Don Sensing has noted in the past how the environmental movement morphed from a Teddy Roosevelt conservation into Earth worship, to the detriment, in this case, of highly unemployed Latinos. Rev. Sensing also observes that the increase in this idolatry seems to coincide with its economic decline.
God is not mocked.
The White House has become as hypocritical on the matter of global warming as Al Gore’s house.
The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.
“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”
Oh, well, that explains it. Cranking up the thermostat is OK for native Hawaiians.
Where’s Jimmy Carter when you need him? I’m sure he has some spare sweaters.
I’ve been involved in many Christian causes and organizations over the last 30 years, many of which I still heartily support and advance. In recent years, I’ve added my voice to a new concern among Christians: environmental stewardship—taking care of God’s creation in a balanced, biblically informed way. I am concerned enough that I am helping to start a new organization, called FLOURISH, to equip the church to act on these concerns.
Some in the church and among my own friends and family have asked if creation care is important enough to be a major focus of the church. Yes, I do believe this is a vital issue for Christian churches and families, and one that is informed not primarily by current politics or policies, but by the teaching of scripture, deep traditions of the church, and even practices and values of our parents and grandparents. Modern trends have given us even more reasons to act. Further, genuine efforts to find balance in our lives and in the way we care for the environment fit well with many priorities and programs of the church and can give our evangelism and discipleship efforts more focus and effectiveness.
Perhaps the best way to present rationale for establishing FLOURISH is for me to present a Top Ten List of reasons why we as American Christians should make environmental stewardship a primary concern:
#10. As Christians we are called to be the very best citizens, and we can be obedient as families and churches by working to better the micro-environments of our communities. This may include activities such as planting trees, working for pedestrian and bike paths, or cleaning area watersheds.
#9. We are commanded to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, and the current disruption of many of the delicate balances in the created world around us is causing health problems, and poses the potential of even greater problems for all of us. These dangers are particularly acute for our most needy neighbors, for those living in urban environments, and for our children. Did you know that childhood asthma rates in children are four times what they were 20 years ago?
# 8. Reducing our dependence on foreign oil is important not only for national security; it will also address religious freedom issues. Our reliance on oil makes us dependent on undemocratic, despotic foreign regimes that restrict the religious liberty of their peoples, and threaten the stability of democratic allies such as Israel.
#7. Pollution has become a serious life issue. When coal is burned, mercury is released into the environment. Mercury in the air eventually settles into water or onto land where it can be washed into water. Once deposited a highly toxic form builds up in fish, shellfish and animals that eat fish. More than 600,000 newborns each year– approximately one in every six babies– are born with harmful mercury levels in their blood. It is unacceptable for our expectant mothers to have to avoid many kinds of fish because we have polluted our waters so badly that their contamination is dangerous to unborn children?
#6. Learning to care for creation and to balance our activities prepares us for missions. The work of our missionaries around the world almost always includes an understanding of how to live on the land, maintain productive harvests, and assure sufficient healthy water. In many areas missions is a blend of evangelism and creation care.
#5. The daily lifestyle habits that lessen damage to the world around us also build faithfulness and family values—practices such as honoring the Sabbath and making it a day of rest, dampening our consumerism, and increasing family time that is relational and close to home.
#4. Through a range of energy-saving changes, churches and families can save a lot of money, which can in turn be used for the programs and missions of the church, for which it is intended. If America’s houses of worship – totaling more than 300,000 – cut energy use by just 10 percent, it would result in an annual savings of $200 million. Prestonwood Baptist Church, a megachurch in Plano, Texas, did a major energy overall and has saved more than $1 million on utilities and water.
#3. Effective evangelism is set on common ground with our unchurched neighbors. Many of them care about the environment, and when we conduct visible and active campaigns to protect and better the environment, this public service puts us side-by-side with others in our community, and enhances our contact and our witness.
#2. The works of God’s creation are, as Romans 1:20 tells us, evidence of God’s attributes. The natural world tells us so much about who God is that Paul says humankind has no good reason for not knowing its Creator. It would be irresponsible for us to allow our actions to diminish that witness.
And the #1 reason the church should make environmental stewardship a primary concern: God told us to. In the creation story God puts man in the Garden to tend and keep it (Gen. 2:15). That responsibility continues to today.
As you know, during the last several years there have been calls for Christians to support various national and international plans and policies to protect the environment. The majority of believers have responded favorably to the view that caring for God’s creation is a biblical imperative and an important part of Christian discipleship in the 21st century. A recent Barna poll indicates that 90 percent of evangelicals in America would like to see Christians do more to care for God’s creation.
Unfortunately, many of the calls for environmental stewardship have come from secular voices that traditionally have been critics of classic Christianity and that still advocate some positions that are contrary to biblical values. Even our evangelical brethren who have championed environmental concerns have made it appear that Christian response to the problems facing us have to be political and must begin with controversial government action on climate change.
This has resulted in overreaction by some of our leaders who have told the followers of Christ that even the most fundamental care for God’s creation is unnecessary and misplaced passion, and that it is laudable to do nothing to address these dangers.
That’s why we are starting FLOURISH, a ministry to equip churches and families to care for creation and advance their witness in our communities, our nation, and the world. For too long we have allowed liberal messengers of the environmental message and contentious government policy discussions to paralyze our faithfulness in creation care.
FLOURISH intends to stand astride the unhealthy chasm between those who prescribe only political solutions and those who would do nothing. We will offer prudent and biblical solutions for individuals, families, and churches—including a variety of training and study materials that will equip pastors, small groups, and youth groups to teach on these topics and to be involved in hands-on activities and missions.
We will be leading a communications effort on creation care in the Christian community through Web-based communications, a quarterly magazine, radio, and other efforts. And we will be providing a turnkey service—the Greater Light Project—to churches to help them audit their use of energy and other impacts on their local environments, and to assist in their efforts to make necessary changes.
Our inaugural project will be the Flourish National Pastors’ Conference on Creation Care to be conducted May 13-15, 2009, at CrossPointe church in Duluth, Georgia (northeast of Atlanta). We intend to gather hundreds of pastors and church leaders at this conference, to continue this conversation in earnest and begin the invigoration of our witness and service in creation care.
Environmental problems, like all others, are of course the result of sin. We often carelessly and unnecessarily damage the world around us because of our sin, and the only complete solution will be found in the life-changing, sin-conquering power of knowing Jesus Christ and in living out that knowledge through the new life he brings. The Christian church bears this truth and, rather than being the tail-end of environmental care, can be the best hope for real progress.
With a hat tip to NewsBusters, a report on polar ice from this past June:
It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.
"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
That was then. This is now.
Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.
Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.
(That rapid recovery in the last quarter is what we in the northern hemisphere call "winter".)
So all the experts and nifty computer models were absolutely wrong. We’re not sailing ships through Santa’s workshop; instead we’re seeing ice levels we haven’t seen for 30 years. Why were predictions so wrong? The article explains:
Researchers had expected the newer sea ice, which is thinner, to be less resilient and melt easier. Instead, the thinner ice had less snow cover to insulate it from the bitterly cold air, and therefore grew much faster than expected, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Maybe, just maybe, the earth has cycles and this icing is just one of them. Cycles like this are one of the reasons that the Huffington Post — no member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy they — are now preemptively accepting Al Gore’s apology for the lies he’s been telling us.
From Chuck Asay. Click for full-size version.
On major things like global warming and the economy, expert opinions are good to have, but if we jump to conclusions too soon we may not have the whole story. And predicting the future has been notoriously difficult, even for the experts.
On global warming.
This was the title of a post on Redstate by Aaron Gardner, regarding where the Republican Party goes from here. Gardner started, as his foundation of what the Republicans need to stand for, from the party platform of 1980, when Reagan was swept into the White House with 489 electoral votes. He made some of his own modifications, but overall the (lengthy) statement stands as a good starting point.
One thing that people forget as they get older, is that more and more people (often called “those who are younger than you”) get to be more and more common and that those people don’t remember things that happened that you do in quite the same way.
On the climate change and global warming front, we are told today in a oft reposted graphic that this last year is looking to be as cold (or if the trend continues) colder than 1979. 1979 was cold in Chicago as were 1980 and 81. For the last 20 years or so December ice and snow didn’t stick around, but would normally melt in a week or so. But in the 70s and 80s snow frequently lasted though until sometime in March, although there was sometimes one week in which temperatures rose above freezing. Sometimes weeks (more than one) passed with continuous sub-zero temperatures, wind chills hit -100 in Chicago, not Minnesota or Alaska. It did in the early 80s and although 1980 was my first year in Chicago, it was at University and there were at that time students who had weathered winters of 77 through 79, who could recount 6 foot and higher snow drifts.
So, if the trend continues this winter, expect the whole global warming kerfuffle to end this winter. Should we place bets on how long the “global cooling” warnings will start to be heard?
I might add that as a first year undergrad, I went ice skating once at midnight on a clear cold night with the mercury at -28 and the wind chill below -80 … just to say I’d done it. Perhaps I’ll be able to do that again with the kids. 😉
If the desert isn’t a good place for solar energy, where is?
Solar companies proposing large power plants in the Mojave Desert are facing opposition from conservationists. They say a rush to build solar here threatens to tear up large tracts of desert habitat and open space.
Environmentalists want to stick with rootops, but as FuturePundit notes, there are other governmental obstacles to that. In addition, California has state mandates for green energy increase, and rooftops alone won’t cut it.
The Greens are going to be their worst enemy in this.
With a tip of the hat to Bruce McQuain at Q&O, the country of Ecuador is about to take a step into environmental extremism that is (so far) unparalleled.
The South American republic of Ecuador will next week consider what many countries in the world would say is unthinkable. People will be asked to vote on Sunday on a new constitution that would give Ecuador’s tropical forests, islands, rivers and air similar legal rights to those normally granted to humans. If they vote yes – and polls show that 56% are for and only 23% are against – then an already approved bill of rights for nature will be introduced, and new laws will change the legal status of nature from being simply property to being a right-bearing entity.
This is a complete rewrite of the definition of the concept of a “right”.
And where did they get this idea? American leftists.
Thomas Linzey, a US lawyer who has helped to develop the new legal framework for nature, says: “The dominant form of environmental protection in industrialised countries is based on the regulatory system. Governments permit and legalise the discharge of certain amounts of toxics into the environment. As a form of environmental protection, it’s not working.
“In the same way, compensation is measured in terms of that injury to a person or people. Under the new system, it will be measured according to damage to the ecosystem. The new system is, in essence, an attempt to codify sustainable development. The new laws would grant people the right to sue on behalf of an ecosystem, even if not actually injured themselves.”
Linzey is a member of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. This is their liberalism and environmental policies running out of control, and is a peek into what they really want in our country.
Linzey admits that Ecuador may be taking a step into the legal unknown. “No one knows what will happen [if the referendum goes in favour of new rights for nature] because there are no examples of how this works in the real world,” he says. “A lot of people will be watching what happens.”
Yeah, good luck with that guinea pig thing. Just waiting for the Plant’s Suffrage movement.
From NASA warming scientist: ‘This is the last chance’ to Hot Climate could Shut Down Plate Tectonics, what is one to think about our impending doom from Global Warming?
In the web-radio interview Toward a Sensible Approach to Global Warming, the scholars at Reasons to Believe interviewed environmental scientist Kevin Birdwell.
The interview was well done, with no rash statements made on either side of the issue. Birdwell presented the current state of knowledge, on environmental science, noting that global warming does occur. He also noted that, due to the incredibly complex nature of the topic, we are not yet able to determine to what extent human induced warming affects the environment. Birdwell also stated that simply reducing carbon emissions will not necessarily impact global warming since all particulants emitted, natural and man-made, play a role in “global warming.”
It was good to see Reasons to Believe finally address this issue, which has polarized many within the evangelical community.
I’ve wondered about this before, but couldn’t figure out how. It could remove some of the thrust of the wind and have … some sort of effect. Perhaps seeds don’t get blown as far or something like that.
Well, this Q&A column from the NY Times notes that one study suggests that the turbines / windmills could force the agitation of moister ground air with drier air higher up to produce a drying effect at ground level. That’s probably not a big deal if your windfarm is in the desert southwest, and maybe not even if it’s out at sea. But it makes it less likely you’ll want to toss up windmills in the middle of fields in the country’s breadbasket.
Greenpeace vandals have been cleared in the UK of damaging a coal station. It’s not that they didn’t do it, it’s that the jury thought they were justified.
The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 [US$ 62,594] worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage.
Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a “lawful excuse” to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of “lawful excuse” under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.
This act of vandalism was just graffiti…this time. And Greenpeace has now been given license to cost power companies (and the people they service) $62,000 at a shot as many times as they want without repercussions. That is incredibly foolish.
An event occurred last August that hasn’t happened since 1913, almost 100 years ago.
The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.
The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots — is an influencing factor for climate on earth.
And how would this lack of sunspots influence Earth’s climate?
In the past 1000 years, three previous such events — the Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minimums, have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called a “mini ice age”. For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season shortens, yields drop, and the occurrence of crop-destroying frosts increases.
The only thing worse for mankind than global warming is global cooling, if you want to look at it that way. And it looks like we could be in for quite the cold snap.
The rest of the article is worth a read. It includes charts showing sunspot activity since the year 1600 that seem to correlate with global temperatures (including a dip during the 1970s when global cooling was the cry of the scientists).
Understand this general rule (economically derived): The higher the price of gasoline, the less driving an individual will do.
Now, understand that the Democratic Party’s platform states:
We will create a cleaner, greener and stronger America by reducing our dependence on foreign oil, eliminating billions in subsidies for oil and gas companies and use the savings to provide consumer relief and develop energy alternatives, and investing in energy independent technology.
So, wouldn’t it stand to reason that an economy with higher gasoline prices would be welcomed by Democrats? Wouldn’t such an economy yield, through the effect of less driving, a cleaner, greener and stronger America?
Yet, Nancy Pelosi recently stated,
The President knows, as his own Administration has stated, that the impact of any new drilling will be insignificant – promising savings of only pennies per gallon many years down the road. Americans know that thanks to the two oilmen in the White House, consumers are now paying $4 a gallon for gas. But what Americans should realize is that what the President is calling for is drilling as close as three miles off of America’s pristine beaches and in other protected areas.
…
Today, the New Direction Congress will vote on legislation to bring down gas prices by taking crucial steps to curb excessive speculation in the energy futures market. The President himself could lower prices by drawing down a small portion of our government oil stockpile, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The New Direction Congress will continue to bring forth responsible proposals to increase supply, reduce prices, protect consumers, and transition America to a clean, renewable energy independent future.
Does Pelosi really want to lower the price of gasoline or does she want to play politics under the guise of saving the environment? How high must the price of gasoline go before the Democrats relent, and actually do something?
