Christian Stewardship and the Environment
By Shafer Parker
(A follow-up to our blog - "The Idolatry of Climate Change")
When I wrote “The Idolatry of Climate Change” back in September, I intended it to be provocative enough to make people think. But I honestly had no idea it would become so contentious. A lot of people disagreed with my main points, (1) that God is ultimately in control of the weather, (2) our relationship with God is more important than addressing climate change[1], and (3) a crisis-mode effort to “save the planet” by sacrificing individual liberties, and indeed even sacrificing billions of lives, smacks of the same kind of fanaticism and idolatry that marked the pagan nations of old. I still believe these points are Biblically and scientifically valid, but I freely admit I went wrong by not making it clear I also believe people should care deeply about the environment, and that doing so does not necessarily make someone guilty of idolatry. For that I apologize and ask only that you continue reading as I readdress my original concerns using a different approach.
In my previous blog I should have explained that in all matters of life, Christians embrace the paradox of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. Let me demonstrate from the gospel of Luke, chapter 22, verse 22, where Jesus said, “The Son of Man is going to die the way it has been planned for him. But how horrible it will be for that person who betrays him” (GW Translation). These were said to the disciples at what is known as “The Last Supper.” Clearly, Jesus accepts it is God’s will that he should be betrayed and die, while at the same time noting Judas, the betrayer, will be punished for committing a terrible sin.
Christians apply this paradox to the environment. We believe God is sovereign over the earth, but we also believe human beings have a direct responsibility to ameliorate the ills that afflict our world. At the beginning of creation God spoke to Adam and Eve about humanity’s responsibility to be stewards of the earth and all its resources. “Be fruitful and multiply,” God said. “Fill the earth and govern it (Italics added). Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground” (Gen. 1:28, NLT).
For Christians, the stewardship mandate is non-negotiable; we’re to care for the earth and we’re to view our management of it as an assignment for which we will someday give an account. Admittedly, Christians have often failed to live up to our responsibility, but it is also a fact that many Christians have taken the stewardship mandate seriously, to the point that throughout history the most effective and sustained land-use methodologies have been developed and carried out in those parts of the world most impacted by Bible-based religions, by which I mean Judaism and Christianity.
Here’s what I find interesting. At the drop of a hat most people can come up with a long list of human-caused ills—there’s a lot more wrong with planet earth than climate change—yet each of these ills is likely being addressed by various groups around the world. In other words, whether people acknowledge the Bible or not, humans seem to possess a built-in concern for the earth’s well being. That’s a good thing. But like all of humanity’s better tendencies, under the influence of corrupt opinion shapers our natural desire to care for the earth can become a lever by which entire populations are manipulated to their own hurt.
Let me illustrate. Despite many declarations to the contrary, no causal connection between human activity and global warming (or climate change) has ever been demonstrated. In fact, there is no proof that earth’s climate is undergoing anything beyond the normal heating/cooling cycles that have characterized the world’s weather for millennia. And the thing is, nobody really knows what causes these cycles. As former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Judith Curry noted in a speech last year, most climate models are not to be trusted because climate is a “highly complex dynamical system,” with “no simple cause and effect.” Dr. Curry explained that “climate shifts naturally and in unexpected ways,” because, as far as is known, the key driver is “large-scale ocean circulations and changes in cloudiness,” factors so complex they are impossible to program into a computer model.
Dr. Curry also mentioned that most climate models cannot be trusted for another reason; they fail to incorporate what she calls “large-scale impactors”, including solar effects, underwater volcanoes, and solar-system gravitational and magnetic interactions. Significantly, Dr. Curry did not list CO2 as a major climate impactor. That’s because against the large-scale impactors Dr. Curry did mention, CO2 has almost no impact. Adding to the problem of associating climate change primarily with CO2 levels, Dr. Curry referenced what she calls “the unknown unknowns” that, if they exist, could be hugely impacting the world’s climate.
Attempting to provide a mechanism through which atmospheric carbon might have an impact, some theorists have suggested CO2 may work with water vapor as a catalyst, meaning a rise in CO2 could theoretically lead to a rise in earth’s atmospheric temperature. But over against that idea, one source lists over a hundred peer-reviewed scientific papers, many of them published in 2019, asserting that CO2’s atmospheric impact is so small as to be “negligible.”
Facts like these raise a question, if CO2 has a negligible impact upon temperature, why the international pressure to reduce carbon emissions? Or to put it another way, why are the world’s economies being stripped of their energy resources and primary wealth generators in order to reduce carbon emissions? Why are Canadians asked to embrace an economy-killing carbon tax? And why the call for western nations to drastically reduce their populations in the name of saving the planet?
Do you doubt western nations are singled out for population reduction? Then explain why at this month’s UN Summit in Madrid, Oscar-winning director Michael Wadleigh would “mince no words” as he intoned “Don’t have children — and I’m looking at you, white man.” Were you aware that over-population is a peculiarly western problem? I was not. Yet from the speeches coming out of Madrid it appears there’s a case for arguing that a population explosion led by wildly fecund Canadians, Americans and Europeans is exhausting the world’s resources. That’s ridiculous, of course. For decades western nations have had such low birth rates that without immigration their populations would be shrinking.
One begins to suspect that something other than science or concern for the earth is motivating the international push to impose carbon reduction and reduced lifestyles upon reluctant western societies. And indeed, in Dr. Curry’s inimitable phrasing, it appears that since 1990 “the policy cart” has always been put “before the scientific horse.” To be plain, evidence indicates the UN determined to use the idea of a climate emergency as a reason to reduce the sovereignty of individual states, and then cajoled and bribed scientists to find the evidence it needed to make the case. Again, Dr. Curry: “The 1992 UN Climate Change treaty was signed by 190 countries before the balance of scientific evidence suggested even a discernible human influence on global climate. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol was implemented before we had any confidence that most of the warming was caused by humans. There was tremendous political pressure on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists to present findings that would support these treaties, which resulted in a manufactured consensus.”
UN officials and their media supporters haven’t even bothered to hide their intentions. Indeed, they have routinely confessed to exaggerating the crisis in order to “persuade” people to accept international solutions. Here’s Al Gore: “I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous [Climate Change] is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.”
Here is Canadian climate advocate, Dr. David Suzuki: “Humanity is facing a challenge unlike any we’ve ever had to confront. We are in an unprecedented period of change.” Another Canadian, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Dr. Maurice Strong, said: “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing—are not sustainable.”
Finally, we have Canadian author Naomi Klein: “Because, underneath all of this is the real truth we have been avoiding: climate change isn’t an “issue” to add to the list of things to worry about, next to health care and taxes. It is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message—spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions—telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. Telling us that we need to evolve.” Remember, there is no science to support such levels of hysteria.
As I said at the beginning of this blog, concern for the environment does not necessarily make one an idolater. But the following quotes illustrate that many leaders of the climate change movement speak of their efforts in terms once reserved for religion. Here, again, is Maurice Strong: “It is the responsibility of each human being today to choose between the force of darkness and the force of light. We must therefore transform our attitudes and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of Divine Nature.” And here is Mikhail Gorbachev, an advocate of UN supremacy for the purpose of battling climate change: "Nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals." Lastly, here’s a quote from Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC from 2002 to 2015: “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and the sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.” At the very least these statements constitute incipient idolatry on the part of some of those at the centre of what can only be called a manufactured climate crisis.
And while I want to be clear that I am not claiming all climate concerns arise from idolatry, it is not without significance that teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has been referred to as Saint Greta, that a gigantic mural of her face has been erected in San Francisco, or that she’s been compared to the Virgin Mary, and dubbed “the environment movement’s ‘Joan of Arc,’” by Canadian author Margaret Attwood. I think it would be difficult to argue that the adoration extended toward Greta by her followers is not motivated by a fervor bordering on the religious. For the Christian, such misplaced reverence can only be seen as idolatry.
You see, for the Christian, God alone is God, and by “God” I mean the Triune God of the Bible, the One God Who is always three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The God whom we serve is truly sovereign, able to do His will and achieve His purposes without regard for any human being. Here’s what He says about Himself, with special attention given to verse 7:
5I am the Lord, and there is no other,
besides me there is no God;
I equip you, though you do not know me,
6 that people may know, from the rising of the sun
and from the west, that there is none besides me;
I am the Lord, and there is no other.
7 I form light and create darkness;
I make well-being and create calamity;
I am the Lord, who does all these things. (Isaiah 45)
Bottom line? Although as human beings we can impact the world for good or for ill, and even though we have a responsibility before God to care for the earth, we cannot stop God from blessing or cursing, and any thought to the contrary is idolatry. Moreover, if God is determined to crush those who oppose Him, he can do it no matter how much “clean” energy we use. It’s past time for today’s world leaders to heed the voice of the first great emperor, Nebuchadnezzar: “Everyone who lives on earth is nothing compared to him. He does whatever he wishes with the army of heaven and with those who live on earth. There is no one who can oppose him or ask him, "What are you doing?" (Dan. 4:35). In environmental matters Christians have a duty to be leading examples of environmental stewardship, but we must also emphasize that repentance and faith are more necessary for healing the earth than all the clean energy we can muster.
[1] In this article I will use “weather” and “climate change” almost interchangeably. For the language police who insist there is a difference, my only defense is that I am following popular usage. When weather seems to fit current computer models it’s called climate change and used as proof the model is correct. When a cold snap or mild hurricane season doesn’t fit the model, it’s just weather.