By Robert Marus
Associated Baptist Press
A Feb. 8 news conference in Washington signaled the start of what could become a showdown over global warming between two groups of evangelical Christian leaders.
At stake are the hearts and minds of evangelical Americans and the politicians who listen to them-not to mention the future of the planet.
At the press briefing, a broad coalition of conservative, centrist and progressive evangelicals announced a campaign to raise awareness about the issue of climate change in the evangelical community. The campaign's leaders also say they intend to pressure government leaders to take steps to arrest or reverse global warming by cutting down on the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Scientists agree that increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” can create an effect that traps heat in the earth's atmosphere, gradually building up average air and ocean temperatures.
The group, which includes megachurch pastor and Purpose-Driven Life author Rick Warren and 85 other evangelical leaders, released a statement called “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action” at the press event.
“For most of us, until recently this has not been treated as a pressing issue or major priority,” the statement read. “Indeed, many of us have required considerable convincing before becoming persuaded that climate change is a real problem and that it ought to matter to us as Christians. But now we have seen and heard enough to offer the following moral argument related to the matter of human-induced climate change.”
The statement asserts that: 1. global warming is real; 2. it will likely produce effects-such as droughts, rising sea levels and more intense tropical storms-that will hurt the poor most; 3. Christian theology demands a response; and 4. a response is needed urgently.
“This statement is groundbreaking; it lays a foundation in our community for building a consensus on the need for action in addressing global warming,” said Jim Ball, a Baptist who is director of the Washington-based Evangelical Environmental Network. EEN brought the leaders together.
“There is a theological and moral set of motives behind the signatories,” said Duane Litfin, president of Wheaton College and a signer of the statement. “As we see the unfolding effects of the degradation of our environment, the ones who will be impacted the most egregiously … are those people-those nations-who are most vulnerable.”
Many meteorologists and other earth scientists have theorized that increasing global air and water temperatures could lead to more extreme weather events-such as larger hurricanes, more severe droughts and more intense heat waves. Several statement supporters cited Christians' biblical mandate to defend the poor and powerless.
“Recently we have not only seen a significant increase in the numbers of people who are caught in the midst of the storms of life's disasters-such as homelessness, hunger and poverty-but we have seen in recent years a significant increase in the numbers of people who are caught in the storms of natural disaster,” said statement signer Todd Bassett, national commander for the Salvation Army. “My involvement in this campaign … is because of my belief that our Lord looks upon the needy with love and compassion.”
Among the signers are several Baptist college presidents-including David Dockery of Union University in Tennessee, David Black of Eastern University in Pennsylvania, Douglas Hodo of Houston Baptist University, and Lee Royce of Mississippi College.
But consensus doesn't exist on the issue for another group of evangelicals. Just a week before the EEN announcement, the National Association of Evangelicals said it would not be taking a stand on the issue of global warming, disappointing many Christian environmentalists.
In 2004, leaders of the NAE approved a statement asserting that Christians have “a sacred responsibility to steward the Earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part.” NAE, an umbrella group for evangelical denominations and congregations, claims 30 million members.
In January the group's president, Ted Haggard, received a letter from a group of politically connected evangelical luminaries urging NAE not to take a position on global warming. The 22 signatories of that letter included Focus on the Family head James Dobson, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship, conservative Presbyterian televangelist James Kennedy and Republican activist and Religious Right author David Barton.
The letter said that Christians “disagree about the cause, severity and solutions to the global warming issue” and asked NAE not to go beyond its previous statements by taking a position on climate change.
“Global warming is not a consensus issue, and our love for the Creator and respect for his creation does not require us to take a position,” the letter said. “We are evangelicals and we care about God's creation. However, we believe there should be room for Bible-believing evangelicals to disagree about the cause, severity and solutions to the global warming issue.”
Land debated EEN's Ball on CNN the day after the press conference. Land said there is not a consensus among Southern Baptists that global warming is real, and scientists differ as well.
Calvin Beisner of Knox Theological Seminary, who helped organize the NAE's opposition, challenged the assumptions behind the EEN statement. He said that, while virtually every earth scientist agrees that average temperatures have increased somewhat in recent years, not all are agreed that human carbon-dioxide emissions are the cause, that global warming will have catastrophic effects, or that cutting CO2 emissions would even be able to reverse the temperature trends-or do more harm than good.
Beisner-a professor of social ethics at the conservative Presbyterian seminary in Florida-cited a handful of scientists who are skeptical about the prevailing wisdom in the scientific community on global warming. Critics in the scientific community have called these scientists outliers, noting that many of the studies discounting global warming's existence and effects were either funded by oil-related industries or that they came from scientific bodies closely associated with fossil-fuel producers.
Nonetheless, Beisner said, enough doubts exist that supporting drastic measures to curb global warming could do more economic harm than good-thus hurting the poor.
“Part of the actual regime for reducing [greenhouse-gas] emissions is putting additional taxes on the consumption of energy-[namely], making it more expensive to use,” Beisner said. “When you do that, you are going to increase costs.”
Since the poor spend virtually all their income on basics-food, shelter, transportation-the prices of which are dependent on energy costs, Beisner said, “If we increase basic costs to them, we can put millions of them over the brink.”
However, the statement from the Evangelical Environmental Network called for legislation to reduce emissions “through cost-effective, market-based mechanisms.” In 2005, the Senate passed a bipartisan-but non-binding-resolution calling for such efforts.
Beisner said another potential economic cost associated with combating climate change is the government or private funding allocated to paying for the anti-warming measures themselves. “The money we spend on that cannot be spent on other efforts to help the poor,” he noted.
But one Christian expert on renewable energy sources said those economic arguments ring hollow. “This is probably the single biggest fallacy of renewable energy,” Peter van Walsum, an environmental studies professor at Baylor University, told Associated Baptist Press. “The best way to preserve energy is efficiency. And efficiency is not an economic cost; it's an economic benefit.”
Because a fossil fuel-based economy will not be viable in the future-since oil and natural gas are finite resources-van Walsum said, conserving fossil fuels and using renewable energy sources will also end up helping poor people in the long run.
“You're basically taking money that you would have spent on one sector of the economy and spending it on another, and you're getting benefits,” he said.
For example, the money spent on infrastructure for constructing solar energy plants or wind-energy plants would provide short-term economic gain. And maintenance of the plants would provide long-term jobs.
Relying on such resources would also reduce costs, domestically, associated with dependency on fossil fuels. “The amount of money we spend on importing oil is huge,” van Walsum noted. “The economic argument [against combating climate change], I think, is heavily lobbied by the fossil-fuel industry.”
He cited a theological reason for conserving fossil fuels. “Waste, to me, is a sin. Why do we take a resource that has been given to us and just squander it?” van Walsum asked. “There's plenty of biblical warnings about being good stewards, and to waste we are being bad stewards.”