Recently in conservatives environment Category

Erin Manning.

But if conservation is really, well, conservative, then why is it that so few conservatives can find themselves at ease among the conservation-minded environmentalists of today?

I've said this before, but I think that the dividing line is contained in these questions: do you agree that human beings are themselves a kind of pollution on the planet, and that greater and greater efforts must be made to make sure that fewer of us are born? Are we saving the planet for future generations, or should we attack and destroy future generations (especially by using, supporting, and promoting among the world's poor the unholy trinity of contraception, sterilization, and abortion) to save the planet?

UPDATE/BUMPED: Quinn and Rose:

9. The fundamental difference between Liberals and Conservatives is - Liberals see every new life as a potential problem and a burden.  Conservatives see every new life as a potential source of creativity and wealth.  Allow me to elaborate a little bit on that:  When your view of your responsibility to your fellow citizen is to take care of them through government planning and government force, every new person born becomes another mouth to feed another person to educate another burden on the states resources.  If you are a liberal you believe that resources are limited and there is only so much to go around.  You see yourself or government policy as the arbiters of who gets what.  A conservative understands that new wealth is created every time human creativity acts on a resource and is unlimited.  To a conservative, life is a blessing.  To a liberal life is a curse.  (Does this clarify their love of abortion and euthanasia?)

Deuteronomy 30:11-20

Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, "Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, "Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it. See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

***

Post Script:

Most Christians are still ambivalent at best about environmentalism. Why? For the most part it is a paradoxical mix of man-centered and dehumanizing philosophies. Even our Christian environmental labors are largely attempts to save creation in God's name rather than to reconcile ourselves and our neighbors with God.

Is there love in environmentalism? Many Christian environmentalists say the path to godliness is a form of monastic poverty, but is this the self-giving agape John wrote about? We forget that Jesus said the law we're supposed to be obeying is loving our Father and loving other people as ourselves. God says when we love and obey Him, when we honor life and marriage and our neighbor and put no idol in His place, He will pour out life and blessing and, yes, fruitfulness and increase. If there is love in environmentalism, it seems we love the notion of a perfect planet more than a Perfect and Holy Savior.

Is there a way to reconcile Spirit-filled Christianity with environmental stewardship? As long as we walk according to the flesh rather than the Spirit, I have my doubts.

Rich Cizik on the new face of Evangelicalism.

This was the crux of our discussion--Mr. Cizik claims that he, or more precisely, his views represent those of a younger generation of Evangelical America, a generation which in his words is 'fed up.'

In the WaPo today. She makes a great point here:

We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter.

Yeh, would should reduce fuel consumption across the board. But as long as we're dependent on petroleum, aren't we more likely to "do" petroleum greener?  I think so.

Would also love to see her take on ecology from a Christian perspective, since she are one.

More here. What this bodes for the environmental movement:

Americans also became more likely to say the economy should be given priority over the environment when the two interests conflict -- although that may reflect the difficult economic times, rather than an ideological shift away from environmentalism.

That's bolstered by data showing red-staters up 7% on green issues over the past half-decade.

When you toss out the "we're for the planet - which side are you on?" canard, people are all for a great environment. The difference hinges on what to do and whether the government or the free market should get us there.

UPDATE: Conservatives are also "more pro-life" by that same 7%. How could that be you ask? You're part of that frustratingly large group of folks on both sides of the aisle that haven't made the link between abortion and pollution.

Ken Chilton:

On the cost side, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that any cap-and-trade bill that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 15 percent could cost the average household roughly $1,600 (in 2006 dollars). Further, "The rise in prices would impose a larger burden, relative to income, on low-income households ...." (Households in the lowest income quintile spend 21 percent of their income on energy-intensive items compared with 4 percent for the highest one-fifth of American households.)

A Heritage Foundation analysis finds that Waxman-Markey would, by 2035, raise electricity rates 90 percent, gasoline prices 74 percent, residential natural gas prices 55 percent and an average family's monthly energy bill by more than $100.

How about the corresponding value of reducing greenhouse emissions? Congress has made no attempt to answer this obvious question.

One estimate by Paul Knappenberger, an environmental scientist with 20 years experience as a climate researcher, concludes "by the year 2050, the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would result in a global temperature 'savings' of about 0.05 degrees Centigrade ... about two years' worth of warming." In short, this legislation creates very high costs for American households and produces NO discernable benefit!

As an elder in a 300-member evangelical church, I am aware of efforts to recruit church leaders to push for climate change legislation. The advocates label their efforts "creation care" and claim Biblical support for their position based mainly on helping the "least among us" and stewardship of God's creation.

But efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions necessarily result in higher energy costs that impact "the least among us" most harshly. The Biblical command to care for the poor and deal with them justly should give us pause as we consider policies with almost no benefit and great cost to the least of these.

Whenever my family or my grandparents were going to be gone for a while they usually unplugged everything around the house. Cleantech Blog says they may have been onto something.

Back then it was just being thrifty. Now they call it saving the climate. Whatever works.

BeliefNet: Dr. Mary Veeneman reviews Harper and Metzger's Exploring Ecclesiology: An Evangelical and Ecumenical Introduction. "The question we need to ask, especially of evangelicals, is this: Does the church matter? And if so, how does it matter? Now over to Mary..."

Do you think the gospel has anything to do with creation? Is creation care redemptive in a meaningful sense? I don't remember exactly how I responded, though I somehow pointed out that not all evangelicals are premillennialists, that there are actually a number of evangelicals interested in environmental protection and moreover, that environmental protection was consistent with evangelical values. It is this topic that Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger seek to address in the chapter, "Eschatology, the Church, and Ecology in this book we are discussing here at Jesus Creed blog.

National Wildlife Federation teams up with the Christain Coalition.

WWRRD?

Religious folks, mostly from progressive walks of life, see environmentalism as a great uniting force. 

Apparently the world is being united by environmentalism, but not in the way you'd first think:

Actor and comedian Paul Rodriguez is the perfect example of how the threat of extreme environmentalism can bring together Democrat Hispanics and Republicans. Rodriguez owns a small family farm in California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley. This is the same area that has been radically affected by a judge’s ruling shutting off Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta water pumps that send water south. Why would a judge cut off the most essential nutrient for farming? Environmentalists claim the pumps could threaten the tiny smelt fish in the delta water. Under the federal Endangered Species Act, if an animal is “threatened,” the well-being of unfortunate humans in the area takes a back seat.

Rodriguez witnessed firsthand the devastating consequences of placing a greater priority on the safety of a fish than the livelihood of his family and neighbors and decided to speak out. At a speech delivered last week to the conservative California Republican Assembly annual convention, Rodriguez described the travesty of the government’s decision: “It is tragic that in the most fertile soil that God has ever placed on this blue marble that we should have a desert where there should be a garden. We are truly blessed to live in a land that’s just like Canaan: everything that you drop on there will grow. We have everything we need except resolve.”

Once again I ask "what are the Hispanic Catholics thinking?"  I bet Pew would get a stunner of an answer if they asked the question.

One more time: There are more progressive/secularists who think evangelicals believe in a God-given right to destroy the world than there are evangelicals who actually believe in it.

But I have never seen a liberal say we should skip the whole group completely. Until now, that is.

Seeking support from Evangelicals for climate change legislation is a bit like asking Rush Limbaugh to campaign for Arlen Specter. The attempt is ill-advised. We should not be reframing the debate to make the issue tolerable to Evangelicals. That type of accommodation is the dangerous first step onto a slippery slope, and soon we'll be compromising on teaching Intelligent Design next to or in place of Darwin's "theory."

Um, OK. On the other hand, given that a large majority of the country bends toward Christianity and away from climate change, ignoring their concerns is just going to marginalize climatists further.

For some that's not such a bad thing. For those advocating national concensus on climate change it's a mistake.

NY Times this weekend says the words progressive environmentalists are using to press their human-caused climate change agenda aren't working: (via)

The research directly parallels marketing studies conducted by oil companies, utilities and coal mining concerns that are trying to “green” their images with consumers and sway public policy.

Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center poll released in January found global warming last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists. “We know why it’s lowest,” said Mr. Perkowitz, a marketer of outdoor clothing and home furnishings before he started ecoAmerica, whose activities are financed by corporations, foundations and individuals. “When someone thinks of global warming, they think of a politicized, polarized argument. When you say ‘global warming,’ a certain group of Americans think that’s a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues.”

Certain groups like, say, evangelicals, conservatives, independents, and the like? More:

The answer, Mr. Perkowitz said in his presentation at the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language. “Energy efficiency” makes people think of shivering in the dark. Instead, it is more effective to speak of “saving money for a more prosperous future.” In fact, the group’s surveys and focus groups found, it is time to drop the term “the environment” and talk about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.”

“Another key finding: remember to speak in TALKING POINTS aspirational language about shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency while avoiding jargon and details about policy, science, economics or technology,” said the e-mail account of the group’s study.

Well, the whole energy/environment discussion SHOULD be about freedom, prosperity, costs and a cleaner future for our kids. 

Too bad it's just words to them.