John H Armstrong

Climate Science and Evangelicals

One of the true hot-button issues conservatives routinely debate  is climate science and global warming. I have listened to some of the strangest and most confusing debate over this issue. Some of the worst debate over this issue is routinely endorsed by evangelical Christians who laugh at climate science and demonize those who take it seriously. Some even produce impressive looking papers on what is wrong in the ciimate science debate. Much of this makes Christians look rather foolish to those who do rigid research on this problem.

What must be understood in this debate is that there is no doubt that global warming actually exists. The question is not, “Is global warming real?” The question is what causes it and what can, or should, we do about it?

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry recently suggested that the flow of grants has led to a growing body of research arguing for human causes of global warming. In the September 26 issue of USA Today, Republican Bob Inglis, a two-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1993-99, 2005-11), laid waste to this form of reasoning when he noted that scientists do not make a name for themselves by parroting consensus by rather by finding ways that challenge it! If you know anything at all about scientific research, and about how research actually works, you know he is right. You don’t get a theory named after yourself, or a prestigious award given in your honor, for writing papers that say, “Yes, just as he/she said!” You become famous, and make real breakthroughs in science, by demonstrating new insights and by providing new understanding to the scientific community.

What conservatives have done is create an appearance of uncertainty about the science of this issue when little uncertainty presently exists among working scientists. 97% of climate scientists have concluded that the planet is rapidly warming as a result of human activity. 97%! But only 15% of the public knows this to be true. And most of them care very little about this issue. I can count on one hand the number of conservatives I’ve heard in the last year who took this issue seriously at all. Most reason, “It doesn’t impact my life right now so why should I care that much about something that will only impact people decades from now?”

Conservatives sometimes admit climate change is real but then quickly assert that human activity has little or no part in it. And if there is some human element they will then argue that the costs of correction are just too heavy, especially in bad times like now.

Bob Inglis tackled this proverbial response of conservatives when he noted that when they argue that the markets will deliver innovation and ultimately correct the problem they are right but they do not actually practice their own beliefs. This theory about the market is what has been argued about our dependence on foreign oil since 1973 but things have not fundamentally changed. Why? Inglis cogently argues that if we passed along the “real costs” of petroleum (the national security risks, the costs of protecting the supply lines from the Middle East, the cost of pollution from the tailpipes of our cars and the cost of taxpayer subsidies) then we would soon be made aware of our real problem! Markets can and would respond but not when some  fuels continue to escape accountability. Markets work best when they are most freed of interference. This is just good economic sense.

Inglis concluded his opinion piece in the September 26 issue of USA Today on how to engage climate science politically with a credible call to action:

Conservatives can restore our objectivity by acknowledging that Americans are already paying all the hidden costs of energy. We can prove out commitment to accountability by properly attaching all costs to all fuels. We can prove our belief in free markets by eliminating all subsidies and letting the free enterprise system sort out the winners and losers among competing fuels.

Or, more cynically, we can attempt to disprove science, protect the fossilized and deprive America of a muscular, free enterprise, no-growth-of-government alternative to cap and trade.

Burning the Future: What Do You Know About Coal in America?

I have frequently noted that documentary films are almost always biased. This does not mean they are worthless, not in the least. It just means they take a stance, in advance of the making of the film, and then pursue demonstrating the rightness of that stance through the medium of film. This is not true of all documentary films but it is clearly true of most.

This is surely the case in Burning the Future: Coal in America (2008). Coal provides half of the electricity in the United States. This is fact. But how is this coal extracted from the ground and at what cost to people, nature and the environment? In the 2008 presidential campaign we heard both candidates talk a lot about “clean coal.” What is that? Most of us, I would guess, know next to nothing about coal and how it is used.

Consider, for starters, that 36% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U. S. come from coal. Consider, that it takes 5 tons of coal to provide electricity for each one of us every year and you see how dependent our way of life is on coal. And consider that every eleven-plus days the explosive equivalent of the Hiroshima atomic bomb is exploded upon the mountains of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, all for extracting coal from the land. Burning the Future examines this controversial subject in a controversial but highly useful way. It shows that there is a strong human struggle between the coal industry, a multi-billion dollar boom to investors, and the resident of Appalachia. The residents of these areas have been forced to deal with toxic ground water (the scenes which show this are so graphic no one could doubt the problem) and the obliteration of 1.4 million acres of mountains. Their health has clearly suffered and their families face problems few of us can understand. At the same time our government looks the other way, at least in many instances.

Burning the Future tells the story of how ordinary citizens have organized themselves to fight back. How they want to protect their water supply, their mountains, their land, their families. Mountaintop extraction of coal strikes me as a profitable industry with incredible problems for real people. This is a political problem but it seems, to me at least, that both parties care very little about the problem.

This was underscored for me when I flew home recently and chatted with the man in the seat next to me who worked as a major executive for BP (British Petroleum). I had not yet seen this film and I think my conversation actually made me want to see it now looking back on what we discussed. I asked this executive: “Can the petroleum industry change its ways and make profits?” He was sure they could and that eventually they would have to do this. I then asked him why the United States was so slow to adapt? His answer was simple: “Lobby groups and money.” If you watch Burning the Future: Coal in America you will see a graphic illustration of the truth of what he said to me and what the consequences are for some of our fellow Americans.

This film is 89 minutes in length and includes several additional feature interviews.

Is God Green? Making Sense of the Environmental Debate Among Christians

Is God Green?
Bill Moyers on America
Films for the Humanities & Sciences (2006)
60 minutes

The issue of the environment has clearly appeared on the radar screen of evangelical Christians over the past eight years. Is this a good thing or a not so good thing? A debate now rages among high-profiled evangelical leaders, most of whom know little or nothing about science. At the same time ordinary Christians are paying more attention to the environment than ever before, or so it seems to me.

This is the subject of a recent Bill Moyers’ documentary presentation called: Is God Green? It was produced in 2006, right in the middle of the fierce back-and-forth debate of two sides in the evangelical world. Moyers suggests that millions of Christians are now “green.” (I think his way of determining this sizable number is questionable, as I will soon show.) These Christians, he does show quite effectively, have taken on the care of the environment as a moral and biblical obligation. In the film he features a very interesting Vineyard Church in Boise, Idaho, that is very engaged in environmental issues and as a result is acting on their beliefs and also seeing non-Christians pay attention to their witness as a result. Such Christians believe, even more controversially, that it is their duty to do something about global warming. Included in this rising concern is the desire to preserve the loss of animal species and to clean up our air, food and water.

My wife and I have clearly noticed an increased interest in these subjects among our peers over the last five years. We have made some changes and I expect we will make more. 

Moyers shows how this rising emphasis among evangelicals on the environment is also opposed by Christians who stress that the imminence of the End Times and the Rapture make such stewardship unnecessary at best. Along with this type of approach the much more common response of evangelical leaders to this rising green interest is to suggest that younger evangelicals are being captured by the liberal left and the Democratic Party.

Moyers traveled around the country interviewing evangelicals on both sides of this debate. Included on the film are the usual critics such as James Dobson and Pat Robertson. At the end of the film Robertson is quoted in a way that shows his views might be changing after all. The two primary evangelical leaders featured on the film are Richard Cizik (left), the Vice President for Governmental Affairs for NAE, and Calvin Beisner (right), a very conservative Reformed theologian and a professor at Knox Seminary in Florida.

First, why do I question Moyers on his use of numbers about the evangelicals who are really interested in this issue? He makes the faulty assumption that Cizik speaks for millions because of his title and position with NAE. He clearly does not speak for so many people because of his position. NAE speaks for so few evangelicals that it is, in my judgment, irrelevant to the discussion in the end. Cizik speaks for himself and less than a 100 other leaders who signed a document a few years ago. And he does this eloquently and with humility and grace. He does represent a growing movement for sure but no one can talk yet about how large it really is at the end of the day.

On the other hand Beisner speaks for some evangelicals as well, but one has to doubt that most evangelicals have never even heard of him, much less read his considerable work on the environment. In this video, whether you agree with him or not, Rich Cizik comes across as the reasonable, compassionate, and more caring person of the two. Beisner, sadly, fits some of the expected stereotypes of conservative Reformed arguments on such issues. For example, he rightly defends divine sovereignty but it comes across as clumsy and matter-of-fact. Moyers is appalled at his argument that God may actually be causing all of this. (Beisner rightly says God “sent” (decreed is the theological word here) Hurricane Katrina but it all sounds like fatalism to the ordinary viewer. While Reformed Christians rightly have a high view of divine providence they should believe just as fervently that humans can wreak havoc on the earth in ways that God does not (directly) “cause,” at least in the usual sense of the word “cause.” Beisner fails to adequately distinguish, in other words, between what God ordains and what man is responsible for causing because of his sin and moral foolishness. His Calvinism is so high that it leaves you breathless and gasping for some measure of balance.

Further, Beisner speaks of global warming with a note of considerable disdain and then proceeds to suggest that if God is actually causing global warming then we should do little or nothing about it. This response borders on a kind of macro-fatalism that is quite alarming to me, a Reformed Christian. Don’t take my word on this, view the video and see for yourself. Beisner’s certitude about his position was far more entrenched than was Cizik’s, though both men clearly seem to be quite sure of their conclusions, and thus their actions, in this debate.

I find myself somewhere between these two polarizing positions. Cizik makes a good case for the facts but the devil is in the details. That climate change is taking place is obvious. Why it is taking place is not so obvious. What to do about it is problematic but careful planning is needed. Yes, there is climate fear and hysteria that rises to the level of idolatry. What else is new? This is no excuse for sitting this discussion out by mocking one side of the other. Christians, of all people, ought to cultivate a posture that is willing to listen and learn, especially when it will impact future generations of people on the planet.

One thing I am sure of—the next president of the United States will take this subject far more seriously than our present president. Both Obama and McCain are openly committed to this discussion and to finding actual ways to improve the environment. McCain, for example, fancies his position as much like that of his hero Theodore Roosevelt, perhaps America’s greatest environmental president. Obama is automatically committed as a Democrat. So this election will give us two serious candidates who both think we should do more.

I have spoken previously of global warming hysteria, built on bad science and pandering politicians. This leads to bad policies and radically unacceptable responses. But isn’t it time that Christians stop using terms like “environmental nut balls” and began to engage this dialog seriously? Calvin Beisner seem to argue that the creation mandate (Genesis 1:27) allows us to destroy species, to take from the earth without seeking to replenish it and to destroy open lands and natural beauty. I would welcome a healthy debate about his use of this Genesis text, so commonly used by Reformed Christians for almost every cause under the sun.

It seems clear to me that Genesis 1:28 is saying that humankind (male and female) has been given a divine benediction to flourish, to fill the earth with their own kind (i.e., to have children), and to exercise careful dominion over the rest of the created order. We are not the lords of the earth, but the stewards. Our dominion comes from God and we must use it for his glory, not simply for our gain and profit. As earth’s stewards we are to care for the whole earth and this must include every living thing. Idolatrous environmentalism and human dominion over the whole earth that uses it and does not seek to restore it are not the only options on the table! Indeed, Genesis 1:28 requires us to pay careful attention to the earth, something forgotten long ago by evangelicals who think everything is for them to use before we get taken out when the Lord returns. This response is, quite frankly, heretical. It is neither life affirming nor truly Christian, but life denying. I fully expect more and more Christians will become interested in the environment in the years ahead. If Cizik is wrong in some of the details, and I think he is, then he is right about the bigger concern and has thus done us a favor by helping to awaken us to important concerns. Younger Christians know this instinctively and are more willing to listen to it since they do not associate God’s creation with a political party or a particular ideology that has grown out of a bad theology.

I realize Bill Moyers is despised by many conservatives in my generation. My response is: “So what.” This is no reason to refuse to view such a presentation. I found this documentary well worth the time I spent viewing it. In fact, I think I will watch it again.