Should Christians Be Concerned about Climate Change?
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching
Scripture: Genesis 1, Genesis 2

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--should-christians-be-concerned-about-climate-change
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
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bible doesn't speak specifically about climate change in the sense that you're discussing however i would say in genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 we do find that god created human beings to be stewards of this earth even before sin god put adam in the garden of eden and told him to tend it to take care of it so actually work is not a bad thing it precedes sin now the toil and the suffering and the penalty of sin that's now associated with work does come after the fall but the principle of taking care of god's creation uh and being a steward of god's creation and working to to uh tend it that is biblical that is god's plan so i think in the general sense yes we christians should be interested in the care of the earth ecology plants animals maybe much more than we should than we have been in the past many times we think well the lord's coming and you know we'll go into the millennial kingdom the new heaven and earth so we don't care about present earth well that's not the way we live our lives and that shouldn't be the way we treat the earth so i think we should be good stewards i think we are when we talk about taking dominion it's not meant to be in a dictatorial or harsh or exploitive way but yes we we have oversight of god's natural creation here on earth of the plants and animals and so we should do our part to treat them and we even use the word humanely in treating animals like a human should in a responsible way a care caring way now what about global warming well from a scientific point of view the first question is is there really global warming there's debate about that uh i think most scientists say yes but in the big scheme of things those same scientists will say well um a few thousand years ago there was the ice age which is much more you know arduous than what we experienced now they they say and there's plenty of evidence glaciers came down on the northern half of the united states uh and so there's been drastic climate change certainly for sure that didn't have anything to do with humans uh there was the medieval warm period and there was the little ice age after that which that didn't have anything to do with humans so that's the first thing is there global warming well probably so but it could be within the range of natural occurrences now

by humans because the idea is that with our production of greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and other methane other gases that tend to hold uh temperature in our atmosphere and on the earth so are we the cause of global warming and again most scientists would say yes and that that is a little more controversial i think when it comes to a hurricane or tornado it's really irresponsible of politicians to try to claim that to global warming because first of all it's hard to say a climate change is related to a specific event there may be some cause of making it more violent or volatile but just to take an example the recent tornadoes you spoke of i think they're called e5 well it's been eight years since the u.s experienced that kind of tornado so if global warming is really the cause of it well you mean we went eight years so i guess there must have been global cooling or global warming didn't do much and then suddenly it zapped us the same with hurricanes whenever there's two or three hurricanes they'll say oh it's global warming and then you go several years without a major hurricane hitting the u.s well they ignored that so i think it's pretty irresponsible to try to do that now it could be that they're increasing intensity but to a major extent our population has increased dramatically and our population in vulnerable areas and when we talk about hurricanes on the coast has increased dramatically so a lot of the damage is due because we have more population and more built up areas that in years past would have been devastated but there was no people or a few people or no infrastructure a few buildings and so for example one of the most devastating earthquakes in american history happened in the early 1800s in the st louis area so bad it caused the mississippi river to flow backward but nobody knows about it why because hardly anybody lived there and there were no structures there so it caused minimal death or damage although if it happened today and very few people know this but i've actually experienced earthquake here in st louis it was minor but i felt it uh and if that if that same earthquake happened today it would be an unprecedented national disaster but of course it wouldn't be associated with global warming so anyway What are we supposed to do having said all that so there's a question is there global warming so for for our purposes let's say yes uh is it caused by human activity for our purposes okay let's say yes because that's what the majority of scientists say but then there's a third question what are we supposed to do about it and here's where i have my real problem with a lot of the discussion because the proposed solutions uh would only would do little or nothing to actually change what they're alleging as global warming for example here in the united states we're one of the major producers producers of greenhouse gases but even greater is china and also very significant russia and india those three countries have not committed to any kind of significant action compared to what people in the u.s are saying should be done so even if the u.s totally shut down its economy completely 100 without the cooperation of china india and russia which they have not promised to cooperate our actions would do no good so all of this political maneuvering seems to be more in the way of virtue signaling or attempt to gain political control because their solution actually won't do any good and even if those other nations cooperated the kind of actions we're talking about will only marginally make a difference so here's the problem the advocates of radical change it seems like they want to control the whole economy and it seems like they have a they want governmental control and there's what i call the law of unintended consequences when you give great government control on paper it sounds very good but in the real world there is no human being or there is no elite group of humans who are capable of managing the world economy that's what we prove with communism and socialism it can't be done the market which has composed the decisions of millions and billions of people is far more efficient in allocating resources and solving problems government can help along the way but government can't be the solution the market has to be the solution so if you want to impose cost to the market to reflect the real cost of pollution fine but then let the market figure out how to innovate create new technologies and allocate resources i'm all for green energy i'm all for conservation i do recycling at home i'm all for you know electrical cars although that just displaces the problem to the factories that generate electricity they don't really solve the problem and but i'm all for any kind of technology wind and solar power nuclear technology which is interesting because if you really relied on nuclear technology that would illuminate your global warming but the same people that want us to take drastic action most of them also hate nuclear energy so they take that off the table which shows that there's it's more about politics than purely a scientific solution so when you when you look at the law of unintended consequences when you put government control first of all government can't find the solutions without private enterprise and capitalism and innovation in inventors who are motivated by economic incentives second of all there's drastic government inefficiencies so you waste a huge amount of resources when you give everything to the government and the government gives it back to you there's a lot lost in the process and then there's government favoritism that when the government picks and chooses who to subsidize then they pick political cronies they pick people who are not necessarily on the cutting edge edge of technology but are on the cutting edge of political manipulation and so many times the the billions of dollars that government spends are spent very inefficiently and so my point is even if you say yes let's do something about global warming we have to be careful not to empower the government excessively to focus on market solutions and here's what's interesting i looked this up because and i was even surprised u.s greenhouse gas emissions have been in decline for the last number of years now in 2020 it was declined they said because of cove which shut down things but even in 2021 that trend is continuing we are now back the u.s is now back to the level of the 1970s in greenhouse gas emissions and that's considering there's been a 50 increase in population since that time it wasn't the government action it was industries finding more efficient ways the internal combustion engine and gasoline and natural gas and nuclear energy so with without the government doing anything the economy itself despite a 50 increase in population has gone back to 50 years ago greenhouse gas emissions that lets me know whatever solutions we want it needs to be a collaborative effort that doesn't crush the economy and doesn't impose drastic government controls but is a partnership of all of us that allows the energy sector and the um the various industries and our economy to continue to grow and to be healthy and to give appropriate input i think if we all work together with respect for private enterprise then we can create a better environment overall without