Climate Change/Global Warming

Whether you are liberal or conservative…….. today’s post is going to annoy you. You may even refuse to accept parts of it…. So please bear with me.

The great intractable arguments of our age usually drag on because either the two sides are talking about different things…….or because both sides are wrong.

With GW……… both sides are wrong. Since you are probably on one side or the other…….. You too are wrong.

Conservatives are wrong because they argue that it is not happening. Well, it is. The glaciers are melting, the weather is getting warmer, we have a 100 year flood every 10 years, etc. Conservatives say that this is temporary….. statistical noise…….. that things will ultimately cool back down. I’ll concede that they are right if and when the planet cools back down. But, I’ll bet a six pack that I will never see it in my lifetime.

Liberals are wrong because they propose a laundry list of expensive, “big government” solutions that are futile…… All to be paid for by some, as yet to be named, “rich guy”. There is no serious proposal on the table that will fix GW by cooling the planet down to 1950 temperatures. The most comprehensive “fix” that has been proposed, the Paris Accord has, as it’s goal, merely slowing GW down. And even that is failing. In essence, liberals say we should spend enormous sums of money on various projects so that we might delay the consequences of GW…… the flooding of Miami for example…….by a few decades. And all of their plans ignore the fact that the population of the earth will double…… again…….in my grandchildren’s lifetimes. Do you really believe that we can double the number of people running air conditioners and eating hamburgers and cut our carbon emissions?

Theoretically, if you give enough monkeys enough paper, enough typewriters, and enough time……… they will type the Bible.

Theoretically, there are fixes that might reverse……might “cure” GW.

1. Completely outlaw burning fossil fuels and eating meat worldwide, today.
2. A 30 year ban on having children followed by a strict one child per family limit worldwide until the population of the earth drops to 4 billion.
3. Outlaw cutting trees and require every human to plant and nurture 100 trees.

If we did those kinds of things, we might fix GW……. in about a century. But, of course we won’t. And even if the US did, China, India, Brazil, and the developing world will not. In essence, we are asking the developing world to throw itself under the bus by not doing exactly those things that America has been doing for the last 200 years.

In a word………. practically speaking…….attempting to “cure” global warming is futile.

Here is the sad truth.

We have overpopulated and then poisoned the planet. We are not going to fix it. Southern California and the great plains will revert to desert. Much of Florida will flood. Drought and hurricanes will become more severe and more frequent. We will face water shortages and food shortages. In addition to refugees fleeing Central America, we will have refugees fleeing southern California, Florida, Arizona, Kansas, and Nebraska. It is not a question of “if these things will happen”, but rather of “when”. Will they happen to me, to my children, or to my grandchildren?

Enough.

Our current debate on GW is a bit like a man who has jumped off of a 100 story building and is plummeting to the sidewalk. He passes the 75th floor and a Republican sticks his head out of the window and says, “nothing to worry about………it’s a temporary statistical hiccough……. keep doing what you’re doing…. It’ll be Ok.”. He passes the 65th floor and a Democrat sticks his head out of the window and says, “flap your arms……..it’ll slow you down.”. And yet the sidewalk is still racing up to meet him.

Pretty depressing………… So why does this mess belong in a Christian blog?

It has to do with hope…… hope for me, for my children, and for my grandchildren. If I am a secular humanist, I have to tell my children that my generation, and my parent’s generation, have poisoned the planet, it’s going to get ugly for them and then they will die and that’s it. Tough luck for you. As a Christian, I will tell them that yes, we have poisoned the planet and it’s going to get ugly for them…….but then, after they die, they will go to a place that hasn’t been poisoned…….a place where all of the bad things in this world have been dealt with…….a place of love, joy, and peace. And Jesus will be there waiting for them. I’ll be waiting for them too.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” 

John, ESV

This is my kind of place.