Rethinking Enviornmentalism

It's been a while here at the JP Survey. Moving does that to you. So I (Ashley) have decided to write a few guest posts to get dicussions flowing again. Jonathan and I both enjoy reading about issues, playfully arguing - I mean, dicussing - issues, and writing about them, so please join us!

Now that we're back from jolly old England, re-adjusting to American culture has left us walking less, surrounded by much newer things, and sadly, drinking a little less English Breakfast. On the bright side, though, we now have a working faucet in the bathroom, 70 degree weather in February, and Chick-fil-A. So we're good.

On a more serious note, there is one distinction in particular between Americans and Brits - generally speaking - that we'd like to share today: views on the enviornment.

This is a somewhat hot-button topic in American politics. If you haven't followed this debate in recent years (due to being in Timbuktu or Siberia, of course), the broad break-down in opinion follows:

LIBERALS: Followers of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. We've destroyed our environment, if we don't act now the earth will be inhabitable within 24 hours, yada yada.

CONSERVATIVES: Inherently dislike Al Gore and therefore reject anything he publishes. The economy is more important than the environment, there is no proof of harm anyway, blah blah.

Enlgand, however, is over this debate. They've, ahem, sided with liberals here. Now before all you conservative readers stop reading, let's rethink this whole issue for just a minute, as my husband and I did while living in Oxford. We confess to having not carefully considered the issue before; but once we did, the results were interesting:

For Christians, why did this turn into a political debate in the first place? And how in the world did most Christians (the so-called "right-wing evangelicals" and such) end up on the "we don't really care about the enviornment" side? Seriously. Let's go back to the basics.

"God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good....God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good." (Genesis Chapter 1)

Notice the pattern? God creates. It's good. God creates. It's good.

Then what does he do when humans enter the picture? He gives us the entire earth. To subdue it, to care for it, to tend it. In a way, we (mankind) are the governors of the world. We are not the ultimate ruler, but we definitely have some authority, at least for now. The question is, how do we use that authority?

Somehow, I'm fairly certain the answer should NOT be to trash the earth without regard to its future. No, we are called - yes CALLED - to care for the earth. So whether or not Al Gore is "making up" enviornmental drama is not the point. It doesn't matter if the Earth will self-destruct in 1 year or 1,000,000,000,000 years. We have responsibilities to do the best job we can as 'governors' of the world today.

The environmental debate is still important scientifically, of course. (And may I encourage you to read the scientists themselves on this issue, not news columnists or politicians who can filter the data one way or the other?) But again, the truth or falsity of An Inconvenient Truth should not be our basis for how we view environmentalism. Look to higher standards of Truth.

Practically, what does this look like? Well, we're still working on that part. But little things do add up, so why don't we all start by trying to waste less? Let's reuse and recycle, as Captain Planet always encouraged us as children. (And let's "take pollution down to zero" while we're at it! Just kidding.)

Food for thought....

And Jonathan wanted to include a note:
Save the polar bears.