Hot In Herre

The National Association of Evangelicals hasn't taken a public stance on global warming despite a few calls from within the organization for it to do so, which evidently makes the Washington Post none too happy.

See if you can guess where the Post stands from its headline: Evangelicals Will Not Take Stand on Global Warming.

The Post is evidently flummoxed that evangelicals, while professing to care for the environment, would fail to fall into lock-step with the green activists of the left on warming. Perhaps it could be because they don't understand the concept of being "prudent." Or of "examining the actual evidence."

One of my professors is quoted in the Post's article. He has extensively researched environmental issues and is affiliated with the Acton Institute, which has done important work in this field, and he was one of many urging the NAE to look before it leaps onto the green bandwagon:

...E. Calvin Beisner, professor of social ethics at Knox Theological Seminary, a conservative Presbyterian school in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., applauded the NAE's non-position.

Beisner, who helped draft [a letter urging caution] to [NAE president Ted] Haggard from evangelical leaders, said they had feared that the NAE was going "to assume as true certain things that we think are still debatable, such as that global warming is not only real but also almost certainly going to be catastrophically harmful; second, that it is being driven to a significant extent by human activity; and third, that some regime, some international treaty for mandatory reductions in CO2 emissions, could make a significant enough drop in global emissions to justify the costs to the human economy."

While many environmental leftists will beat their chests and make a lot of noise over statements like this, one thing you'll notice they'll never do is answer them. Asking them to justify their assertions on the causes and effects of global warming will draw little more than a blank stare.

Currently the green left is of the "do something--anything" school of thought, without much regard to the actual evidence. I'm glad there are sensible voices urging us to seriously examine whether there is any real link between human behavior and global warming. If not, all the calls to monkey around with world economies in an effort to "fix" it is so much spitting in the wind.

Related Tags: global warming, environment, National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard, E. Calvin Beisner, Knox Theological Seminary, Acton Institute, Washington Post