Global warming or not, we must conserve.

Forever, O LORD, Your Word is firmly fixed in the heavens. Your faithfulness endures to all generations; You have established the earth, and it stands fast. By Your appointment they stand this day, for all things are Your servants.
Psalm 119:89, 90

Still polarizing

The question of global warming and the environment continues to be one of the most polarizing topics of contemporary discussion and debate. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has a good many of the “green” party harrumphing and I-told-you-soing; while the opponents of environmental activism are on the defensive against the promised offshore drilling moratorium and cap-and-trade legislation.

Advocates and opponents marshal scientific evidence and practical arguments aplenty to support their preferred position. If the globe is in fact becoming as hot as the debate over this issue, then we’ve got a serious problem, indeed.

Amid all the verbiage and vitriol over “environmental change”, as the language of the moment has it, one matter has been overlooked. And that is that both advocates and opponents of this controversial claim are operating out of the same motive. And that motive is inadequate to achieve a long-term satisfying outcome.

Both those who argue the case for global warming and those who argue against it have as their primary concern the interests of mankind. Those who deny the threat of environmental change fear that adjusting for it will bog down commercial and economic interests. Those who insist that the danger is real warn that man’s environment is being adversely affected and, in the long run, that won’t be good for mankind.

As Bill McKibben summarized the last three years of debate over environmental issues, “For most of the past three decades, the battle over wilderness was pretty much between those people who wanted more of it and those who wanted to graze, mine, cut, build, and roar around” (“Walking Through an Idea,” Appalachia, Winter/Spring, 2008). Commercial interests want to get at and employ the resources of the creation without having to dance around restrictive environmental protocols. Environmentalists want to preserve more wilderness by clamping down on emissions – at great expense to industry – and preserving more wilderness from development. Both argue their positions as representing what’s best for humanity. Industry representatives point to the growing economic needs of a growing world population, while others would agree with Bill McKibben, who insists that “we need more wild for human reasons: we need to set aside land from our use simply to prove that we can do it, that we don’t need to control everything around us.”

For conservation, but…

I cast my vote on the side of the conservers of the environment, but not at the expense of using the resources of creation in a responsible manner.

For the larger issue in this question is how are the purposes of God best served? The earth is the Lord’s after all, not ours (Ps. 24:1). Every created thing is His servant (Ps. 119:89-91), and we must look to Him to understand how best to use the resources of the creation without exhausting them, and in a way that allows them to continue to be available to the generations that will follow us.

The seeds of a theology of the environment are contained in the Law of God, in passages such as Deuteronomy 22:6 and 7 and Deuteronomy 20:19 and 20. The first tells us that, if we come across a bird’s nest with eggs or young, and the mother bird sitting on them, we may take the eggs or the young, but not the mother. She can always make more, but if we eat her, the eggs or chicks will die.

The second text warns against destroying fruit-bearing trees in the course of conducting a war – or, we might suppose, any project to develop land. The birds and fruit-bearing trees are God’s servants, put here to provide for the needs of all creatures for many generations. As such they bear witness to God’s providential care and love, and remind us that He is a God of beauty, order, and plenty.

The debate about environmental change is going to be with us for some time. Christians should seek to inject a note of stewardship unto God into this issue, before those who think it’s only all about us begin to implement strategies that, because they focus on man’s concerns only, are sure to fail.

For additional insight to this topic, get the book, St. Francis of Assisi and Nature, by Roger D. Sorrell, from our online store. Or read the article, “Christian Environmentalism,” by Dr. Ray Bohlin.