Call me a climate skeptic...

but its a wisdom born out of time. If you live long enough you develop an informed naivete, a kind of hope that people will be their best selves, Christian faith helps with that, but with one eye open just in case. I'm not, for example, sure I believe the caricature of every person concerned about the global temperature being a wild eyed communist bent on establishing a new world order but at the same time I'm skeptical about predicting weather 20 years from now when the meteorologist on TV often can't get it right for next week.

The truth is there is an argument for conserving the environment and seeking to live on this planet as gently as possible. It's a moral and spiritual argument rooted in the Christian tradition that all creation is God's and that we are merely stewards of it as we pass through this life. It's a beautiful argument based in the mystery of God and humanity and when practiced can be part of a larger and more whole kind of existence in the world.


Sadly, in our world of materialism there is no God and so no appeal can be made to anything truly and deeply spiritual. At best we can create a kind of secularized mythology but its power is tied to its substance and lacking both it has no real ability to convince, only coerce. Without something of higher substance to relate to it can only achieve its aims by fear. So we are given pictures of exaggerated apocalyptic scenarios in an attempt to manipulate us and if the evidence is not strong enough well, then, change the computer model to make it so.


In the end, the great failure of the global warming debate may be the failure of secular religions to inspire, built as they are on houses of sand, and that may actually open the door for an understanding of creation rooted in the heart and soul of humans responding in love to their Creator if people of Christian faith will take the time to learn what they believe and act on it.