Dear Friend,
As you read this week's WeGetIt.org Wednesday Bulletin, please be thinking of friends who would benefit from it, and then forward it to them. Thanks for your support!
Christians are helping Gustav victims
Stewardship of creation sometimes means preventing harm to the Earth by minimizing pollution and maximizing efficiency of resource use. Sometimes it means shielding people from harm by unstoppable natural disasters--what law and the insurance industry, perhaps showing more faith than they intend, call "acts of God."
A good example was the response by Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers to Hurricane Gustav. Even before Gustav made landfall, SBDR was preparing thousands of meals in evacuation centers in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, even as far away as Kentucky. Both before and after the storm passed, it provided meals and shelter for evacuees. And SBDR's response wasn't limited to material efforts. "We're praying for the safety of all of the evacuees and that the damage will be as minimal as possible," Robby Tingle, team leader for Missions Ministry at the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, said.
What many people won't think of about SBDR's and other groups' responses to Gustav--governmental and private--is what enabled them to help. While the storm was bigger and stronger and affected more people when it struck the Gulf coast than in the Caribbean, deaths (16 versus 94) were far fewer largely because Americans' greater wealth shielded them from Gustav's worst impacts. Natural disasters kill more people in poor locations than in rich ones.
That's one reason why the WeGetIt.org campaign emphasizes the need to promote economic development to lift people out of poverty as an important part of creation care.
To donate to the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief fund, visit the North American Mission Board (www.NAMB.net) and click the Disaster Relief icon.
Quiet Sun may spell global cooling
For the first time in nearly 100 years an entire month has gone by without the sighting of a single sunspot. That could turn out highly significant for Earth's temperature.
Why?
Because sunspots correlate with both solar energy emission and solar magnetism. Solar energy affects Earth temperature directly. Solar magnetism affects it indirectly by affecting how much cosmic radiation enters Earth's atmosphere, which affects low-level cloudiness. Decreasing solar magnetism leads to increasing cloudiness, which leads to decreasing surface temperatures. During the Maunder Minimum (very low sunspot activity about 1645 to 1715), temperatures fell so much the period has come to be called the Little Ice Age.
Thus, as the graph above indicates, solar influence on global climate dwarfs human influence through the emission of carbon dioxide. What the downturn in sunspots portends is global cooling.
This also helps explain why temperatures on Mars and other planets, which lack human influence, have changed in ways similar to changes on Earth.
What solar power costs consumers
Many environmentalists claim that solar energy can be produced at a price closely competitive with oil, gas, coal, or nuclear. But the results of one state's electric utility's including solar power in its energy mix show otherwise.
Since Florida Power & Light began increasing the proportion of solar in its mix, it has had to raise rates to customers 16 percent. As a study by the Heartland Institute's James M. Taylor shows, that 16 percent rise in energy costs can add $500 or more to annual electric bills.
Why the difference? Simple economics. It costs FP&L four times as much for every kilowatt-hour of solar energy it generates as it does for every kilowatt-hour of energy it generates from its primary sources: coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear.
FP&L has long offered customers the option to purchase "green" power for $9.75 per month--they get no more electricity for the extra $117 per year, but they get to feel good about themselves. Very few, however, have opted for that, and most of FP&L's revenue from it goes to administrative and marketing costs, largely eliminating whatever environmental benefit might have been intended.
Now, please forward this message to your pastor, other Christian leaders, and friends and urge them to sign the declaration, too!
The more people sign, the stronger the message our leaders will hear that Biblical principles and factual evidence, not media hype about speculative fears like global warming, should guide our care for the environment and the poor.
Gratefully,
-- The WeGetIt.org campaign team
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