Christian Perspectives on Climate Change

It should be clear to anybody paying attention that in the US at least, some of the loudest voices opposing climate action are clerical. There are many reasons for this. Some are theological, like the view that a creator deity logically would not allow an Earth intended for human habitation to be destroyed by our own hand if it intended to ultimately destroy it by supernatural means.

^source

But then, there's also scriptural support for environmentalism, such as a passage in Genesis which assigns us stewardship of nature. Which way Christians go with it tends to depend in large part on their political views. The fossil fuel industry has done a frankly impressive job of greasing all the right palms to put their words into the mouths of conservative preachers and Christian television personalities across the US.

Framing arguments against climate change in religious language inspires immediate, uncritical trust from Christians. Hearing anything put into Biblical parlance flips a switch in their brain, disabling their natural skeptical defenses and in most cases securing their political complicity. This is a problem that Republican Barry Goldwater famously warned us about:

source

Well, now the chickens have come home to roost. The exact same playbook used by the fossil fuel industry to convince the public in the 1920s that leaded gasoline was not a credible threat despite what scientists had to say, and likewise by the tobacco industry to downplay the link between smoking and lung cancer, has now been used to prevent any measures whatsoever to slow or reverse atmospheric and oceanic warming, as well as oceanic acidification and the various other unwanted effects of an excess of atmospheric GHGs.

You don't even have to go back as far as the leaded gasoline hoopla or the tobacco industry conspiracy to keep the public ignorant of the damage cigarettes cause, made famous by films such as Thank You For Smoking and The Insider. Even in the 1990s, the exact same tactics were being used to sow false doubt and confusion concerning the role CFCs played in damaging the ozone layer.

In fact, many of the exact same paid shills who used to deny that CFCs were damaging the ozone are now employed by the same fossil fuel companies to deny climate change, using the exact same tactics as before:

Tim Ball

Tim Ball on CFCs’ and ozone: “CFC’s were never a problem… it’s only because the sun is changing.” And, “fluctuation of ozone in the stratosphere is likely a natural phenomenon because solar radiation is a fluctuating event.” (Western Standard, June, 1993)

Tim Ball on global warming: “The climate is changing all the time, and what’s going on right now is well within natural variability.”(Saskatchewan Leader Post, July, 2006)

Fred Singer

Singer on CFC’s and ozone : “The hypothesis that CFCs deplete ozone is still just that: a hypothesis. The theory did not predict the Antarctic ozone hole and cannot predict what will happen globally. There is no firm evidence as yet for a long-term depletion of global ozone. Much of data is contaminated; the ozone record is dominated by large, natural fluctuations on many time scales…”

Singer on global warming : “Greenhouse warming will be barely detectable and within the “noise” of natural, year-to-year temperature changes.” And, “there has been no warming observed as yet as a result of the ongoing human-caused CO2 increase.”

Hugh Ellsaesser

Ellsaesser on CFC’s and ozone : “The public has been misled to an even great in that the possible beneficial consequences of increased UV have been consistently ignored.” (sic.) And, “There has indeed been a slight decline in global ozone levels, probably due to sunspot activity and natural dynamics in the atmosphere.”

Ellsaesser on global warming : “Natural variability in the Earth’s climate easily exceeds recent global temperature trends.”

National Centre for Public Policy Research

On CFC’s and ozone: “The impact of CFCs on the ozone layer is not fully known. Changes in weather patterns, the eruption of volcanos, changes in ultraviolet output of the sun linked to the 10-11 year solar cycle and other natural phenomena can, like CFCs, inhibit the production of ozone.”

On global warming: “A careful examination of the Earth’s climate history, however, shows that this warming is the result of a natural fluctuation in temperature and poses no threat to humanity.”

The public continues to fall for it over and over again however, and the largest two reasons why are religion and politics. If you convince somebody that you share their religious beliefs, that you're part of their political tribe and hate all the same people they do, there's basically no limit to what you can convince them of.

This method never stops working, it would seem. The average human is many times more likely to trust his feelings of religious and political loyalty than anything a scientist says, unless it confirms those feelings. It fits very neatly into the anarchist or libertarian political worldview, for example, to believe that climate change is a hoax by the dastardly government to increase taxes and control peoples' lives.

That narrative is so compelling and so perfectly confirms anarchist/libertarian views, that they are emotionally unable to resist it. They can't even conceive of the possibility that it actually is what it appears to be, a slowly unfolding environmental disaster that large scale organization and cooperation is necessary to solve. That conclusion would run totally counter to their beliefs and as such, is ideologically repulsive, which matters vastly more than facts to the average person.

Likewise, to the Christian eye, climate change looks an awful lot like the storms, earthquakes and other natural disasters said to herald the end of days. That fits into their existing worldview much more comfortably than the notion that humans are capable of destroying the Earth's ability to support billions of humans.

Add to this the fact that there's heavy overlap between Christianity and libertarian/Republican ideology in the US, and it may help to explain how stuff like this happens:

As Hagee explained, the views put forth by scientists and experts on any subject are not to be believed if those views are at odds with what the Bible teaches. As such, the extreme weather events that the climate has been experiencing are not the result of climate change but are rather signs of the End Times and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

"The Bible says that whenever we approach the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ," Hagee explained, "that there would be strange weather patterns. Jesus said this in Matthew the twenty-fifth chapter. So we have a decision to make: do we believe what an environmentalist group says and choose to live in a world where we're attempting to make everything as clean in the air as possible, or do we believe what the Bible says, that these things were going to happen and that rather than try to clean up all of the air and solve all of the problems of the world by eliminating factories, we should start to tell people about Jesus Christ who is to return?":

On today’s edition of the “700 Club,” Robertson said actions to curb human-influenced climate change are part of an anti-American “socialist agenda,” saying it all goes back to “the playbook of Obama’s mentor.”

Fighting climate change “is high on the agenda of the radicals who want to destroy America, it isn’t high on the agenda of those who really care about what goes on in life,” he said.

“Environmentalism has become a religion,” Land says. “These are recycled communists, recycled socialists, recycled collectivists who are trying to use a flawed theory of environmentalism to bring about the collectivist society they were unable to bring about politically through socialism and through communism.”

Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, also interviewed for the film, accuses environmentalists of “worshiping the environment” instead of God.

Truth In Action Ministries host John Rabe, meanwhile, warns that policies targeting climate change could lead to the return of communist dictatorships that left “over 100 million people killed.”

He also accuses scientists who are working on climate issues of having a “pretention to omniscience” and committing idolatry: “One of the ways we can commit idolatry is by substituting ourselves as the creature for God, that’s what many of these scientists and bureaucrats are trying to do.”

"In what has become one of the greatest deceptions of our day, radical environmentalism is striving to put America and the world under it's destructive control.

This so called Green Dragon is seducing your children in our classrooms and popular culture. Its lust for political power now extends to the highest global levels. And its twisted view of the world elevates nature over the needs of people, even the poorest.

With millions falling prey to its spiritual deception, the time is now to stand and resist"

Mother: "One popular thing to do in American politics, is to note that the Summers in the United States over the past few years have been very warm. As a result, global warming must be real. What's wrong with this reasoning?"

Son: "It's only gone up 0.6 degrees"

Mother: "Yeah it's not really a big problem is it"

Son: "No. I don't think that it's gonna hurt us."

Mother: "It's a huuuge political issue, global warming is, and that's why it's really important for you to understand"

Son: "Is evolution too?"

Mother: "Not really"

Son: "Creationism?"

Mother: "It's becoming one. What if you had to go to a school where the teacher said "creationism is stupid! And you're stupid if you believe that?"

Son: "I think they should [unintelligible]"

Mother: "Or, what if you had to go to a school where your teacher said "Evolution is stupid, and you're stupid if you believe that?"

Son: "I wouldn't mind it"

This is largely the same crowd you see on Facebook proclaiming that NASA has lied to us, and the Earth is flat. There's necessarily substantial overlap anyways, as every flat Earther is also a climate change denier, since that fits neatly into their belief in a government which lies to us in order to discredit Christianity.

Now, I hear you protesting that you're not a flat Earth loony. But odds are good you're a creationist, as if you believe the government and scientists the world over have lied about climate change, it's very easy to take the next step and conclude they're also lying about evolution.

If you deny climate change but not evolution or the shape of the Earth and imagine those views are unconnected, pay closer attention to who you're in bed with and how each one of those perspectives acts as a gateway to the next. The first step is deciding that science is wrong whenever it arrives at conclusions you find politically unbearable, or contrary to your religion.

Every subsequent step down into the pit of stark raving, flat Earth insanity is easier to take than the last because you've already divorced empiricism. That's the first wrong turn, after which it doesn't matter what direction you go, as they all only take you further and further from the truth.