Christians in Conflict: Greens vs. Contractualists
The Greens have recruited an interfaith council of liberal Jews, liberal Protestants, liberal Orthodox, and Liberal Roman Catholics. These people have formed an organization to make big civil government even more intrusive in our lives. This is The National Religious Partnership for the Environment.
There is a rival organization of conservative, Bible-believing activists, whose economics is tied to the principle of voluntary association and whose worldview is shaped by what the Bible says about personal responsibility. It is The Cornwall Alliance.
First, the Greenies. Here is what they have done.
[The link is dead:404. There is no trace of this document on the web other than my original article.]
Public Policy Initiatives
The Partnership has undertaken local and national public policy initiatives. In so doing, it has sought to present moral principles, beyond political partisanship, to help guide action for the common good.
NRPE led the effort to address the needs of developing countries (known as international adaptation) in US climate legislation
Interfaith Global Climate Change Campaigns have been established in 20 states, and an Interfaith Climate Change Network has recruited 25,000 individuals as advocates for national climate policy.
The U.S. Catholic bishops published a pastoral statement entitled “Global Climate Change: A Plea for Dialogue, Prudence, and the Common Good.”
40 senior religious leaders composed “Let There Be Light,” a religious reflection on energy policy.
Evangelical Christians were widely credited for having helped prevent rollback of the Endangered Species Act.
The Jewish community enacted a two-year campaign to prevent deforestation.
A delegation of Christian and Jewish leaders met with officials from Ford, General Motors, and the United Auto Workers to deliver an “Open Letter to Automobile Executives” and held substantive discussions on fuel economy.
Regional environmental justice projects were initiated in Catholic dioceses on the issues of sprawl (Los Angeles and Connecticut), sustainable agriculture (Iowa), transportation equity (Detroit), and water (Florida).
Hundreds of people of faith signed a prayer petition sponsored by the National Council of Churches calling on political leaders to honor God’s command to tend the garden and commit to being better stewards of America’s air, water, wild lands and wildlife.
The rival organization, the Cornwall Alliance, has a very different agenda.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.
We believe abundant, affordable energy is indispensable to human flourishing, particularly to societies which are rising out of abject poverty and the high rates of disease and premature death that accompany it. With present technologies, fossil and nuclear fuels are indispensable if energy is to be abundant and affordable.
We believe mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, achievable mainly by greatly reduced use of fossil fuels, will greatly increase the price of energy and harm economies.
We believe such policies will harm the poor more than others because the poor spend a higher percentage of their income on energy and desperately need economic growth to rise out of poverty and overcome its miseries.
We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.
We deny that alternative, renewable fuels can, with present or near-term technology, replace fossil and nuclear fuels, either wholly or in significant part, to provide the abundant, affordable energy necessary to sustain prosperous economies or overcome poverty.
We deny that carbon dioxide—essential to all plant growth—is a pollutant. Reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures, and the costs of the policies would far exceed the benefits.
We deny that such policies, which amount to a regressive tax, comply with the Biblical requirement of protecting the poor from harm and oppression.
Take your pick.
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Published on October 23, 2012. The original is here.