Post on 30-Apr-2020
Global warming: a Christian response
Bob White
• Creation – ‘very good’
• New Creation – perfected• Decreation – spoilt by sin
Global warming: a Christian response
Should Christians be Green?
Global warming: a Christian response
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth Gen 1:1
Through him [Jesus] all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
John 1:3
God created the universe
v4 God saw that the light was good
God’s creation is good
v21 And God saw that it was good
v31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
v25 And God saw that it was good
v18 And God saw that it was good
v12 And God saw that it was good
v10 And God saw that it was good
Genesis ch 1
The Son [Jesus] is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.
Heb 1:3
For by him [Jesus] all things were created …He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Col 1:16-17
God sustains the universe
A Christian responseScientific issues
Global warming: a Christian response
• God cares: so we should
Global warming: a Christian response
The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. Ps 104: 21
He covers the sky with clouds; he supplies the earth with rain and makes grass grow on the hills. He provides food for the cattle and for the young ravens when they call.
Ps 147:8-9
‘[God] …. waters a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass’ (Job 38:27)
Global warming: a Christian response
• God cares: so we should
• God’s commandment to us
Global warming: a Christian response
Humans are made ‘in the image of God’
Moral beings: justice
Can love & be loved
Creative
Can relate to God
God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
Genesis 1:28
Global warming: a Christian response
• God cares: so we should
• Community: care for neighbour
• God’s commandment to us
Global warming: a Christian response
We do not hold a freehold on our world, but only a full repairing lease. We have a moral duty to look after our world and to hand it on in good order to future generations.
Margaret Thatcher
A Christian responseScientific issues
Global warming: a Christian response
Pasterze glacier, Austria
1875
2004
methane 24%
carbon dioxide 63%
nitrous oxide 10% others 3%
Contribution of Greenhouse Gases to Global Warming
Carbon dioxide 386 ppm
Methane 1750 ppbVostok ice core, Antarctica
Global Population
Global Population
Global warming causes more extreme weather events: floods and droughts
Global warming: a Christian response
Floods are one of the world’s main killers
Global warming: a Christian response
Bangladesh: 13 November 1970
> 500,000 people died
• 1887: Yellow River, China 0.9 – 2.0 million dead
• 20th century: floods affect 100 million per year
• 1931: Yellow River, China 1.0 – 3.7 million dead
• 2025: half world population at risk from storms
Climate Change: a burning issue?
Maldives
150-200 million environmental refugees globallyby 2050 due to rapid climate change
• God cares: so we should
• Community: care for neighbour
• God’s commandment to us
• Covenant: God’s promise to humankind
Global warming: a Christian response
"Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done."
Global warming: a Christian response
Genesis ch 8:21
"As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat, summer and winter,
day and night will never cease."
Global warming: a Christian response
Genesis ch 8:22
• God cares: so we should
• Community: care for neighbour
• God’s commandment to us
• Covenant: God’s promise to humankind
Global warming: a Christian response
• New Creation: Christian hope for the future
When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.
1 Cor 15:35-38
But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?"
How foolish!
‘If I knew Jesus would return tomorrow, I would plant a tree today.’
Luther
Global warming: a Christian response
‘The Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of
the next.
Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in; aim at earth and you get neither.’ CS Lewis
Global warming: a Christian response
• God cares: so we should
• Community: care for neighbour
• God’s commandment to us
• Covenant: God’s promise to humankind
Global warming: a Christian response
• New Creation: Christian hope for the future
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• ‘Climate change is not due to humans’
• ‘CO2 is not responsible for global warming’
• ‘Rises in CO2 occur after global warming, not before’
• ‘Temperature observations don’t support global warming’
• ‘Computer models are unreliable’
• ‘It is all to do with the sun, not CO2’• ‘It is all to do with cosmic rays’• ‘The negative effects are overstated’
Misleading Arguments