The “Climate Mongers” are at it again.  Thousands of protesters were out in New York and a few other cities around the world to try to salvage their dying cause of man-made global warming and the associated “solutions” they have variously proposed.  The mainstream news media were also on this story like leeches, giving it massive publicity compared to other marches.  It was called the “People’s Climate March,” a name apparently chosen without any irony intended (In case you aren’t up on such naming, the communists of yore were fond of labeling nearly everything beginning with “The People’s).  Their mantra, as usual, was that humans in the past 200 years (roughly since the Industrial Revolution, but especially in the last 50 years) are creating an environment that leads to a much warmer global climate, or cooler (one doesn’t quite know which they are now choosing), in turn causing ice melt, flooding, natural catastrophes, massive weather distortions, and pretty much everything else bad one can imagine—and these folks can imagine quite a bit.  It was fairly impressive, with an estimated 300,000 in attendance in NY.  Many luminaries attended—scientists, environmental celebrities, government officials, monks and other religious people, members of socialist organizations, and, individuals such as the ever-present Al Gore and the Secretary General of the United Nations, not to mention ordinary people.  Quite a group.

What do they really want?  It all depends on whom you ask.  Some of those in attendance who were interviewed  (such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) believed that those they called “climate deniers” (full disclosure—I might be one) ought to be hauled into court, tried and sentenced to jail.  Yes, for the “crime” of daring to challenge the view of the climate change advocates, some of us stupid and ignorant critics should be in prison.  The moderates only want massive taxation of wealthy countries, with the proceeds to be redistributed to the poor ones—an odd proposal for solving an environmental crisis.  It sounds more like a thin disguise for simple wealth redistribution.  Still others want a regulatory regime so big and restrictive that, as a few actually have said aloud, we would all go back to living “simply” off the land, much as our ancestors did centuries ago.  Sorry, no refrigerators, no TVs, no iphones, no computers, no automobiles for certain, no electricity (maybe natural gas, but on a limited basis)…. You get the picture.  This is the more radical element in the movement, but others land somewhere not all that far off.

What’s not to like?  Well, to begin with, the science, contrary to the strident voices of the climate advocates, is not settled, and is becoming less settled as time passes.  Why just the other day, a species supposedly extinct because of man-made climate change was “rediscovered”—alive and well!  The little animal was a small snail, thought to be killed off by climate change, as insisted by a quite biased scientific journal and its editors, who refused even to publish a rebuttal by skeptics at the time.  Temperatures have not been rising.  The polar ice isn’t melting.  The weather has even been a little cooler.  So how do the climate change advocates respond?  They change the theory.  Fewer hurricanes, fewer tornadoes, cooler weather must actually be the result of, not warming, but just “change.”  I have some inconvenient truth for the changers.  The climate has been changing for centuries, back and forth, warmer and cooler.  And even if it changes all one way, this is no necessary doomsday scenario.  It might actually benefit parts of the world, even if it occurred.  Further, where is the evidence that, if climate change occurs, it is man-made?  I have written on this before.  The evidence is simply not there to declare disaster.

Moreover, the method for reaching the disaster scenario is more than a little suspect.  Instead of real and substantial empirical data, models are used that extrapolate out from previous years.  Models have their place, but in this case, they are being misused, in some cases deceitfully, to make the argument for the reality of what is not real.  That isn’t science, at least not fully.  Making the case requires data gained from actual measurements.  And then a real causal connection between man’s productive activity and climate change must be made.  Even then, a strong case must be made that if such change did occur and was caused largely by humans, is it such a threat to the planet that significant policy changes should be made?  Perhaps in comparison to the overall costs, not just in money terms, it just isn’t worth it—and we would all get along just fine.

Finally, this site is called BereansattheGate because we desire to bring Christian thinking to bear on important issues.  Therefore I don’t want to end without that consideration.  As part of our broader dominion mandate, including stewardship in all of life, we are no doubt called to make the earth a better place than it was before we were born (Genesis 1).  Each generation it can be argued would have the same calling.  But this does not mean that the preservation of a pristine planet is an absolute value.  The mandate was not to do nothing but to “be fruitful and multiply” and to “subdue the earth.”  We are to make the earth better for us humans, but that can and should involve “working the garden” to make it different, more productive, of greater benefit to humans.  The mandate is not simply to allow the earth to lie unused, but to use it while at the same time not using it for wrong motives or to exhaust its ability to support life.  The “wilderness” vision of environmental protection is not viable; nor is it necessary, as some radical climate change advocates would have it.  Do we want to kill off our own human population to achieve a supposed solution to a problem that does not exist?  I say not.  And I believe Scripture supports that conclusion.  I am not of course arguing for no rules at all for using our environment.  But rules must always be proportionate to the actual problem.  Christians will support rules but not to the extent of stifling the good or creative and productive activity.

The climate change marchers may have had good intentions—though some certainly did not—but they ought to re-think their entire position.  But whether they do or not, Christians have no excuse for remaining ignorant.