Global Warming: The Debate is On!

Well it is official, the debate is on. My friend Jeremy and I (I love you Jeremy), spent over an hour "discussing" Global Warming (GW) the other night at a friends house and I realized that we are not the only ones. Like most things in our culture, the debate has come into the popular conscious by way of popular-film. Last years An Inconveniant Truth brought the discussion about GW into the living rooms of most people living in the Americas. Now many people might wonder at my use of the word debate here. "Who is actually debating the issue anymore?" they say "Everyone believes in GW!" To them I would say not so fast. Not everyone does believe in it. If you are interested in the discussion, which will be part of our cultural discourse for the next decade at least so you might want to be informed, I would refer you to watch An Inconvenient Truth, which is an Oscar-winning documentary by Al Gore, and presents the issue from the left--Human beings are drastically negatively effecting our environment; and The Great Global Warming Swindle ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU ) a one hour film shown on the BBC critiquing the basic argument of the left and of the arguments presented in Gore's film. Let me sketch both sides of this debate, as I understand it.

On the one hand there are those, like Gore and others, who believe that the temp. of the earth is warming, that it is doing so beause of the harmful emission that humans produce, and that we are causing the earth major damage, through industrial development and the abuse of planetary resources. This side highlights the level of CO2 in ice-deposits and concludes that the temp. of the earth can be correlated with those deposits. So higher CO2 levels = higher temperatures. The solution, they suggest, is to focus a higher percentage of the economy on "green iniatives", and to place restrictions and laws on large oil companies, forcing them to research "alternative energies". Simplistic but good for now.

On the other hand there are those, like the scientists in the aforementioned film, who believe that the temp. of the earth is not doing anything it hasn't done before (the outcry in the 1970's was actually that the earth was cooling), and nothing the earth wion't do again--not based on anything human beings do but based on two other things: the sun and the oceans, the two greatest influencers on climate change. One scientist gives the image of a car which is breaking down--and people who are talking about the bolt on the hubcap instead of the engine and the transmission, which are the real issues. They argue that the CO2 levels are not changed substantially by negative human influence but by "sun-spots" (see Wikipedia), and that if one were to map out the CO2 levels they would follow perfectly the patterns of sun-spots, and not industrial development. The concern, here is the many billions of dollars that are being allocated to "alternative energy solutions" (Canadians 2007 budget 4.5 billion) is a waste of money, propogated by a myth and a lie, and could be used more responsibly toward third-world causes etc. They say that the fact that the West has suddenly grown a conscious toward such things is hurting Africa--because we are now putting major sanctions on them, forcing them to use wind-power, which is useless and expensive at this point. Just causing more problems in a continent that has little to offer by way of natural resources.

For my reflections here, I want to assume that human beings do effect their environment, and often times negatively (not too hard to prove--think about exitinction of species, due to industrial developlment, expanding suburbs, and oceanic pollution), my question, has to do with the extent of human influence in the realm of Greehouse gases (specifically CO2, which we all produce, and nature produces). I think it is important to get the answer to this question right before the debate moves on.

As a point of Christian reflection I want to say that any discussion that leads to care for the environment over and above industrial exploitation is the right direction. We have a responsibility to care for creation in all the ways we can. That is part of our Adamic mandate--the question becomes whether we are looking in the wrong direction for solutions to the existing problems. Everyone loves an apocalyptic story, and right now the media loves the one about humans destroying the world, single-handedly, through smoke-stacks, the questions becomes: Are we really? If we are, let's move quicker to solutions, lets force these oil companies to come up with some better solutions. Let's listen to prophets like Wendell Berry, and Al Gore. If not, then lets re-look at our budget priorities (a prophetic call as well) and focus our attention on the right kinds of things.

Two final thoughts: Let us not reflect on our experience as the tell-tale sign of global anything. First off, effects to the environment take time to impact--sometimes hundred of years. I was at home at Christmas and my friend said "GW is true, look I am wearing a T-shirt!" (I didn't want to call him up in February and ask him how cold it was!). Many people are not aware that there was actually a "little iceage" in the 15 century in Europe, and crazier climate changes then that throughout history that cannot be explained by industrial development. Second, Wendell Berry reminds us of something important in his book Sex, God, Economy and Community : that we should not think globally first about issue, because that takes the issue out of our hands, out of our reality, and into a blackhole of theory, we should talk only locally, for the local solutions to environmental issues are the global solutions. My challenge is that we begin to speak and act locally if we want to create changes--weather we are the major problem or not.