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 WASHINGTON – While it may seem like everyone believes in global warming
and the impending catastrophe it will bring, a group of conservative
Christians countered that message Thursday by launching a national
campaign to gather one million signatures for a statement that says
Christians must not believe in all the hype about global warming.
The “We Get It!” declaration, which currently has nearly 100
signers, is backed by prominent Christians including Tony Perkins of
Family Research Council, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family,
award-winning radio host Janet Parshall, and U.S. Senator James Inhofe
of Oklahoma.
What supporters of the statement seek is to inform
Christians about the biblical perspective on the environment and the
poor, and to encourage them to look at the hard evidence, which they
say does not support the devastating degree of climate change claimed
by mainstream society.
“How can you create policies on uncertain
science?” asked Dr. Barrett Duke, vice president of the Southern
Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
“How
can you say what it is that needs to be done when you don’t really know
and you don’t really have real consensus on the state of the problem or
what is causing the problem?”
Duke called it an “unbiblical”
response to make policies based on unsettled data that would push the
poor further into starvation and poverty.
But the SBC leader made sure to clarify that he and other signers are not “anti-earth.”
“It
isn’t as though we think that the earth is here to be abused. It is
not,” he said. “It is God’s creation and we have a responsibility to
care for it and to do all that we can to help it be the place that God
wants it to be.”
Yet at the same time, policies should not be
made to sacrifice the needs of the most needy in order to “reach some
kind of standard” that may not even be reachable, Duke argued.
“If
humans are not causing the problem then it doesn’t matter how much we
reduce CO2 emissions. It won’t make any difference,” he said.
Fellow
signer Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, founder and national spokesman for the
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, also talked about
the harmful effects of popular climate change policies that call for a
cap on carbon emission.
“The number of premature deaths, number
of diseases, and the harm to the human economy that can be predicted
from the policies used to fight the warming” is more destructive than
even if all the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change)-predicted global warming-caused disasters came true, Beisner
said emotionally to The Christian Post.
“You try to cap emissions
and you kill more people than die if you don’t cap emissions,” Beisner
said, referring to those who would die from lack of access to energy,
higher food prices, and the halt in their country’s economic
development.
“We will have killed people,” he added solemnly. “We
care about this issue the same way why we care about abortion. It kills
people.”
Several of the speakers at Thursday’s press event
accused the green movement – that blames humans for the impending
global warming disasters – of being driven by emotions and
“fear-mongering.”
“We believe this is being driven by emotions,
emotions that will lead to decisions that will lead to negative
consequences that will create tremendous harm not only to American
families but impoverished families all around the globe,” said Tony
Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and former vice
chairman of the Environmental committee in Louisiana.
Signers of
the declaration said while they do acknowledge, in varying degrees,
that global warming is real and humans are partly to blame for the
earth’s warming, they believe that for the most part the heating of the
earth is due to the natural warming and cooling cycle of the planet.
The
“We Get It!” view starkly contrasts that of the IPCC and some prominent
green evangelicals who believe that scientific evidence strongly
supports that global warming is a serious crisis and man-induced.
The
IPCC report last year – which is said to be the clearest and most
comprehensive statement to date on the impact of global warming mainly
caused by man-induced carbon dioxide pollution – warns that 30 percent
of the Earth’s species are at risk of extinction, up to 250 million
people are likely to experience water shortage, and stronger and more
frequent natural disasters are expected in the near future.
The Rev. Richard Cizik, head of the Office of Governmental Affairs for
the National Association of Evangelicals, has been the face of the
green evangelical movement. He has visited churches and Christian
college students nationwide to give seminars on the detrimental effects
of global warming and what Christians need to do to help.
Last year, he also joined forces with the scientific community to
urge the U.S. government to pass a carbon emission law and for churches
and individuals to minimize unnecessary energy usage.
“If you are
for the sanctity of life and ignore the health impact of the
environment on the unborn, I think that is a limited understanding of
how everything is connected in life,” Cizik, who was among Time magazine’s most influential people in the world this year for his environmental protection efforts, said earlier.
“You
can’t separate either these principles like taking care of the earth
and the sanctity of life – they overlap,” the NAE leader contended. “So
to say you are pro-life but to ignore what is occurring to the unborn
from environmental degradation is an abomination.”
To Cizik and
others in the green evangelical movement, creation care is a more
holistic understanding of the evangelical pro-life stance.
Supporters
of the “We Get It!” campaign would readily agree with Cizik that
creation care is important, but they strongly disagree with him on the
severity of global warming and the policies to address the problem.
Opponents
of the popular global warming view say that until all scientists can
agree that global warming is as severe as some claim and that it is
mainly human-induced, they are against any policies that would raise
energy costs because they would put the lives of millions in jeopardy
based on uncertain or debatable scientific evidence.
Beisner on
Thursday offered a proposal that both sides could agree on – more
widespread use of nuclear energy. He said despite disagreements on the
position of manmade global warming, nuclear energy is a feasible
solution because there is already adequate technology to support it, it
is extremely safe, and is price competitive with petroleum, coal and
other sources of energy to produce electricity.
But at the end,
the campaign organizers admitted to facing difficulties in how they
will get their message out to younger evangelicals, who seem convinced
that global warming is real and mainly human-induced.
Beisner
said his organization is starting to connect with Christian colleges to
give seminar presentations on their view of the environment to students.
Meanwhile,
FRC’s Perkins said the campaign needs to find common ground with young
evangelicals by focusing on what the Bible says about the environment
and the poor.
“We are going to be engaging young evangelicals to
view this through the lens of Scripture first and then let’s make our
plans second,” Perkins said.
According to the “We Get It!”
campaign, Christians need to start by believing that God is creator of
all things and that humans are the pinnacle of God’s creation. As a
result, humans are responsible for looking out for the environment, but
first and foremost for their fellow man, which is the jewel of God’s
creation.
Well-known radio host Janet Parshall, a mother of four
young evangelicals, shared that she is particularly concerned about
getting the issue out to the younger generation.
“That is exactly why we have the ‘We Get It!’ campaign,” Parshall said, “because they didn’t get it.”
“We
are afraid that a lot of the young people in that demographic are
marching to the tune of a political agenda masqueraded as sound
science. So what we really want to do is make sure that they get it,
that they get sound science,” she said.
The “We Get It!” campaign
has begun a national outreach to pastors, people in the pews,
African-American and Hispanic church leaders, youth, artists,
homeschoolers, evangelical scientists, congressional and state
policy-makers, and other Christian leaders in their effort to gather
one million signatures for their declaration on the environment and
poverty. Source
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