The Global Warming Debate

I've been thinking about this issue for a long time and in talking to other people about how they see it, I'm sometimes at a loss for words. You have those people who believe it and are doing what they can to help, those who believe it and just don't care and those who absolutely refuse to believe it so they don't have to care. I turn my radio to conservative talk every now and again and am still surprised to hear how Global Warming is somehow a conspiracy. I don't really understand what anyone has to gain by the observation that the earth is warming at an alarming rate and that man's influence is an overwhelming factor in this increased trend. The majority of people claiming that the effects are minimal seem to be Evangelical Christians or those making a profit from oil. For those people who believe that Christ will soon be returning to the earth in these "last days" and the earth will burn and all the good souls will be raised while the wicked are left to burn with the earth, it's really not a priority. I mean, if the earth will be ablaze within the next 20 to 40 years, why in the world would we need to do anything about that tiny 1 to 3 degrees in temperature rise? I mean... seriously.. just turn up the A/C, right? What I don't understand about the Christian perspective is this: Christians believe that God, a man, created the earth. Because he created the earth in 7 days, there was no room for evolution, so each and every plant, bug and animal had to have been created for some purpose. The earth is like God's back yard, so to speak, and we are basically visitors. It's on loan to us. Now, honestly.. if you loaned a car to someone and they brought it back trashed, would you not be a little bit upset? Even if you do believe that the earth will be destroyed in the end, is it not still disrespectful to treat it poorly while we are here? While our actions are still affecting other people and other living creatures, I would think God, if he is a man above, would want us to be kind and to watch how what we do carries over to other beings. Just because we are ignorant doesn't make us innocent.

I watched a documentary the other night called, "Jesus Camp". I found it so incredibly disturbing. This Evangelical Christian pastor was literally training young children to live and speak her belief system. She has a camp every year and in this camp, she teaches these very young kids that Satan is out there, that they must be warriors against sin, which is like a flesh eating bacteria and that they must wage "actual" war against those people who do not believe in Jesus Christ. She specifically targeted Muslims and told these children that they would be in war with the Moslems to bring the "truth" back to this earth. The "truth" basically consists of praising Jesus Christ, speaking in tongues (basically making up your own language and screaming it to the heavens at the top of your lungs), making sure you repent EVERY day for all of your indecent thoughts and acts (apparently not having enough faith in Christ is the ULTIMATE sin) and learning to hate people who do not believe as you do. Many of the parents of these children see that they are home schooled. They teach them that evolution is a bunch of crap and that global warming is a conspiracy, all this over a nice bologna sandwich. They teach their kids to praise President Bush as a brave leader who is guided by God. In fact, at camp they have a life size cut out of the man and they pray for him every day. The scary part of this idea is how strong and pervasive it is within this one group of people. It bleeds into conservative politics and has heavily blurred the line between church and state. People believe that this world is more evil than it used to be and this is all because prayer has been taken out of the schools. What people don't understand is that this world is not more evil than it used to be, we just have more information put in front of us, so we see the bad things more often. I think that as human beings, we have become more aware and more concerned with our fellow man. Bad things still happen, but we also do so much more good. If we believe in our possibility to transform the ills of the world into something positive, we certainly can do it. Global Warming is an opportunity for everyone to do something small to achieve something really big. Seeing how we can reverse the damage we do will inspire people all over the world to be more mindful of all that they do and how it affects every living soul in this world. Whether they believe in Jesus Christ is not the big issue. How we treat each other is and I'm pretty sure that if Christ were walking the earth today, he would be taking the bus and he would recycle.