Heat waves and a biblical perspective on climate change
Chances are, it’s a hot weekend for you.
Throughout the United States and Europe, most places are seeing temps 10-20 degrees above normal, with heat indices even higher. It’s about the second strong heat wave in a hotter-than-normal summer, probably best spent indoors with the A/C running full blast.
This isn’t earth-shattering news. This usually happens once or twice a year, though not usually this early. But at times like these, I always wonder where those people are who joke about global warming during the cold snaps of winter. More specifically, those who don’t just joke about it, but who deny it’s really occurring. Most of these people are, like me, on the conservative side of the political spectrum, so rest assured this is not a political diatribe. Quite honestly, I don’t share the Republican or Democratic point of view on climate change. But I do feel it’s more relevant than we think about most of the time. This is such a politically charged topic that it’s very hard to impossible to talk about biblically. That’s what I want to do here.
One of the first commands God gives humans in the Bible is in Genesis 1:28: And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” There’s no ambiguity in the meaning here: We’re supposed to have dominion over the earth. We’re commanded to fill the earth — populate it throughout. We’re commanded to subdue it — make it subject to us — and we’re commanded to have dominion, or rule over it. Like kings and queens who conquer a kingdom and assume dominion over it, we are to have dominion over the earth. We are the rightful rulers. But like kings and queens have a responsibility to govern their territory responsibly, we have a responsibility to govern the earth responsibly.
So here’s how the typical climate change narrative goes: Humans have put astonishing amounts of pollutants into the air in the last century or two, so much so that it’s significantly altering the climate from its natural pattern. This unnatural climate alteration is going to cause great harm to some ecosystems, and harm to us as well. In our impulsive rush for advancement, we’ve polluted the environment with trash and waste, disrupted ecosystems and appropriated them for human business ventures, and poured so much pollution into the air that it’s starting to warm the climate. Therefore, we have failed in our duty to responsibly rule the earth.
Is this true? Have we failed in our duty? Is the climate running away out of our control? It’s indisputable that the climate is getting warmer. You can know this without ever having to believe the media reports. Take a look at the data from your city (look at your region’s NOAA climate website), and see if they have a list of the top warmest and coldest years. When you check the politics-free data, you’ll certainly see that the 2000s are some of the warmest years in history. In the case of Detroit, which has excellent data records, 11 of the top 20 warmest years are from 1990 or later, while only 1 of the top 20 coldest years is (2014). Meanwhile, there are a huge number of cold records from the 19th century that have never been broken. Record highs are broken twice as often as record lows.
We also know that it’s warming at an unprecedented rate, not seen since the end of the last Ice Age. It’s not a natural variation, and it’s something we’ve never experienced before.
So have we failed? There’s pretty much two ways people respond to this. One side says yes, we have, and we’d better reverse course quickly lest we bring disaster upon the earth and ourselves. The other side says no, we haven’t, we’re doing just fine the way we are. I don’t think either response is fully correct. The Bible says God gave us rulership over the earth. The correct response, biblically, is to look at God’s command to us concerning our relationship with the earth, and what it really means.
His command is threefold:
Fill the earth. One wrong idea that’s very popular today is that the earth exists for its own sake. It’s there, and we’re just living in it. God says the opposite. We are the pinnacle of God’s creation, made in God’s image. The earth was designed for us, not us for the earth. The earth is our home, all of it, and we are to fill it. We are to make sure that none of it goes to waste. That doesn’t mean we can abuse it at will — would you pump toxic gas into your own house every day, or dump trash all over it? But it does mean we can choose human flourishing over the flourishing of the forests. If there is something in nature we can put to use for our benefit, we should. We wouldn’t leave the dining room of our house clean and immaculate only to never use it. But, we also need to properly judge what kind of use is truly to our benefit. If we’re using the earth in a way that ultimately harms us, it’s bad. If we’re using it in a way that ultimately benefits us, it’s good.
As it relates to climate change, that means climate change, even human-caused climate change, isn’t in itself a bad thing. The climate has changed much more drastically before. After all, virtually all of human history has taken place during the most recent Ice Age (albeit with no real organized civilization). The question is, is it going to help us ultimately, or harm us? The verdict is a little less clear than politicians’ apocalyptic rhetoric would indicate. Meteorologists have a hard time predicting exactly what will happen 5 days from now, let alone 50 years. Some change might have some benefits. Some places might benefit from warmer weather, as Prof. Richard Tol suggests. For example, Michigan will be a relative paradise. The idea that climate change is going to produce a Day After Tomorrow scenario is not true, and it’s not clear precisely how the effects are going to be realized. Weather is so variable that you can’t really attribute any one storm to climate change. But even though 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) doesn’t sound like much, because average local temps vary by far more than that year to year, on a global scale the effects are much more pronounced. The change is felt in long-term patterns, not so much the everyday. And those of us in eastern North America tend to feel the effects the least. Estimates of how fast the climate will change also vary widely. But too much change, everyone agrees, is harmful in a huge variety of ways. You can’t warm the planet 6 degrees and not have some serious consequences.
So this brings us to the second part of God’s command:
Subdue it. We are the rulers of the earth, and there is a force on the earth that is threatening our well-being. It’s not acting according to our will. You could almost think of it as a rebellious subject. Now it’s our responsibility to subdue it and bring it into subjection. How do we do that? A ruler generally has four options when it comes to a rebellious subject:
0) Ignore it and hope it goes away. This is not really an option. We’ve already seen that this is not going to work. It’s not a problem we can escape. We can hope that the scientists are wrong, perhaps, but we should hope while acting on these very real concerns.
1) Surrender and minimize the damage. The earth is warming and we can’t change that, so we slow warming, hopefully to a halt, by dramatically reducing CO2 emissions. This option has become super-politicized and is the one everyone yells about. We also don’t know how much good it will do, and it pretty much requires everyone on the face of the earth to cooperate. The now-infamous Paris Accords, supposedly a monumental, world-saving international climate change resolution, is only going to make a difference of a few tenths of a degree, if everyone cooperates and doesn’t take advantage of others’ cuts, which they aren’t.
2) Fight to defeat it. Develop technology to counteract climate change and even cool the earth. Nobody talks about this because it’s not so politically controversial. But there’s a lot to be said for this. Technology is advancing at an astonishing pace, and that should only accelerate as time goes on. Not enough is being said about this, which could make a huge difference if we innovate. We could use more people going into technological fields that can advance this. There is, in my opinion, much more hope in doing this than there is in getting all the squabbling nations of the world to agree on limiting their emissions, and keeping that agreement.
3) Compromise and adapt. In this case, that means not panicking and wasting time in political battles, but preparing to adapt to a world that will change. Some areas of the world will be less livable, but with modern technology and smart planning we can prepare for this and even counteract it. Prepare to elevate or move coastal cities that will be endangered by rising sea levels. A tall task? Sure, but no bigger than getting 196 nations to cooperate on a global solution. Find out what land will be suitable for growing crops in a warmer climate. California’s loss could be Washington state’s gain. What will eventually wither in Kansas could be grown in Minnesota. Our grandchildren may be better off growing up in Wisconsin and Michigan and Ohio than California and Arizona. Find reliable food sources for developing nations, and help them develop technology now to assist them when climate change strikes.
Have dominion. Finally, we must exercise our control over the earth. We must rule over it responsibly. We can’t idolize it and treat it as some sacred object that ought not to be disturbed, but we can’t be careless or play politics with how we treat it either.
The basic science and facts about climate change are not that controversial. Nor are the basic elements of God’s command to us in the Bible. The problem is that it’s become so political that no one talks about the comprehensive picture. Everyone is so consumed with their own solutions or denials or apocalyptic fears. But if we think biblically and view ourselves as rulers of the earth, then I think that ought to move us to responsibly think of a comprehensive solution that has the best chance of working. And I think we cannot just rely on one of the solutions above: we need to use all of them: reducing emissions, developing technology, and adapting to a changing environment.
So what does this mean for the everyday? It means this isn’t a political issue. We conservative Christians shouldn’t oppose climate change programs just because progressives support them, which I think we sometimes do. If you’re inspired to do something about climate change, an option could be not just telling everyone to stop driving cars, but going into the tech field to learn how we can counteract it. It could even mean planning ahead for our children and grandchildren. How are we going to set things up so they can succeed in a world that’s more climatically extreme? (Maybe move to Michigan.)
But it’s our obligation to be responsible with the earth, and to resist the politicization and idolization of the way we treat it. We need to act as rulers of the earth, not subjects. We need to treat our home well, because packing up and moving isn’t likely anytime soon.
