On Christians and Global Warming

The Foundation for Economic Education's Sheldon Richman, shares some wisdom on global warming:

More than a few reputable scientists see potential problems in the climate change that is occurring. Thus the issue needs to be evaluated on its merits. I know of no a priori reason to rule out the possibility that human activity is producing enough greenhouse gases to warm the atmosphere to an extent that will have bad consequences. That doesn't mean it's happening, just that it's not impossible.

For every factoid about ice sheets or sea levels or sun spots I can pull from the skeptics' literature, someone else can produce a counter-factoid. How is a nonscientist to decide which is accurate?

This is not to say the skeptics don't raise apparently compelling points. They do, and the believers should address them. But that still leaves the problem of how a layman is to sort the wheat from the chaff.

For advocates of individual liberty it is tempting to believe the skeptics are right because the other side is associated with statist solutions to climate change. Most solutions call for government control over the burning of fossil fuels. No advocate of free markets can be comfortable with a position that entails substantial taxes and subsidies to achieve a political objective -- reduction of carbon emissions -- especially when the solutions promise no more than negligible reductions in temperature. (Temperature, not emissions per se, is supposed to be the believers' cause for concern.)

But picking sides in a scientific debate on the basis of proposed remedies is the wrong way to go about things. A believer in global warming could get the science right but the remedy wrong. That government shouldn't ban smoking doesn't mean smoking isn't bad for you. There is nothing incoherent about favoring free markets and thinking that global warming is a problem.

Unfortunately, I have rarely heard the science of global warming discussed as a separate issue from solutions. It' is always the assertion "global warming is occurring..." without discussing magnitude of its impact, immediately followed by "therefore we must..." Shouldn't these be two separate issues? Why is it that the politicians are the ones speaking about this much more than the scientists?

This is why, as a Christian, I have grave concerns about the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI). Particularly when several pastors I greatly respect are signatories. (See this New York Times article for more on this.)

Apparently, I'm not the only Christian concerned about this:

About 20 prominent, politically-active evangelical Christian leaders -- including Charles Colson, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention -- recently urged the National Association of Evangelicals to stay out of the global warming debate. They wrote: "There should be room for Bible-believing evangelicals to disagree about the cause, severity and solutions to the global warming issue."

While I think this initiative is well-intended (as are many efforts to "solve" global-warming), it seems like it amounts to public support of scientific findings by pastors without the expertise to make this claim and endorsement of economic solutions without a solid understanding of the economics involved.

Don Boudreaux shares his thoughts on Richman's statements here. In this post, Dr. Boudreaux quotes GMU law professor Bruce Johnsen:

Although climate scientists are competent to tell us whether the earth is, for the time being, warming, or whether it is warming outside some historically normal parameters, they are not competent to forecast the economic consequences of such warming or to suggest what should be done in response. When they try to do so they are not acting as scientists but as political advocates. Even if it is true that global warming will generate "large-scale disruptions," the consensus among economists -- whose expertise is at evaluating trade-offs -- is that taking the steps necessary to avoid such disruptions will lead to substantially larger disruptions.

In my estimation, it seems most economists are unqualified to tell climatologists what is occurring with global warming. Likewise, most climatologists are unqualified to predict the economic consequences of such warming or of the potential "solutions". It seems like most well-meaning pastors lack the training for making either of these judgments. Supporting something that sounds like it is a good thing to do (and has a lot of popular support) without carefully weighing in all the evidence and potential consequences is a very dangerous road to travel and not being a good steward of the intellectual, informational, or influential gifts we've been given.

Unfortunately the poor, who are the ones ECI members most want to help, are the ones who would be most negatively impacted by many of the proposed "solutions" to fight global warming. If pastors really want to help fight global warming in an effective way, they should consider signing up for the Pigou Club instead.

See this New York Times article about the Evangelical Climate Initiative and this Wall Street Journal opinion piece on the lack of consensus within the scientific community about global warming.

Joe Carter of The Evangelical Outpost shares some great thoughts on ECI here and here.

Read more about the Christian debate here, including this response to ECI by Calvin Beisner (PDF), associate professor of historical theology and social ethics at Knox Theological Seminary:

It is important to speak directly to the issue of motive. We do not question the motive of those who produced or signed the ECI’s “Call to Action.” We assume that they acted out of genuine concern for the world’s poor and others and considered their action justified by scientific, economic, theological, and ethical facts. We trust that they will render us the same respect.

It is not sufficient, however, to have good intentions. They must be linked to sound understanding of relevant principles, theories, and facts.

AMEN!