“Climate change is the totalitarian’s dream come true. It offers a rationale for government intrusion into every aspect of life for every person on Earth.”
Strong words, from a speaker at the Family Research Council on Earth Day last week. But if anyone wants to dismiss the speaker as a rabble-rousing alarmist, they’ll have a tough time doing it. He’s a serious Christian thinker, E. Calvin Beisner, whose credentials should earn him a respectful hearing.
Beisner is, among other things, founder of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, whose goal is “bringing a balanced Biblical view of stewardship to the critical issues of environment and development.” That makes him a different shade of green than many people who wear the label. Some samples (from a report by CNSNews):
Christians are commanded by God to care for the poor, which Beisner said would suffer the most from the kind of environmental controls and alternative energy plans proposed by both the United Nations and the U.S. Congress.
“The Bible requires us to care for the poor,” he said, detailing how the policies focused on cutting the use of fossil fuels, for example, will hurt the poorest people by increasing the cost of energy and limiting its availability in the world’s poorest places where access to abundant energy supplies can prevent disease and premature death.
* * *“Secular environmentalism, in contrast to creation stewardship, is at heart a false religion,” Beisner said.
“It degrades human beings, the crown of God’s creation, deifies nature in its untouched state as the ideal — contrary to God’s mandate for man to fill, subdue, and rule the Earth — and disregards the poor, who often are harmed by environmental policies like banning DDT, a cheap and safe insecticide that could largely eliminate the malaria-bearing mosquitoes that cost millions of lives every year in the Third World,” he added.
I’m glad to hear from Beisner. Like him, I’m skeptical about the extent of man-made global warming. But even if I weren’t, I’d worry about the ideas behind much of the crusade against global warming — and the way some people are getting their sense of purpose from that crusade. I hope Beisner gets that aforementioned respectful hearing from fellow Christians, even those who disagree with him on some points.
Read a bit at least. Read more if you want. Discuss.
