Re: [asa] Creation Care

*This
is where the ASA (and Evangelical Environmentalists in general) have
the greatest value in that we can possibly be more effective*

This is good. Another perspective that it seems to me needs to be brought
into this is a broader eschatalogical and missiological one. Speaking
anectodally, certainly from my own spiritual DNA, there can be
an inclination to dismiss a long-term problem like this from a sort of fuzzy
sense that this can't be a priority for the Church in light of what Christ
commissioned the Church to do before his return -- make disciples of all
nations (Matt. 28:19). We can haggle over specifics of eschatology, but
certainly a major theme of the New Testament is that our ultimate hope for
peace and restoration of right relationships among people, between people
and God, and between people and the rest of creation, lies in the return of
Christ.

It seems to me that the Gore camp is "religious" about climate change in the
sense that global warming is their eschaton. Either people will respond to
the threat and usher in a sort of millennial kingdom of technological
harmony, or they won't and thereby humanity will be decisively judged. We
know this is wrong. Neither final peace nor final judgment will come until
Christ returns and the Kingdom of God is fully established.

Instead of making warming into a new eschatology and turning the response to
warming into our new mission, how do we develop a distinctly Christian
response to man-made warming that places it within an authentically
Christian eschatology and prioritizes appropriately it within an
authentically Christian missiology? (Maybe -- I'm sure -- there are some
good books on this out there that I haven't yet read).

On 1/22/07, Rich Blinne <rich.blinne@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/22/07, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is the kind of articles that are always in the premier journals.
> > When you review the literature as Randy and I have you do not find the
> > apocolyptic predictions which could not survive peer review but the
> > more moderate defensible positions like above. BTW, the modest
> > increases such as above IS the consensus.
> >
> > Thank you Rich, Pim and Randy for helping clarify these things for
> me. Now,
> > if modest increase scenarios are the consensus, would we agree that
> alarmist
> > popularizers such as Al Gore are misrepresenting the science and
> disserving
> > the public? Does the climate science community welcome Gore et al. or
> run
> > the other way?
>
> This is where there is not a consensus. Some like the scientists who
> run the Real Climate blog see Gore as mostly accurate and certainly
> more accurate than the deniers. Other like the "heretics" cited in the
> NY Times you quoted believe that Gore's overheated rhetoric is
> unhelpful. I tend to side with the latter.
>
> You have raised a valid point in that none of the mitigation
> strategies have zero cost and thus should be evaluated as such. This
> is where the ASA (and Evangelical Environmentalists in general) have
> the greatest value in that we can possibly be more effective at
> balancing the cost of the problem vs. the cost of the "solution"
> focusing on how this would effect the world's poor. The scientists
> have spoken. Now it is the time for the engineers to speak. This is
> already happening. The 21st Annual Meeting of the Rocky Mountain
> section of the ASA has invited two distinguished engineering
> professors, Dr. Bernard Amadei and Dr. Walter L. Bradley, to discuss
> solar/wind/biomass energy technologies, energy conservation, clean
> water and microenterprise for developing countries. The title of the
> meeting is "Science and Technology with a Human Face".
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Web:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com
Blog:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
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