Is God a green? For years theologically conservative Christians have tended to be political conservatives. Now some are breaking ranks on issues like the environment.
The Rev. Joel Hunter, a spokesman for the Evangelical Climate Initiative — centered around the issue of global warming — was recently chosen to head the Christian Coalition but resigned before taking over because of policy differences, including over what he called “creation care.”
The Rev. Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals has become a leading Christian environmental activists. He explains: “there was a vacuum of leadership on this front in Washington, and evangelicals stepped into the void.”
Evangelicals should be applauded for rethinking political orthodoxies. But in doing so they must avoid becoming ensnared in another secular political web.
Cizik speaks of “biblical environmentalism.” Mankind is to exercise dominion over creation, but only as steward for what remains God’s creation. Potentially destructive climate change should concern Christians as well as others. But whether it is a problem requiring government action, and if so, precisely what action, isnot a theological matter.
As E. Calvin Beisner, a professor at Knox Theological Seminary in Florida and spokesman for the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, points out: “Certainly no one on either side can point to a scripture text, or even a concatenation of texts, and say, ‘See, my view follows by good and necessary consequence from the very Word of God’.”
Even thoughtful people of good will can disagree on policy.
Avoiding unjustified certitude is particularly important in the area of climate change. Everyone agrees that the planet is getting hotter. But the degree of natural climate variability (the earth has at times been much warmer than today), validity of climate models, significance of man’s role (in contrast to, for instance, solar activity), likely magnitude of warming, potential positive consequences of a warmer world, impact of countervailing feedback mechanisms and cooling forces, and chance of catastrophic harm remain highly controverted.
Equally important is the question: What to do? By any measure, Kyoto is a flop — it would do little to reduce expected warming while imposing a high economic cost.
Any policy, environmental or other, involves trade-offs. Adaptation, adjusting to warming, almost certainly is a more efficient strategy than mitigation, preventing warming.
Evangelicals should be particularly careful in appealing to an alleged “consensus” on the issue. After all, by its own terms their faith violates scientific consensus.
In any case, the global warming consensus is notably shallow, given the manifold disagreements among scientists over the details of any warming. Media coverage overwhelmingly favors advocates who fear the worst — such as Al Gore and his deeply flawed film “An Inconvenient Truth” — but more than a few scientists doubt the argument that without significant cuts in energy use mankind is headed for catastrophe. As Beisner puts it:”The idea of scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming is an illusion.”
Global warming is a matter of science, not theology. How to address the issue involves prudence rather than faith. Responsible political engagement requires understanding the issue’s complexity, man’s inadequacy, and government’s incapacity. Evangelicals are right to worry about environmental issues, but not to make government action on global warming a new tenet of their faith.
Doug Bandow, Bastiat Scholar in Free Enterprise at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is vice president for Policy at Citizen Outreach and the author of “Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics.”
