fertile, then, by our very nature as human beings, conjugal intimacy and openness to conception must go together, Paul's ghost would say. Breaking that natural link by artificially suppressing the procreative aspect of sex goes against God's plan and imperils society's good order.

A Woman's Right to Contraceptive Coverage?

I don't know whether theological-moral disputes of this sort make any sense whatever to non-Catholics, especially secular ones who do not profess faith in a religion. Let me try to put the issue under a slightly different microscope, instead. I think a fundamental question here is whether women have a right to sex without costs and consequences.

Costs: the monetary outlays just for using the oral contraceptive pill can be up to $600 a month. But the dollar costs of having a baby and raising it to adulthood are vastly more huge.

Consequences: specifically, pregnancy, childbirth, and, barring adoption, motherhood. The sacrifices and sheer difficulties inherent in raising a child for X number of years, perhaps with no father around to share the burden. Also, possibly having to give up a career to become a full-time mom, meaning taking big-time hits to life plans and economic prospects.

Is there, then, a right justly claimed by American women that they must not be forced to bear the costs and consequences of having sex? At least, not if human ingenuity and artifice can have anything to say about it.

This question may be the linchpin of this whole debate. If you think women do have such a right, I can pretty well predict how you would answer all the other questions surrounding the issue. For example, if you think such a right exists, you would typically say that women's health insurance plans must, all of them, cover birth control with no extra premiums, deductibles, or copays.

On the other hand, if you deny that such a right exists, you are likely in sympathy with the pronouncements of the bishops on the matter — even if you yourself are not a Catholic.

The Catholic Church denies that there is such a right, because the Church has always taught that there can't be such a right. Catholic doctrine says flatly that all conjugal acts (a) must be between married partners of the opposite sex and (b) must be open to the transmission of life. The idea that sex can and ought to be freely engaged in while blocking its expectable natural consequences is "gravely disordered." End of discussion.

When the Obama administration announced its original policy making free contraceptives universally mandatory in women's health insurance, it included a carve-out to the effect that churches per se were exempt. The carve-out was a narrow one, since it applied strictly only to religious congregations and their immediate employees. Then, Catholic bishops and others howled in protest. What about, they asked, our various hospitals/schools/charities that aren't included in the exception?

The administration was forced to broaden the carve-out to include those semi-secular institutions.

When that happened, some liberal Catholics felt relieved. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, though, did not. On the other side of this issue, some pro-choice groups called the modified rule a sell-out, because women employees of Catholic institutions who are not themselves Catholic or those who use contraception despite the Church's teachings would now be left without coverage — an unacceptable situation if you believe women have the right to have sexual intercourse freely, without putting themselves in line for undesired consequences and costs.

Widening the Scope of the Discussion

One can cast the discussion narrowly as a contrast between two competing values:

1. A woman's proclaimed right to sex without consequences, and therefore to contraceptives at no cost.
2. The Church's proclaimed right to act within the dictates of its official conscience.

Put that way, it's hard for me personally to decide which value ought to trump the other.

Arguments from within the Church and outside it to the effect that Church teachings on contraception ought to be updated, since they've "evolved," don't really help me settle the matter. Whether or not it's so, the fact remains that right now the Catholic Church bans contraception as a matter of moral and theological principle. Until that changes, I don't see how it's right for the government's agenda to trample over the Church's religious teachings.

Then again, so many Catholics do in fact use artificial contraception that it's hard to think of "the Church" as being united on this issue. Meanwhile, two generations of American women of whatever religious background have been raised to believe that there's nothing whatsoever wrong with using contraception, and it cannot be denied that they feel a great deal more free than their grandmothers did, simply because they understand that sex can, if they choose, be without consequences.

But what's missing in what I have said so far is, I think, the question of the consequences of widely available contraception as they pertain to the larger society.

You might think that oral contraceptives' introduction in 1960 would have led to a state of affairs in which there were fewer unwanted pregnancies and (post-Roe v. Wade in 1973, which legalized abortion) almost no need for abortions — that, in the famous words of President Clinton, abortions would be "safe, legal, and rare."

Abortions are safe today, and they are legal, but they're not rare. According to "United States abortion rates, 1960-2008," there were over 1.2 million abortions in the United States in 2008. Most of them were, I assume, due not to medical necessity but to the fact that prospective mothers declined, however regretfully, to carry their fetuses to term. That abortion rate, admittedly, was somewhat down from over 1.6 million in 1990.

Prior to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion in 1973, abortions in the United States rose from a paltry 292 in 1960, the year the Pill was introduced, to 586,760 in 1972, the last pre-Roe year.

This useful graph represents the statistics:

Ratio = the number of abortions per live births; % = abortions as percentage of total pregnancies (live births + abortions).

Then there's the question of babies born out of wedlock, mothers who aren't married, and single-parent families. Columnist George F. Will writes recently in The Washington Post that

... now more than 50 percent of all babies born to women under age 30 are born to unmarried mothers. ... In 1965, [the late Senator] Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then in President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, published his report on the black family’s “crisis,” which was that 24 percent of black children were then born to unmarried women. Today, 73 percent are. Forty-one percent of all children are now born to unmarried women.

How could the wide availability of birth control have led to more, not fewer, post-Roe abortions and more, not fewer, fatherless children today?

If the Catholic bishops are right, the crux of the problem is that contraceptives unhinge sex from its procreative aspect. And if Paul VI was right in Humanae Vitae, that undesirable result was apt to be accompanied by another one: the unhinging of sex from its unitive aspect as well. The procreative and unitive aspects of conjugal sex are intrinsically inseparable, Paul VI wrote. Sex both produces new life and unifies prospective parents in a deeper bond of mutual commitment.

Sever sex from its procreative aspect and — given that widely available contraception so often fails to prevent unwanted pregnancies — you get abortions numbering in seven figures nationally. Sever sex from its unitive aspect and you get an epidemic of single motherhood.

These are, however, social pathologies and have no clear remedy in the realm of public policy, George Will writes. For example:

The entitlement state can be reformed by various known — if currently politically impossible — policy choices. But no one really knows the causes of family disintegration, so it is unclear whether those causes can be combated by government measures.

The Pill is not a direct cause of (paradoxically) high abortion rates, nor is it a direct cause of family disintegration. No one is saying that it is. Yet it is clear (to me at least) that contraception's wide availability has contributed to those social pathologies — while in its more positive aspect it has contributed to the justly applauded liberation of women in our society.

Also clear to me is that we need to strike the proper balance between legitimate public policy concerns — e.g., women's access to contraception under their health plans — and legitimate expressions of religious conscience such as the Church's principled refusal to be accomplices in same. Only out of the careful balance between these competing world views can come the next evolutionary step in the culture wars.

Catholic Institutions, Health Insurance, and Contraception

The Catholic Church takes as a matter of principle that the use of condoms, the Pill, and "abortifacients" such as the "morning-after" pill violates its fundamental religious beliefs. A ruling recently handed down by the Obama Administration says schools, hospitals, and charities run by the Catholic Church must provide health insurance to their employees which covers birth control — not to mention morning-after pills that some say can induce abortions, along with voluntary forms of sterilization such as vasectomies. Catholic bishops and other leaders of the faith have accordingly cried foul.

Secretary of Health and Human Services
Kathleen Sebelius

I must confess to originally having a tin ear for the bishops' complaints — yet the amount of opposition to the ruling by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius (herself a Catholic) has caused me to rethink.

I am not, I need to say here, a "cradle Catholic," but a convert from a culturally Protestant, but mostly secular, orientation. I know many Catholic converts are among the strongest supporters of official Church teachings, but I'm not necessarily one of them. When it comes to teachings concerning sexuality, marriage, and procreation, I'm usually on the other side of the fence from the Church hierarchy.

My ordinary tendency is to say that the Church-run institutions ought not to deny the affordable availability of commonly used contraceptive devices and pharmaceuticals to their employees. Many of their employees, after all, are not Catholic, and among those who are Catholic, the majority (according to widely known statistics) do use birth control. So what business do the bishops have insisting that the health insurance they provide to these employees must lack the relevant coverage?

As a "cultural Protestant" whose upbringing turned out to be much more secular that religious — I virtually never was taken to church during my childhood — I find myself initially more prone than many Catholics to agree with what Secretary Sebelius said in "Contraception rule respects religion" in USA Today:

Today, virtually all American women use contraception at some point in their lives. And we have a large body of medical evidence showing it has significant benefits for their health, as well as the health of their children. But birth control can also be quite expensive, costing an average of $600 a year, which puts it out of reach for many women whose health plans don't cover it.

Therefore, Secretary Sebelius is saying, all health plans — including those paid for by the Catholic Church for employees of its quasi-secular subsidiaries, such as schools, hospitals, and charities — need to cover contraception.

* * * * *

But wait!

One of my best friends, a cradle Catholic and a Democrat who is a liberal on most religious and secular issues, tells me he thinks the Administration's ruling was a dumb move politically. Alienating a hefty slice of the Catholic vote in several crucial swing states could lose him the November election.

Mark Shields
on the NewsHour

Liberal political analyst Mark Shields, "speaking as a Catholic," said the same thing more forcefully on the PBS NewsHour last week, characterizing the potential "fallout" from the ruling as "cataclysmic."

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker — whose religion is unknown to me — writes in today's column, "Obama runs roughshod over religious freedom," that:

The new health-care reform act’s mandate that Catholic institutions pay for insurance to cover birth control and even abortifacient drugs ... runs deeply contrary to fundamental Catholic teaching. The argument that many Catholic women ignore this particular church commandment is a non sequitur. The church has consistently stood by this teaching. Catholics commit adultery and lie, too, but they don’t want or expect the church to condone those actions.

Post columnist Michael Gerson — again, I don't know if he's Catholic — has written, in "The poor pay the price for Obama’s politics":

... religious liberty is also popular, given the Constitution and all that. Even those who have no objection to contraception — the category in which I have repeatedly placed myself — can be offended when arrogant government officials compel religious institutions to violate the dictates of their consciences.

After making that point, Gerson adds that the real victims of the contretemps will be poor people, given that the Church may wind up with no option but to shut down schools, hospitals, and charities:

Take the case of one city: Philadelphia. There are about 2,000 such faith-based institutions, many of them Catholic. Replacing them [with secular initiatives] would require about a quarter of a billion dollars every year. Catholic Social Services helps more than 250,000 people a year in soup kitchens, shelters and centers for the disabled. Its Community-Based Services division runs adoption and foster-care programs, staffs senior community centers and supports immigration services. The Catholic Nutritional Development Services, working in partnership with public agencies, delivers nearly 10 million meals a year — accounting for about half of all meals delivered to poor children in Philadelphia in the summer months when school is out.

That's a practical argument that has to be accorded great weight, given that (per Parker):

Although Catholic churches and their direct employees are exempt from the new rule, all those other Catholic-sponsored entities, from schools to hospitals to charities that employ non-Catholics, have to comply or pay prohibitive fines. Estimates are that Notre Dame University, which hosted President Obama as commencement speaker in 2009 against howls of protest, would [alone] have to pay $10 million in annual fines [if it doesn't accede to the rule]. That’s some expensive birth control, baby.

But it's the abstract question of religious liberty in America, under the Constitution, that, I think, has to carry the day. The Church's stands against contraception and abortion are bedrock beliefs. They lie at the core of Catholic teaching. Under the Constitution, I think it an abuse of secular governmental authority to mandate that the Church violate its own beliefs.

* * * * *

Why should we take the anti-contraception position of the Church as its bedrock belief? Ultimately, because the Church says it is.

I may disagree with what the Church says about contraception, but at the end of the day I have to uphold its fundamental "right to be wrong" on the matter.

I came into the Catholic Church after having made a temporary home a Protestant faith (I will be kind enough not to name it) that is very close to Catholicism from a liturgical perspective but whose teachings (especially about such hot-button issues as female priests and homosexual unions) seemed to be to increasingly built on quicksand. Never mind that I agreed with the liberals within the faith; I was at the same time appalled that the faith seemed to have no ironclad teaching authority, no magisterium, such that any liberalization of belief today couldn't be wiped out in a generation, or a century.

I decided I wanted to know absolutely what my faith's teaching was. I could then speak out against it, if I felt that to be necessary. Someday, there might be a formal process of change. If and when it came, it would be permanent, not built on quicksand.

So I gladly became a Catholic.

I joined a Church that treats its stand on birth control as bedrock belief. Paying for insurance coverage for contraception is accordingly forbidden to Church agencies, even though employees whose religious scruples oppose contraception would be free not to avail themselves of it.

By the way, I have not seen it mentioned, but what about the fact that Church employees likewise contribute their healthcare paycheck deductions into the same insurance pool? They themselves may decline to use condoms or the Pill, but others in the pool can draw their money for purposes of employing contraceptives. Not just the Church but to a certain extent religiously scrupulous employees of its quasi-secular agencies would thus be bankrolling a practice that is officially called sinful.

* * * * *

We have here a matter of grave principle. I am, I confess, very bad at matters of grave principle. I am a longtime proponent of "situation ethics." As such, I tend to feel nonplussed by appeals to moral and ethical absolutes.

Put more precisely, I want to know what the absolute no-no's are said to be ... then I want to be at liberty to break them and speak out against them, according to my personal conscience.

Right or wrong, mine is a complicated view that inherently demands balance. There must be an equipoise struck between absolute authority and personal conscience.

The ruling of Secretary Sebelius and the Obama administration, I now think, tips the balance too far in the direction of personal conscience. Yes, insured employees whose religious scruples oppose it remain free not to use contraception, even though it's covered under health plans they and their employer, the Church, pay for.

But, no, this ruling does not leave the absolute teaching authority of the Church in matters of faith and morals sufficiently unscathed. The Church says no to contraception in a way that does not permit it to accept the Sebelius ruling, period. If it caves in, it loses a crucial piece of its fundamental identity. That can't be right.

And so my initial reaction to the controversy, I now see, was wrong. I think President Obama and Secretary Sebelius need to reconsider, and sooner rather than later.

Washington Post Editorial: "Maryland’s power play"

I've been covering the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2012, a legislative initiative of Maryland's Democratic governor, Martin O'Malley, in my Maryland Offshore Wind Power series. If passed in this year's General Assembly session, it's intended to subsidize an electric-power-producing wind farm 10 nautical miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, off Ocean City. It might look something like this:

A recent editorial in The Washington Post objected to the wind farm, which I whole­heartedly support. The editorial gives me information I hadn't known, though, and for which I'm grateful. Among the items I learned:

• The proposed wind farm would eventually generate perhaps a third of the state’s electricity. I hadn't realized it would account for that much of our electric power.
• Maryland lawmakers have already mandated that the state's utilities derive 20 percent of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2022. Renewable sources include wind, solar, and other technologies which don't consume fossil fuels, which we will eventually run out of, and do not contribute greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, to the atmosphere, thereby abetting global warming.
• The state’s renewables mandate already requires that utilities derive 2 percent of the state’s electricity from solar by 2022.

The proposed wind farm legislation apparently (see my earlier posts in this series) requires wholesale electricity suppliers to buy up to 2.5 percent of their megawatts from offshore wind generators. I interpret that to mean that 17.5 percent or more of the required 20 percent for renewables would come from other than offshore wind.

The Post editorial doesn't mind the renewables mandate per se, just the specific requirement of the proposed legislation that a certain-sized chunk of it come from offshore wind. That requirement would keep electricity suppliers from opting for cheaper alternatives.

The Post also wants natural gas to count, at least partially, as "clean energy," even if it is not strictly "renewable." Natural gas has become quite cheap in the last few years. Burning natural gas puts half the carbon in the atmosphere that burning coal does. So why shouldn't electricity suppliers be encouraged to buy from electricity producers who use gas, if that's a lot cheaper than the proposed offshore wind operation?

My answer is that an expensive-to-build offshore wind farm needs an initial ratepayer boost before it can hope to become price competitive with natural gas, with nuclear, or even with solar, sometime down the road.

As I understand it, building the proposed wind farm would start in 2017 and be finished in 2022 — barring delays. Once it was completed, its developer would have to pay off the steep financing for it, over some ensuing period of years. Meanwhile, if Maryland's residential electricity customers' bills are $2.00 higher than they would otherwise be, most of the extra money would get funneled into paying off the loans.

Someday, though, the wind farm's startup costs would have been paid off. At that point, the wind farm would become price competitive with other power plants, and might even be cheaper than a great many of them.

Maryland's Offshore Wind Power Initiative, Part 3

Maryland Governor
Martin O'Malley (D)

The Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2012: that's the name of the legislation Governor Martin O'Malley will introduce into Maryland's General Assembly this year, that, if it passes, will encourage building a "wind farm" in the Atlantic Ocean, 10 miles off the coast from Ocean City.

A wind farm (also called a "wind park") is a series of wind turbines — up-to-date windmills — that are set a-spin by the passing breezes, thereby producing electric power.

Wind farms are increasingly popular on dry land in the U.S., but apparently there are none yet built off America's shores. Here's a picture of one that sits off Copenhagen, Denmark:

I've already blogged twice about Gov. O'Malley's initiative, which I as a Maryland resident strongly support. Recent news coverage has added to my understanding of the proposal. Herein, I'll refer to the following sources:

1. "O’Malley to try again for offshore wind development," Washington Post, Jan. 22
2. "O'Malley to unveil new approach to wind power," Baltimore Sun, Jan. 23
3. "New O'Malley wind farm proposal still a long shot," Baltimore Sun, Jan. 23
4. "O'Malley Introduces Updated Offshore Wind Bill," Southern Maryland Online, Jan. 24

The governor, a Democrat, wants an as-yet-undetermined private outfit to build and subsequently own and operate the wind farm, the creation of which would be stimulated ultimately by an at-most-$2.00 increase on residential ratepayers' monthly electric bills. The increase for large commercial concerns would be limited to 2.5 percent.

The wind farm would create 1,800 jobs in the construction phase and 360 once a wind farm is operating, says the O'Malley administration (Source 2). It would be a way to produce "clean" electric power from a renewable source that does not pollute the atmosphere with carbon and thereby foster climate change.

Financial Details

I find the financial details of the plan a bit obscure, admittedly. Apparently, the wind farm as a "producer" would sell its electric power to "wholesale suppliers," who would in turn supply power to "utilities," who would then transmit it to homes and businesses. The bill would require suppliers, as middlemen, to "get a set amount of their power from wind, as they do now from solar sources" (Source 2).

Proof that the suppliers' requirement is being met would come in the form of "an offshore wind renewable energy credit allowing companies to earn certificates for demonstrating that they are using offshore wind as a certain percentage of their total energy generation" (Source 4).

The electric power from the wind farm would be sold to wholesale suppliers at rates determined on an open market. There would apparently be a secondary market for the renewable energy credits, i.e., the "certificates." "The price of the credits would fluctuate in tandem with market rates to ensure that offshore wind producers can continuously count on a stable profit" (Source 1).

I gather that that means a supplier that more than meets its renewable-energy requirements might wind up with excess credits, which could then be sold on the secondary market to suppliers who are under their quotas. That's how the price of credits would "fluctuate in tandem with market rates" that apply to the wind power itself. The more power the wind farm produces relative to demand, the lower the prices of the power and of the credits would normally be.

The prices for wind power/credits would be passed along, in whole or in part, to the ultimate consumers of the power as higher charges on their monthly bills.

Ostensibly, the prices must never go so low as to deny the wind farm operator — the "producer" — a reasonable profit. And they must not go so high as to exceed $2.00 a month for residential customers or the extra 2.5 percent for larger entities. How will we know in advance that the costs and prices will be so well-behaved?

Source 2 says:

Administration sources said the extra cost would be subject to a strict limit. If the Public Service Commission projects a cost of more than $2 a month — in 2012 dollars over 20 years — the project would be abandoned. ... the PSC would consider the [producer's] wind-power plan to ensure it was feasible and the price reasonable. Once it got the green light from the PSC, the [producer] could sell into a Maryland market with a guaranteed minimum demand built into the law. The PSC also would have to commission an independent study to verify that the program would produce a net benefit for the state.

Both the PSC and the independent commission would presumably have a go/no decision to make at some point down the road, based on (says Source 1) "on a 20-year prediction of future energy prices." That's "a term twice as long as the state’s Public Service Commission typically forecasts," Source 1 says, and it clearly imposes palpable risks.

The wind power would start flowing, Source 1 says, in 2017. The go/no-go decision would have to be made prior to that, and the underlying prediction would cover the 20-year period starting in that year. A big risk is that the 20-year prediction would be off target.

Costs of Building the Wind Farm

That's how the costs of operating the wind farm would be borne. These sources have far less to say about how the costs of building it in the first place would be met.

None of the sources says how much the wind farm would cost to build. Would the state itself subsidize any of the development costs? Seemingly not. Source 1 speaks of a "subsidy" from ratepayers ... but that's the $2-per-month I already mentioned.

Without mentioning any actual dollar amounts for development of the wind farm, Source 3, by Jay Hancock of the Baltimore Sun, gets down to brass tacks on how the building of the project might be financed: with federal "loan guarantees and tax subsidies for wind energy." Sadly, though, says Hancock, "Tax credits deemed crucial for wind development expire this year. Partisan rancor in Congress prompts many to fear they won't be renewed."

Accordingly, I assume the developer of the wind farm would get no up-front state or federal subsidies. It would raise capital the old-fashioned way, based on the supposition that operating the wind farm would produce a steady profit.

If there were any federal subsidies, fine. If not, fine too?

Chances of the Wind Farm Actually Being Built

Source 3 basically deals with Jay Hancock's estimate of the bill's chances of passage and the chances that the wind farm would really get built, assuming the bill does pass. He says the O'Malley bill may get through the legislature, but that doesn't mean the wind farm will actually get built. Why not? Because an offshore wind farm is hugely costly.

One official who is in the know is quoted by Hancock as saying, "We are not obligating our ratepayers to a single dime unless and until someone can figure out how to finance and build one of these things" under Maryland's ground rules. "If they don't figure it out, no harm, no foul."

Hancock continues:

But the ground rules are likely to prove too daunting for developers. Building pylons and turbines in corrosive water miles offshore is a risky and developing art. Delays and cost overruns are common. The more electricity customers are protected from that risk, the more wind farm developers have to assume it. And wind farm developers aren't looking especially daring these days.

And:

Even with federal support, there's no guarantee O'Malley's project works. Unlike last year's proposal, this one wouldn't have Baltimore Gas and Electric and other utilities buy offshore wind power directly. Instead, the [Maryland] Public Service Commission could require wholesale electricity suppliers to buy up to 2.5 percent of their megawatts from offshore wind generators. That's supposed to assure developers of long-term demand.

To clarify that once again: Baltimore Gas and Electric is a "utility" that transmits electric power to many Maryland customers. Since it does not itself produce electric power, it has to purchase the electric power it transmits to its residential and business customers. From whom does it purchase the power? From "wholesale electricity suppliers."

One of the "suppliers" I have dealt with in the past is Dominion Retail. I am now dealing with Stream Energy. There are several other electricity "suppliers" available in the deregulated Maryland market.

The "supplier," in turn, buys electricity from the likes of "offshore wind generators," among numerous other energy "producers" that may derive electric power from wind, solar, natural gas, coal, etc. It is the "suppliers" that would be mandated to buy "up to 2.5 percent of their megawatts from offshore wind generators," according to the O'Malley proposal.

If the offshore wind farm is hugely costly to build, and it would be, then once it is actually built and in operation, as an electric power "producer" it would begin passing along as much as it can of its large financing and construction costs to the wholesale "suppliers" — who would pass them along to the power transmission "utilities," who would pass them along to you as a customer. That is supposed to cause no more than a $2.00 increase in the monthly bills that "utilities" charge their residential customers, and at most a 2.5 percent increase for commercial ones.

But would those dollar or percentage limits actually work to let the the wind farm turn a profit, given the huge fixed costs of its initial investment in facilities and equipment which would have had to be initially financed by means of borrowing money at some perhaps high rate of interest? Hancock thinks not. Just as home buyers have to be pre-approved for their mortgages based on their incomes, the wind farm developer would have to be pre-approved by the PSC based on the likelihood that it could turn a profit under the ground rules of the legislation.

So the bill might pass and be signed by the governor ... and yet the PSC might be forced to nix the project sometime down the road, before the wind farm is actually committed to and built.