Christians and Global Warming – Christians Launch Campaign against Global Warming Hype is the story from “The Christian Post.” “The “We Get It!‘ declaration, which currently has nearly 100 signers, is backed by prominent Christians including Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, award-winning radio host Janet Parshall, and U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.” (The title of their initiative is obviously a play on Al Gore’s ambitious new project: The We Campaign.)
Jim Inhofe, you will remember, is the leader of the Republican minority on the Environment & Public Works Committee, its former chair, and an ardent opponent of even acknowledging the reality of climate change.
This, obviously, is an important story as these folks have the rapt attention of a lot of Americans. There’s a highly relevant counterview, though, within the conservative Christian community, and it’s exemplified by the National Association of Evangelicals. Here’s what I wrote going all the way back to March 2007 at this post:
The other story that I want to flag for you concerns the very public spat between elements of the Evangelical Christian community in the U.S. One recent focus of the contention has been the very active campaign waged against global warming by Richard Cizik, the vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals. The NAE, for your information, is an umbrella group, with hundreds of organizational members, and represents on the order of 30 million Americans. See “NAE rebuffs critics, affirming Cizik and a wider agenda” from “The Christian Century.” (Bill McKibben is another featured writer for them.) The NAE has an active “Creation Care” initiative. You can hear Cizik talk about that here at NPR. You might also check out the Evangelical Climate Initiative. It’s being led by some pretty heavy hitters out there, among them Rick Warren, Jim Wallis, Leith Anderson, and former New York City congressman Floyd Flake.
Cizik, perhaps not incidentally, was named a couple of weeks ago to the Time Magazine world’s most influential list. See also this from the NAE.
For another take on this, see Creation Care Leaders Join National Campaign to Protect Wildlife Threatened by Global Warming. “Faith leaders are joining together with science, art, and justice groups in a national campaign to protect plants and animals threatened by global warming.” To see the partners in the campaign and their projects, go to Irreplaceable – Wildlife in a Warming World.
Biofuels from GMO – I’ve been an environmentalist, and I think a pretty progressive and well-informed one, for a good long while. I have not been able, in all that time, to entirely fathom the full-throated opposition to GMO’s in much of the environmental community. It is, in my mind, a very good thing to think about plants that may be able to prosper without pesticides and fertilizers, and therefore produce more food with fewer inputs. There is enormous potential. To me genetically modifying organisms is little more than accelerating the process of hybridization which humans have been doing for thousands of years. Yes, there is, of course, potential for abuse by corporate interests and danger to the balance of nature. A student of mine just delivered an excellent paper recounting, among other things, a number of the ills in GM corn production. Nevertheless, there is a huge body of research, development and practice that shows that GM crops can significantly contribute to sustainable development worldwide.
One avenue with huge potential is the production of “second-generation” biofuels. (I’ve visited the problems with food crops being used for biofuel production, and the associated problems of land-use changes and the massive loss of carbon sinks at a number of posts here.) See this article, Biofuels strengthen case for GM crops from the “FT” and the article from “Nature” to which it refers: Plant genetic engineering for biofuel production: towards affordable cellulosic ethanol. (You have to register at these sites to get full access, but it’s free.)
Growing Opposition to Federal Biofuels Policy – While we’re on the critical subject of ethanol, see this article, Coalition presses Congress over ethanol, also from the “FT.” “Interests ranging from US food manufacturers and livestock producers to environmentalists, humanitarian aid agencies and consumer groups are calling for Congress to rethink so-called “food to fuel’ mandates that would require the US to use 9bn gallons of ethanol this year.” The Grocery Manufacturers Association is a key cog in the machinery. See their press release from late last year on the federal energy bill. Referring to the biofuel mandate, they said, “we are disappointed the Senate did not heed the warnings expressed by a broad range of scholars, economists, environmental leaders and consumers about the adverse impacts an aggressive mandate could have on food prices and the environment”
If you want to go much deeper into the question of the global food crisis, you could do a lot worse than checking out the “FT’s” comprehensive special section, The Rising Cost Of Food, particularly this part of the website with interactive graphics.
