All Creation Luminous

Having Perplexity AI prepare an Orthodox critique of my PhD thesis provided me with food for thought while I contemplated the not inconsiderable task of revising the thesis from an Orthodox perspective. So far, the fruit of that contemplation had amounted to the following chapter outline:

Introduction: Our Compromised Environment – an introductory examination of the environmental crisis and its nature as a spiritual problem.

1. Creation and the Patristic Mindset – an exploration of how Orthodox theological methodology applies to the doctrine of creation (including the Orthodox view of Scripture; Georges Florovsky’s call to “acquire the patristic mind”; the emergence of  Orthodox theology from liturgical experience; and the role of apophaticism in Orthodox theology).

2. The Triune Creator – the grounding of environmental theology in the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity (the Cappadocian vision; perichoresis and relational ontology; creation and the divine energies; creation as a triune act).

3. The Word Through Whom All Things Were Made – an exploration of patristic cosmic Christology (the Logos, the logoi, and creation; the Incarnation and the material creation; the cosmic Christ; recapitulation and the restoration of the cosmos).

4. The Lord, the Giver of Life – outlining the pneumatological foundations of environmental theology (the Spirit as Life-Giver; the Spirit in Orthodox liturgical theology; deification and cosmic transformation; eschatological pneumatology).

5. Priests of Creation – replacing an anthropology focused on dominion/ stewardship with Orthodox priestly anthropology (the image and likeness of God; the priestly vocation; Adam and the cosmic temple; deification and ecological responsibility).

6. The Eucharistic Vision of Creation – examination of John Zizioulas’s suggestion that creation is eucharistic and its implications for environmental theology (creation as divine gift; the eucharistic offering of creation; the implications for our worship; the Eucharist and environmental ethics).

7. Nature in Orthodox Worship and Spirituality (the sanctification of time; the blessing of creation; iconographic ecology; ascetic environmentalism).

8. All Things Made New – examining the eschatological destiny of creation (Orthodox affirmation of matter and bodily resurrection; the cosmic dimension of salvation; the transfiguration of the cosmos; the kingdom of God and ecological hope).

9. Towards an Orthodox Environmental Ethics (ascetic principles and sustainable living; the Church as ecological community;  the global challenge of the crisis and Orthodox witness; political responses to the crisis and Orthodox action).

At the moment, one major element is still missing. Somewhere I have to work in a chapter on human sinfulness and the notion of ecological sin. I feel it should go fairly early in the text, but I’m not sure how to do that without anticipating material that I want to develop later on.

And the title of this revised study of environmental theology? At the moment, I am calling it All Creation Luminous: An Orthodox Vision of the Natural World. According to St Gregory of Sinai, the perfect hesychast ‘sees the entire creation luminous as in a kind of mirror’.

Global heating

I recently came across an interesting graph on Carbon Brief (here). It shows the frequency of all-time hot records (dashed red line) and cold records (dashed blue line) over global land regions shown as a nine-year running average over 1950-2024, as represented by the Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5 surface temperature reanalysis. This is contrasted with the theoretical probability of new records expected in a stationary climate as the temperature measurement series expands (solid black line).

The graph shows a clear warming trend for global land masses.

Global heating visualized

I recently came across #ShowYourStripes, a website that offers a variety of charts to help visualize the extent of global heating over the past 150 years. Here, for example, is a bar chart of global temperature change (relative to the average temperature for the period 1961–2010):

It really underlines the acceleration in global heating since the late 1970s.

One particularly nice feature of the site is that you can use it to generate charts of average temperature change for different regions, countries, and even cities around the world.

Climate Justice

A review of James B. Martin-Schramm, Climate Justice: Ethics, Energy, and Public Policy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010)

Climate change is now very well documented, and its apparent connection with the combustion of fossil fuels and certain land use practices raises important ethical questions. Martin-Schramm grapples with these issues at a public policy level, looking particularly at the ethical responsibility of industrialized countries, especially the United States.

In his opening chapter, he proposes an ethic of ecological justice based on the moral norms of sustainability, sufficiency, participation, and solidarity. These norms are complemented by a series of twelve guidelines – equity, efficiency, adequacy, renewability, appropriateness, risk, peace, cost, employment, flexibility, timely decision-making, and aesthetics – to create a toolbox of ethical resources that he applies to the issue of climate justice in the subsequent chapters.

Chapters 2 and 3 offer an optimistic survey of the range of energy options currently available to the United States. The first deals with so-called conventional energy options – coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power – and the second with alternative/renewable sources of energy – solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, marine. He mentions the concept of peak oil but does not dwell on its implications, opting for the relatively optimistic view that global oil production will not peak until about 2026. He is similarly optimistic about uranium supplies. However, he proposes that we should shift from conventional to renewable energy for environmental (and security) reasons and seems to believe this is a feasible (if difficult) way forward.

Chapter 4 explores international climate policy just prior to the Copenhagen summit at the end of 2009. Viewed in the light of the ethical toolbox developed in chapter 1, he commends the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework proposed by the Stockholm Environmental Institute.

His fifth chapter focusing on US climate policy paints a bleak picture of fine words unmatched by effective action. He concludes that ‘Failure to take aggressive action now to reduce emissions will perpetuate current rates of GHG emissions and condemn future generations to a rate and degree of warming unprecedented in human civilization’ (p. 158).

The final chapter consists of a case study, examining greenhouse gas reduction strategies implemented by Luther College, Decorah, Iowa. He uses this to show how individual institutions and communities can implement energy policies that meet the ethical criteria spelled out at the beginning of the book.

As indicated above, my main reservation is that I think he is unduly optimistic about continuing conventional energy supplies and our capacity to move seamlessly from conventional to renewables. But, that reservation apart, Martin-Schramm has produced a very helpful practical survey of climate justice issues for anyone involved in the development of energy policies whether at community, company, or national government level.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

 

A review of How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire by Andreas Malm (London: Verso Books, 2021)

Apparently, this little tract from Andreas Malm (an associate professor of human ecology at Lund University) was originally intended to ask why there was so little climate activism. However, in the wake of Greta Thunberg and the rise of Extinction Rebellion it became a critique of the pacifism of the environmental movement. He sets out his case for a more aggressive environmentalism in three brief chapters.

The first chapter, ‘Learning from Past Struggles’, is an overview of environmental activism since the 1990s. Malm is struck by how little has been achieved by green activists in the past thirty years. In looking for a reason, he picks on the pacifism of the movement. Extinction Rebellion, in particular, has made what it calls strategic pacifism a central pillar of its approach. In response, Malm explores the historical models used by Extinction Rebellion to justify their pacifism, specifically the movement for universal suffrage, the movement for Indian independence, and the civil rights movement in the USA. He concludes that in all three cases, members of those movements turned to violence when nonviolence failed.

By creating a violent fringe that the mainstream leaders of the movement could disavow, this forced the powers that be to enter into dialogue with the mainstream of movement.

Having established that violence may succeed where pacifism fails, he moves on in Chapter 2, ‘Breaking the Spell’, to argue that capitalism is too committed to the carbon economy to make the effort required to transition to a green economy. Assuming that politicians and business leaders are unlikely to be moved by the nonviolent antics of Extinction Rebellion, he advocates for the strategic use of sabotage. For practical examples, he turns to the global South and cites cases of activists blowing up pipelines in Nigeria and South Africa. By way of contrast, he remarks on the striking lack of examples in developed economies (apparently forgetting that in the ‘developed’ world, greater regulation and surveillance makes the acquisition of explosives much more difficult). Having commended the blowing up of pipelines, he is careful to disavow any action that affects ordinary workers. But this makes the pipeline a bad example, since loss of fuel would affect the poorest most quickly.

Finally in Chapter 3, ‘Fighting Despair’, he attacks the fatalist critics of climate action, specifically Roy Scranton and Jonathan Franzen. However, he fails to see that he too is a kind of fatalist. He offers no practical alternative to capitalism, merely the hope that by breaking the present system something better will come to pass. He has, in fact, bought in to the myth of redemptive violence that pervades the society he wants to change.

This little tract has the strengths and weaknesses of a book written in the white heat of righteous anger. His passion makes it a compelling read, but it leads him to overlook nuances. This results in a confused and simplistic account of pacifism and a rose-tinted view of the role of violence in political change. Strangely, for someone who advocates for violent environmentalism, the most aggressive action he admits to is letting down the tyres of SUVs. In conclusion, this is a disappointing and hopefully ephemeral work, which I have now deleted from my Kindle.

Talking about climate change

A recent article in the Guardian got me thinking about the language we use when we speak about climate change. Looking back at some of my old articles on Christianity and the environment, I realize that I have not been particularly consistent in how I have referred to it. So, here are some thoughts on talking about climate change.

But first, it may be helpful to distinguish between weather and climate. Weather is what we get from day to day – rain today, sunshine tomorrow (or, since this is Scotland, probably more rain tomorrow). There is a degree of predictability to weather. In the UK, weather forecasts are usually reasonably accurate for the next week or ten days. Beyond that, there is a long-range forecast which is really just a broad-brush account of what we might expect over the coming month. But weather is (or, has been) predictable in another sense. Specifically, it is statistically predictable. It is possible to average the weather results over a number of years (typically 30 years) and arrive at reasonable estimates of the high and low temperatures or the average rainfall in a given month. This sort of statistical analysis allows meteorologists to define a number of climate types, such as such as Maritime, Mediterranean, Continental, or Laurentian. So, for example, Britain has (or had) a fairly typical Maritime climate with cool summers, mild winters, and fairly consistent rainfall throughout the year. To summarize, if weather is what we get, climate is what we can reasonably expect of the weather from season to season and from year to year.

That brings us to climate change. We have reasonably accurate weather records dating back perhaps a couple of centuries. In addition, we have historical, archaeological, palaeontological, and geological records that allow us to infer what the climates were at various locales into the distant past. From these results, it is clear that climates are dynamic. Climates change over time.

I want to underline that climate change is a neutral term. It encompasses both warming and cooling. And it applies both to natural cycles of warming and cooling and to human impact on climates. The term does not imply that such changes are gradual or continuous, but gradualism is a deep-rooted assumption of western science, so there is a tendency to assume that as climates change they will do so in a steady, predictable manner.

The term global warming (or heating) is slightly more specific than climate change. It reflects what has been observed over the past century or more – a steady, gradual warming of climates around the world. Again, note that the term is neutral as to the cause of the warming. My main criticism of ‘global warming’ is that it is too narrow. It focuses exclusively on one aspect of climate. As important are changes in rainfall over time – for example, the progressive desertification of formerly fertile land as rainfall patterns change. Changes in wind patterns and speeds are also significant, resulting, for example, in changing hurricane behaviour. So, perhaps we should avoid this term.

So far, so empirical. But scientists are not content simply to observe and categorize phenomena. Real science seeks to determine the cause(s) of observed phenomenon. In the case of climate change over the past century plus, there is a clear correlation between the degree of warming and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Granted, correlation does not prove causation, but it has long been known that atmospheric carbon dioxide has a significant insulating effect, so it is reasonable to conclude that this is the cause of the warming. Further, the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide correlates suspiciously well with the industrialization of the world since Victorian times. This has led the vast majority of climate scientists, meteorologists, and atmospheric physicists to conclude that the observed climate change is in large part a result of human pollution. In other words, much of the observed current climate change is anthropogenic.

I have become increasingly uncomfortable with ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ because of the tendency to infer from such language that this is a gradual process. So, for example, Mike Hulme of Cambridge University recently asserted that

Rather than imagining cliff edges or crevasses, a better metaphor to think with is the picture of a gradient. Every 0.1C of global warming that occurs increases some of the risks associated with climate change; with every 0.1C avoided some of those risks are reduced.

There is some truth in what he says. But it downplays the very real possibility that relatively small changes in one part of the global climate system can lead to rapid and dramatic changes in climate types around the world.

In view of such a possibility, some people urge us to speak of a climate crisis. They do so from the best of motives, wishing to impart a degree of urgency to the social and political response to climate change. However, I am reluctant to go down this road because it creates the false impression that this is a relatively recent sudden event that can be addressed in the same sort of way as putting an economy on a war footing or responding to a pandemic. It is not. Any adequate response must be a long-term one. Other terms that sometimes appear in the literature are climate catastrophe and climate apocalypse. But this is the language of the fatalist who sees no hope for the human race.

How about referring to our situation as one of anthropogenic climate breakdown? This has the advantage of avoiding the gradualism implicit in talking about change or warming. If we keep pumping energy into the atmosphere and the oceans what we get will not be a simple slow (or fast) increase in temperatures around the world. Rather, what we will see is increasing turbulence and increasing unpredictability. For example, it seems increasingly likely that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (which underlies the Gulf Stream) will collapse by about 2050 (see Detlevsen & Detlevsen 2023). If that happens, it will have a dramatic impact on climates around the world. On the other hand, talking about a breakdown may be misleading. We are not talking about a failure of climate (whatever that might mean) but of dramatic changes in climatic types around the world (which will be unpredictable because of the sheer complexity of the global climate system).

Where does this leave us? Should we talk about climate transformations rather than breakdown? None of the alternatives seem terribly satisfactory. So, for the time being, I think I will opt for the ‘conservative’ position of continuing to use ‘anthropogenic climate change’. But I will keep looking for a better alternative.

Evangelicals and climate change scepticism

Here is a paper I wrote some years ago for a meeting of a local group of Christians in Science:

Introduction

On 1st March 2007 a small but influential group of evangelicals headed by James Dobson wrote an open letter to the National Association of Evangelicals in the USA. The purpose of the letter was to complain about Richard Cizik, a vice president of the NAE. Specifically, they objected to his public support for action to protect the environment in general and, in particular, action against global warming, which they perceived as ‘dividing and demoralizing the NAE and its leaders’ (Dobson et al. 2007: 1). They feared that if members of the NAE took him seriously, they would be diverted from the real issues facing American evangelicals, specifically ‘the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children’ (Dobson et al. 2007: 1). Moreover, they feared that a growing concern for the environment could lead evangelicals into political alliances with ideological opponents. The combined effect could be to undermine American evangelicalism. Just a few months earlier, a larger group of evangelicals signed an open letter rebuffing ‘Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action’, a manifesto published by the Evangelical Climate Initiative in February 2006. A more extensive piece of work along the same lines was published by the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance in 2006.

As Richard Wright (2000) points out, scepticism about environmentalism is nothing new among conservative evangelicals. But it seems that, as public attention has focused on global warming as the key environmental issue, so too has the attention of the evangelical sceptics.

The Sceptics’ Strategy

The strategy of the sceptics has been to sow doubts in the minds of uncommitted evangelicals on a number of issues.

The reality of global warming

The sceptics do not deny that the earth’s climate is a dynamic system. They accept that the climate has changed in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

However, some evangelical climate sceptics put great emphasis on the theoretical nature of anthropogenic global warming, comparing it with Darwin’s theory of evolution, Hawking’s theory of information loss in black holes, and the phlogiston theory of heat. For example,

Ever seen a monkey give birth to a human? But, we’re told, the fossil record and the Galapagos Islands and the duck-billed platypus and a whole host of other factors are all best explained by the theory of evolution. So too, we are told, that various factors relating to the amount of ‘greenhouse gases’ and a measurable change in earth’s temperature are all best explained by the theory popularly known as ‘global warming.’ (Smith 2007)

The comparison with Darwin is, of course, an appeal to an evangelical shibboleth designed to sow doubts in the minds of conservative evangelicals for whom evolutionary theory is one of the hallmarks of secularism. Beyond that, the emphasis on the theoretical nature of anthropogenic global warming plays upon popular understandings of the term ‘theoretical’, which particularly in American English tends to be equated with ‘hypothetical’ or ‘speculative’.

The anthropogenic dimension of global warming

However, most sceptics do not deny global warming outright. Instead one of their main tactics is to question the scientific evidence for a significant anthropogenic element to global warming. According to Calvin Beisner and his colleagues, ‘our knowledge of climate history also reveals substantial natural variability. The mechanisms driving natural climate variations are too poorly understood to be included accurately in computer climate models. Hence, the models risk overstating human influence.’ (Beisner et al. 2006: 3) They contend that a range of natural causes such as fluctuations in solar output, changes in cloud forcing, and precipitation microphysics may be more significant than human carbon dioxide emissions. Writing in First Things, Thomas Sieger Derr is more definite:

The likeliest cause of current climate trends seems to be solar activity, perhaps in combination with galactic cosmic rays caused by supernovas, especially because there is some good observable correlation between solar magnetism output and terrestrial climate change. (Derr 2004)

In common with many climate change sceptics, both religious and secular, Derr also suggests that the recent warming trend is just a blip in a larger natural cycle and that temperatures at the present day are still lower than they were during the Middle Ages.

The effects and severity of global warming

In recent years, popular environmentalism has tended to play up the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming, presumably in the hope that the fear factor will galvanize governments into taking the problem seriously.

By contrast, the sceptics tend to minimize the possible effects. For example, Beisner et al. claim that a temperature rise of about 3 °C is unlikely to be catastrophic,

because CO₂-induced warming will occur mostly in winter, mostly in polar regions, and mostly at night. But in polar regions, where winter night temperatures range far below freezing, an increase of 5.4 °F is hardly likely to cause significant melting of polar ice caps or other problems. (Beisner et al. 2006: 4)

More generally, the sceptics tend to highlight the uncertainties in scientific papers on global warming and emphasize the most conservative estimates of the impact of global warming as evidence that fears of catastrophic climate change are unfounded. For example, the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance cites the fact that the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Review has revised downwards some of the potential impacts of global warming as evidence of ‘the collapse of the catastrophic human-induced global warming dogma’.

But they are not just concerned to minimize the possible negative effects. They also highlight potential benefits of global warming: longer growing seasons in high latitudes; new living spaces in the tundra. Yes, a changing climate may mean drought in some places, but it will also mean increased rainfall in others. Global warming will increase the activity of the climate system, leading to a global increase in rainfall. Furthermore, they argue that increased carbon dioxide levels may actually benefit many food crops.

The efficacy of carbon dioxide emission controls

The sceptics maintain that Kyoto-style emission controls are simply not cost effective. This is hardly surprising, given that they believe human greenhouse gas emissions play only a relatively small part in climate change.

Furthermore, they point out that a system of such controls driven by Western economic interests could lead to greater injustice by denying development opportunities to the Third World. Specifically, ‘Because energy is an essential component in almost all economic production, reducing its use and driving up its costs will slow economic development, reduce overall productivity, and increase costs of all goods, including the food, clothing, shelter, and other goods most essential to the poor.’ (Beisner et al. 2006: 12) Ironically, given the political conservatism of the global warming sceptics, this is an argument first adopted against Western environmentalists by anti-colonialist neo-Marxists in the 1960s.

The motives of the climate change lobby

While some climate change sceptics argue that action to limit anthropogenic global warming will harm the poor, others discern a completely different political motivation behind policies like the Kyoto Protocols. Thus, writing in First Things, Thomas Sieger Derr asserts that

The IPCC is a UN body and reflects UN politics, which are consistently favorable to developing countries, the majority of its members. Those politics are very supportive of the Kyoto treaty, which not only exempts the developing countries from emissions standards but also requires compensatory treatment from the wealthier nations for any economic restraints that new climate management policies may impose on these developing countries. Were Kyoto to be implemented as written, the developing countries would gain lots of money and free technology. One need not be a cynic to grasp that a UN body will do obeisance to these political realities wherever possible. (Derr 2004)

Another possible motive imputed to those who are concerned about climate change by Derr is ‘a somewhat murky antipathy to modern technological civilization as the destroyer of a purer, cleaner, more “natural” life’ (Derr 2004).

The Underlying Theology

In light of Derr’s comments about the motives of those who are concerned about climate change, it would be tempting to dismiss the sceptics as simply having sold out their faith to the ideology of secular capitalism and Republican/neocon politics. And one might point to the fact that the leading theoreticians of the sceptics’ position belong to the Acton Institute for Religious Freedom, a think tank that has received significant funding from the Exxon oil corporation. (For a more detailed account of the political commitments of Christian anti-environmentalism, see Wright 1995). However, to limit ourselves to a political analysis would be to overlook that they believe they have good theological reasons for the position they have taken.

Rejecting the myth of the given

One of the more recent myths of (late) modernity might be called the myth of the given: we find ourselves in (Heidegger would have said ‘we are thrown into’) a finite world with finite natural resources. It is a closed system and the size of the cake is fixed. The finitude of the natural world did not matter during the expansion of modernity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But when every continent has been mapped, every ocean sailed, and much of the mineral wealth of the developed countries has been mined out, attitudes change.

Against the common-sense view that we have been thrown (as it were by chance) into this limited resource, which must therefore be husbanded carefully, evangelical environmental sceptics quite rightly remind us that the Christian doctrine of creation asserts an altogether more positive view. The world is not a hostile environment into which chance has thrown us. Rather, it is God’s good gift. Furthermore, it is open to God and it is sustained by God.

Drawing on the reality of God’s continuing care for creation, the climate change sceptics question whether God would allow the earth to be damaged by human activities of filling, subduing and ruling the whole earth as mandated in Genesis 1:28. According to the New Testament scholar Wayne Grudem,

It does not seem likely to me that God would set up the world to work in such a way that human beings would eventually destroy the earth by doing such ordinary and morally good and necessary things as breathing, building a fire to cook or keep warm, burning fuel to travel, or using energy for a refrigerator to preserve food. (Cited in ISA 2007)

It has to be admitted that God’s care for creation is a point often overlooked by Christian environmentalists. The world in which we live has not simply been left to its own devices by an absent God. On the contrary, God actively cares for God’s creation.

But how far can we take faith in God’s active care for creation? Grudem’s comment begs the question of which human activities in the modern world are ‘ordinary and morally good and necessary’. Some evangelical climate sceptics seem to think that in God’s covenant with Noah we have an implied promise that the earth will never be subjected to another environmental catastrophe on the scale of the Noahic flood. Thus Beisner and colleagues argue that

a Biblical theology of Earth stewardship will recognize the superintending hand of God protecting the Earth. Particularly when it is combined with our earlier observations about the resiliency of the Earth because of God’s wise design, this ought to make Christians inherently skeptical of claims that this or that human action threatens permanent and catastrophic damage to the Earth.’ (Spencer et al. 2005: 17)

While Beisner and colleagues are content with scepticism, others take this as a virtual carte blanche for human impact on the environment.

An anthropocentric interpretation of dominion

However, evangelical climate sceptics are not content to reassert that the world is God’s good gift. They also insist that it is God’s good gift to us. The raison d’être of the non-human is to serve the human.

Thus nature is ours to use for the benefit of the human race as a whole. It is but a small step from this to the assertion that it is sinful not to make full use of the world for our benefit. For example, the dominion mandate is seen as a manifesto for the transformation of the earth into a garden city. (Not so very different from the metaphor of spaceship earth that used to be bandied around by technocentric environmentalists – the nightmare vision of the earth as a totally managed environment.)

The absolutization of human freedom

There is a very strong emphasis on human freedom in the theology of the climate sceptics. And, of course, freedom is a fundamental part of any Christian anthropology (since we are made in the image of a God who is free).

However, it would appear from some of their writings that they believe human freedom to be unconstrained save by the direct moral commandment of God. And whatever is not explicitly forbidden by divine command is permitted.

I can’t help feeling that those who think along these lines fall easy prey to the modern notion that whatever is permitted is compulsory. Take, for example, a recent debate among American evangelicals about driving large gas-guzzling vehicles. The line of the climate sceptics seems to be that any attempt to question the morality of driving such vehicles is tantamount to an attack on our God-given freedom.

Dominium Terrae: an alternative interpretation

Our vocation to rule the earth is made plain in Scripture. The issue is how we are to exercise that vocation. My contention is that the evangelical environmental sceptics have badly misread Scripture at this point.

The etymology of the terms used in Genesis may suggest that dominion be equated with selfish tyranny, but the ideology of kingship we find in the Old Testament implies that the king is the servant of the people he rules. In any case, we are called not to be kings but representatives of the King of kings. The vocation to rule the earth is set firmly in the context of our being created as God’s image within creation: the representatives of the Servant King.

As part of that representative dominion, we are given freedom to use the earth’s resources to meet our needs. In the creation stories we are given the plants, while in the Noahic covenant we are given every living thing. But even that limited use of natural resources is hedged around by divinely imposed limits later in the Pentateuch. Gleaning to the edge of a field is forbidden as are double cropping and clear felling of an enemy’s orchards. And we are commanded to let the land lie fallow one year in seven.

Furthermore, the sceptics are simply wrong to assume that the world is God’s good gift to us alone. Rather Genesis 1 paints a picture of an ordered environment (including autotrophs) that is God’s good gift to all heterotrophs (including humans). A similar point is made in Psalm 104 and the later chapters of Job.

Contrary to the complacency of those who look to the Noahic covenant as a guarantee that no environmental disaster will befall us, the Bible repeatedly uses the motif of a reversal of creation (accompanied by the imagery of the Flood) as a warning of what will befall a disobedient people. To take just one example, consider the Bible’s interpretation of the reversion of the Promised Land to wilderness during the Exile.

So, we are given the freedom to use the world to meet our physical needs. I can agree with Grudem that necessary use of resources will not lead to environmental catastrophe. But there is no mandate within Scripture for our exploitation of the environment to satisfy the conspicuous overconsumption of the developed world (and particularly the United States).

References

Beisner, E. Calvin, Paul K. Driessen, Ross McKitrick and Roy W. Spencer (2006) ‘A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming’ Interfaith Stewardship Alliance. Available online at http://www.ecalvinbeisner.com/farticles/CalltoTruth.pdf.

Derr, Thomas Sieger (2004) ‘Strange Science’, First Things (November). Available online at http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=395.

Dobson, James et al. (2007) Letter to Chairman of the Board, National Association of Evangelicals, 1 March. Available online at http://www.citizenlink.org/pdfs/NAELetterFinal.pdf.

Evangelical Climate Initiative (2006) ‘Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action’. Available online at http://www.christiansandclimate.org/statement.

Interfaith Stewardship Alliance (2007) ‘An Open Letter to the Signers of “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action” and Others Concerned About Global Warming’. Available online at http://www.interfaithstewardship.org/pdf/OpenLetter.pdf.

Smith, Jeremy (2007) ‘Petroleum Pundits’, reformation21. Available online at http://www.reformation21.org/Past_Issues/2007_Issues_17_27_/2007_Issues_17_27_Counterpoints/Counterpoints_March_2007/Counterpoints_March_2007/307/vobId__5439/

Spencer, Roy W., Paul K. Driessen and E. Calvin Beisner (2005) ‘An Examination of the Scientific, Ethical and Theological Implications of Climate Change Policy’, Interfaith Stewardship Alliance. Available online at http://www.interfaithstewardship.org/pdf/ISA_Climate_Change.pdf.

Wright, Richard T. (1995) ‘Tearing Down the Green: Environmental Backlash in the Evangelical Sub-Culture’, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 47: 80–91. Available online at http://www.asa3.org/aSA/PSCF/1995/PSCF6-95Wright.html.

Wright, Richard T. (2000) ‘The Declaration under Siege’ in R. J. Berry (ed.), The Care of Creation: Focusing concern and action (Leicester: IVP), pp. 74–9.

Tipping points just got closer

 An article published yesterday in Nature Sustainability warns that current estimates of how soon various environmental tipping points might occur are far too conservative. You can download the article here. This is the abstract:

A major concern for the world’s ecosystems is the possibility of collapse, where landscapes and the societies they support change abruptly. Accelerating stress levels, increasing frequencies of extreme events and strengthening intersystem connections suggest that conventional modelling approaches based on incremental changes in a single stress may provide poor estimates of the impact of climate and human activities on ecosystems. We conduct experiments on four models that simulate abrupt changes in the Chilika lagoon fishery, the Easter Island community, forest dieback and lake water quality—representing ecosystems with a range of anthropogenic interactions. Collapses occur sooner under increasing levels of primary stress but additional stresses and/or the inclusion of noise in all four models bring the collapses substantially closer to today by ~38–81%. We discuss the implications for further research and the need for humanity to be vigilant for signs that ecosystems are degrading even more rapidly than previously thought.

The moral of the story is that we have not been served well by the laser-like focus on climate change over the past couple of decades. Other environmental pressures are important as well, and when combined with global heating there is the potential for catastrophic breakdown of major ecosystems within the next few decades. Specifically, they suggest that the IPCC warning of a tipping point in the Amazonian forest system by 2100 may be several decades too optimistic.

The human cost of anthropogenic climate change

 Estimates of the impact of climate change are usually couched in terms of economic cost. But a recent paper in Nature Sustainability – Lenton, T.M., Xu, C., Abrams, J.F. et al. Quantifying the human cost of global warming. Nat Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01132-6 – sheds new light on the real cost of climate change by calculating how many people in the coming decades may be exposed to temperature extremes outside the range of temperatures within which humans can flourish. Here is the abstract:

The costs of climate change are often estimated in monetary terms, but this raises ethical issues. Here we express them in terms of numbers of people left outside the ‘human climate niche’—defined as the historically highly conserved distribution of relative human population density with respect to mean annual temperature. We show that climate change has already put ~9% of people (>600 million) outside this niche. By end-of-century (2080–2100), current policies leading to around 2.7 °C global warming could leave one-third (22–39%) of people outside the niche. Reducing global warming from 2.7 to 1.5 °C results in a ~5-fold decrease in the population exposed to unprecedented heat (mean annual temperature ≥29 °C). The lifetime emissions of ~3.5 global average citizens today (or ~1.2 average US citizens) expose one future person to unprecedented heat by end-of-century. That person comes from a place where emissions today are around half of the global average. These results highlight the need for more decisive policy action to limit the human costs and inequities of climate change.