Veiw
Weather or Not
Raymond J. Brown on Christian Stewardship & Climate Change
Talk about a dialogue of the deaf! It seems people fall into two camps on the subject of global warming. One group believes it is an imminent apocalypse foretold. Another holds that it is a hoax on a par with Orson Welles's War of the Worlds radio drama of 1938. As Disraeli opined (according to Mark Twain), "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." And we get lots of them all, presented as undeniable truth that only an imbecile or a charlatan would deny.
As Christians, we remember Holy Writ:
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Gen. 1:26–28)
So the Almighty put us in charge. How do we go about being in charge?
Opposing Bookends
We are called and commanded to be stewards of the earth. We are also called and commanded to righteously exploit the earth for the benefit of mankind. Print editorials, talk radio, scientific seminars, UN gatherings, and talking heads on cable news routinely declare that we cannot do both. Funding supplied by foundations and businesses for academic advocacy of their respective positions is similar to a pair of bookends—they have the exact same appearance, but face in opposite directions. One thinks of the trust that the tobacco industry accumulated while denying cancerous outcomes for cigarettes, or the Pulitzer Prize Walter Duranty won in 1932 for writing glowing reports on Stalin's utopia while mass starvation was actually occurring.
The climatic assertions of two decades ago have become assumptions. I recall being in a dental chair not too long ago. My dentist, an experienced, Ivy League-type doctor, was speaking to her assistant about how ridiculous it was that some people just could not believe Al Gore's warnings about the acceleration of global warning.
Being myself an agnostic (not an unbeliever) on warming, I was nevertheless inclined to opine that I would not believe Al Gore even if he told me he was lying. However, as I looked at the assembled drills, chisels, torque wrenches, retractors, forceps, and excavators, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
Personally, I am conflicted about the concept of global warming. I spent the first half of my life being informed that "another ice age is coming." I recall it being an assertion and an assumption in my school years. As late as 1978, books were being published about the government's refusal to accept reality and about the dark conspiracies to hide the truth. Unless immediate and effective action were taken, these books warned, we were all but doomed. As my wife is a reference librarian, she scrounged up one of those old books. Were I so inclined, I could change certain words in it to their polar opposite meanings, seek a publisher, and perhaps make some money.
The second half of my life (so far), I have increasingly been hearing about global warming, now more frequently referred to as climate change. Probably my attendant cynicism has some legitimate experiential foundation: been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
Raymond J. Brown is Secretary of the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau, a retired U.S. Coast Guard captain, and a security consultant living in New Hampshire. He and his wife Susan, a librarian, have three grown children.
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