Localization: Global warming in the eyes of evangelicals

A call for change Expert: Evangelicals, Bush must recognize global warming threat

January 24 2007

James Fuller Daily Herald Staff Writer


One of the world's leading climate change experts told an audience of evangelical Christians Tuesday that global warming is real, it's being caused by humans and President Bush must recognize those facts.

The remarks by Sir John Houghton, former co-chairman of a worldwide conglomerate of scientists investigating the issue, prompted applause from his audience at Wheaton College.

The college recently came into the spotlight on the issue of global warming when President Duane Litfin became one of 86 evangelical leaders to sign a statement recognizing global climate change as a serious concern.

Litfin was not present for the Houghton's speech Tuesday but clarified his participation in the statement on the college's radio station recently.
Litfin said the statement was not meant to be political but to encourage stewardship. He also said he intended to sign the statement as an individual, not as president of the college.

Litfin, however, recognized he cannot divorce his name from the position.

"Many of us who signed it were saying that we are concerned about what we are seeing, and we think it has major implications for those of us in this world," Litfin said during the radio interview.

Litfin said the political and economic strategy should be left to the scientists.
Tuesday, Houghton said the appropriate strategy in the U.S. begins with the president taking the environment seriously.

Bush must expand his sources of information to the scientific majority that believes global warming is a serious threat, Houghton said, and stop listening to scientists who are part of an effort by the oil industry to illegitimatize global warming fears.

"You could count on one hand the people who are really credible scientists who are saying skeptical things (about the threat of global warming)," Houghton said.

He added that he's encouraged by the reactions of his fellow Christians as a whole, but discouraged by some evangelical leaders being unreceptive to the majority view of the scientific community.

More than 20 high-profile evangelical leaders have signed a statement in direct contradiction to the one Litfin signed.

"These are people who should know better, know their Bibles better," Houghton said. "I'm very discouraged by Christians who are so dyed in the wool, but in ways that are not Biblical."

Houghton said Bush must commit to and form a plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., with specific reduction targets for the next decade.

If that doesn't happen, greenhouse emissions from the U.S. will result in a 30 percent increase in global emissions by the year 2030, Houghton said. As the world's biggest polluter, U.S. emissions will eclipse the reduction efforts of all the nations who've signed onto to the Kyoto Protocol.

Christians should care about this, Houghton said, because the resulting global warming will cause prolonged droughts and raise sea levels to the point where some land will become uninhabitable.

Houghton said conservative estimates predict the creation of 150 million refugees by such displacement by 2050. That's roughly half the current U.S. population.

Global warming is about the creation and destruction of life, Houghton said.

"Creation matters to God," Houghton said. "And if matters to God, it should matter to us."