“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea.” Psalm 46:1-2
Browse the climate section of the UN’s website, and you’ll notice a couple of things. One, climate change is supposed to be catastrophic. Two, it’s entirely humanity’s fault.
Unsurprisingly, this is a source of fear for so many people it has its own name: climate anxiety.
Many Christians and Christian institutions wholeheartedly embrace what is said about climate change. Calvin Beisner, president of the Cornwall Alliance, said. People accept beliefs when they’re told that belief is loving to their neighbor.
“Too many people think ‘well, if I'm told that if I love such and such people, I must embrace so and so an idea…’” Beisner said. “They think that it is virtuous to embrace a particular ideology on the claim that that is what it means to love your neighbor. That has clearly affected many of the different Christian creation care organizations.”
Scripture does say to love your neighbor (Matthew 22:39) and have dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:28). That makes it easy to accept climate change at face value.
However, Scripture also says, “test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
“I'm old enough now that I lived through a period where the big fear was the world's going to freeze…” Michael Harbin, professor emeritus of biblical studies at Taylor University, said. “That's what the scientists were saying. It was called the nuclear winter. …then the scientists who studied it looked back said, Wait a minute. This is no work. This is not as bad as it was in the middle 1800s when we had a little ice age, or in the 1600s when it really was cold.”
Empirical evidence shows all of the warming over the last 150 years has only produced about 1.1 to 1.2 degrees Celsius increase in the average temperature of the world, Beisner said. This might actually be a good thing.
The slight increase in warmth allows for longer growing seasons and fewer human deaths from cold snaps, which kill more people than heat waves, Beisner said.
Greenhouse gasses, specifically human-produced carbon dioxide, are usually blamed for global warming. However, Steve Goreman, an author and speaker on climate change, said carbon dioxide only accounts for 1-2% of the greenhouse gasses in our environment.
Humanity’s contribution is so small, removing it probably wouldn’t be noticeable.
“The human contribution (to) the greenhouse effect is only about one or two percent of the total effect,” Goreman said. “ That means if society were to eliminate all carbon dioxide emissions, we probably would not be able to measure the difference in global temperatures.”
The mainstream narrative about climate change is damaging to humanity.
It hurts those below the poverty line, said David Legates, a former professor of climatology and the current director of research and education at the Cornwall Alliance. Inexpensive energy is necessary to pull people out of poverty.
Wind and solar are not only expensive, they are made with slave labor, Legates said.
“When you hand somebody a solar panel, they have no idea where that came from or what kind of environmental disaster actually occurred to get that into your hand,” he said.
Fear of overpopulation urges people to avoid having kids, either for fear they’ll make the climate worse, or for fear Earth will run out of resources.
None of these fears have come true, and they’re entirely antithetical to the God who said, “be fruitful and multiply” at the same time He said, “take dominion over the earth.”
“Human beings alone are made in God's image, and that means their wellbeing must be prioritized above the wellbeing of any other species, let alone of water or rocks or sand or dirt or air,” Beisner said. “…we want to have clean air, for the purpose of having healthy human beings and secondarily, healthy other life. …But human beings come first.”
This doesn’t mean Christians shouldn’t care for the environment. It just means priorities need to be in order.
Harbin said, “Stewardship is careful management for the next generation and subsequent generations.”
Christians do have the responsibility to care for the earth. But they also have the responsibility to fear God above the earth. Climate change won’t cause catastrophe. God told humanity the world would end — and He told them how in His Word.
There will always be something to fear in this fallen world. But God is sovereign.
