I couldn't help but laugh when I saw this USA Today opinion piece. Minister Buzz Thomas suggests that since our environmental problems are due to overpopulation, the Roman Catholics and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should abandon their policies encouraging large families.

Of course, much of our environmental problem is due to overpopulation. There are simply too many people for the planet to sustain — at least the way we expect to be sustained. Each new person requires more food, water and oxygen. At the same time, each is producing more carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane (the big culprits of global warming). For each additional human, planet Earth (and the rest of us) pays a price. The world knows where this is all headed. In fact, we even devote an entire day — Earth Day, which we'll mark Tuesday — to promote awareness.

Now, consider the Roman Catholic Church's continued opposition to modern birth control or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' (i.e. Mormons) encouragement of large families. This might not alarm you unless you realize that nearly one in every five humans on the planet is Roman Catholic and that the Latter-day Saints belong to one of the fastest-growing religions in the Western Hemisphere. Many Orthodox Jews and some Muslims also eschew birth control.

In the interest of preserving our planet and our species, shouldn't religious organizations be encouraging smaller families? Do our spiritual leaders need additional divine revelation to realize that our current doctrines — which threaten to take the entire world down with us — have become ethically and theologically questionable?

I just couldn't help but laugh that Buzz is suggesting that religion plays a role in global climate change. There are so many other causes mentioned in various articles. Who is Buzz to decide that the Catholics or Mormons are wrong? Maybe Buzz is wrong. Maybe the Catholic or Mormon who won't be born because they start encouraging abortions or birth control would have been the next Al Gore and would have come up with a solution to the global climate change problem.

It just seems to me that we have so many other critical issues that perhaps we could focus some of our evangelical fervor and global consciousness on helping to reduce poverty, famine, finding alternatives to petroleum, exploitation of children or political corruption. This single-minded focus on the global warming crisis to the exclusion of all other issues is a bit like straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic. We have bigger, more immediate issues that could use our attention while we figure out the science.