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‘UNCONSCIONABLE’: Christian Leader Condemns the ‘Climate Colonialism’ That Would Doom the Global South to Grinding Poverty
Climate alarmists don’t just get the science wrong but also demonize the engine of wealth that has brought billions out of grinding poverty; and this “climate colonialism” is “morally unconscionable,” a Christian leader says.
“What I believe we’re seeing in the demand from wealthy Western nations that we fight climate change by reducing our use of fossil fuels is that they are demanding that the poorest nations of the world forego the use of the most abundant, affordable, reliable energy sources that can lift them out of poverty and keep them out of poverty,” E. Calvin Beisner, president of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, told The Daily Signal.
“It is the West saying to the rest, ‘We made it out, you have to stay,'” he noted. “That is just morally unconscionable.”
Beisner recalled growing up in Calcutta, India. “We were stepping over the bodies of people who had died overnight of starvation and disease.”
“When I see people saying, ‘It’s more important to fight climate change than to see poor parts of the world rise and stay out of poverty,’ I say, ‘You’ve never seen poverty, and that upsets me,'” he said.
The Engine of Wealth
Beisner’s Cornwall Alliance calls for biblical stewardship of creation, for the glory of God and for human flourishing. The organization does not believe that preserving a healthy environment requires giving up the use of fossil fuels, which have improved our lives in ways Westerners often take for granted.
“When we look at the enormous contribution that coal, oil, and natural gas—hydrocarbon fuels—have made to lifting billions of people out of abject poverty, into prosperity, into longer, healthier life and life with far more abundant options as to what we can do, and then I hear people condemning these as somehow evil, I say’ Where have you been for the last two centuries?'” he asked.
Beisner noted that too few Americans viscerally understand just how rough prior generations had it.
“For the entire history of mankind, average life expectancy at birth was around 27 or 28 years,” he noted. “Roughly half of all people born would die before their fifth birthday.”
This applied to the wealthy as well as the poor, he added. Queen Anne of England, for example, had 19 children, and not one survived to adulthood.
“It’s precisely the parts of the world that have made the least use of hydrocarbons that have the highest rates, still, of extreme poverty,” he noted.
Fossil fuels account for roughly 84% of the energy that human beings use in the world today—energy humans use to produce food, clothing, shelter, education, transportation, communication, medical care, and so much more.
“If you are objecting to 84% of the energy that we get, then you are objecting to 84% of all the wealth,” he argued. “You want 84% of the world that eats well to now eat poorly or starve.”
Not only are many of the foods Americans eat inspired by cuisines across the world, but the ingredients often cross seas and oceans—transported by “ships or trucks or planes running on fuel made by petroleum.”
Americans “wouldn’t have most of their dietary choices were it not for petroleum.”
The Alleged Climate Threat
But don’t fossil fuels pose an existential threat not just to prosperity but to our very lives?
Not exactly.
Beisner noted that, even though natural disasters have not decreased in the last 100 years, the number of people who die from them has decreased by about 99%.
Beisner noted that “wealth enables us to protect ourselves from anything related to climate and weather disasters,” so increasing wealth is more important than decreasing carbon emissions.
When it comes to preserving the environment, he noted that “a clean, healthful, beautiful environment is a costly good, and—news flash!—wealthier people can afford more costly goods than poorer people can.”
As for the truth of the climate threat, he noted that “there are so many different factors in the climate system” that it is nearly impossible to accurately predict global climate changes, much less attribute a specific change to the burning of fossil fuels. Many alarmist models fail to predict actual weather patterns because they fail to consider many factors.
The Biblical Image of Stewardship
So, how should Christians care for the earth? Beisner noted how God created the world in Genesis, and said human beings should echo his creation.
“We should be making more and more out of less and less, bringing greater order out of lesser order,… and we should be enhancing the abundance of life,” he noted.
“Our calling as human beings made in God’s image is to enhance the fruitfulness, and the beauty, and the safety of the earth to the glory of God and to the benefit of our neighbors,” Beisner explained. At the root of that is the gospel of Jesus, which he and the Cornwall Alliance preach.
The post ‘UNCONSCIONABLE’: Christian Leader Condemns the ‘Climate Colonialism’ That Would Doom the Global South to Grinding Poverty appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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