 March 18, 2009
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! Church in the global south has other priorities
While American evangelicals are warming to creation care (but not many to manmade global warming alarm), Christianity Today finds that our counterparts in poverty-stricken countries around the world generally have different priorities. "As we struggle with mere survival physically," said Godfrey Yogarajah, general secretary of the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka, "climate change is not on our agenda presently." Poverty, which underlies contaminated drinking water and food, food shortages, and extreme air, water, and land pollution, leads to hundreds of millions of illnesses and millions of deaths in poor countries. Next to poverty and its effects, speculations about harm from manmade global warming decades from now pale into insignificance, which is why people in poor countries generally oppose incurring high costs to fight global warming. Ironically, the current global economic crisis may offer solutions to both problems. First, it leaves cash-strapped businesses and governments in the wealthy world less willing to waste hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars trying to reduce largely-natural global warming. Second, as national budgets tighten, it could lead to major reassessments in how international aid is given to poor countries. But why, you ask, is that good? Because, as Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo puts it, "far from being a catalyst, foreign aid has been the biggest single inhibitor of Africa's growth. Among its shortcomings, aid is correlated with corruption, fosters dependency, and invariably instills bureaucracy that hinders the emergence of an essential entrepreneurial class. For Africa to grow in a sustained way, foreign aid will have to be dramatically reduced over time, forcing countries to adopt more transparent strategies to finance development. What the credit crunch has effectively done is to instigate this process by default." As you might imagine, Moyo's book, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, has stirred considerable debate in media around the world.Number of scientists rejecting manmade global warming multiply Fifty-nine more scientists around the world have publicly opposed belief in manmade global warming in recent months, bringing the total documented by the minority staff of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to over 700 . That's more than 13 times the number who worked on the "Summary for Policymakers" of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report. Robert H. Austin, a Princeton University physicist who has published 170 scientific papers and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, told minority staff, “Unfortunately, climate science has become political science. . . . It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomena which is statistically questionable at best." Climatologist and paloeclimate researcher Diane Douglas, who has authored or edited over 200 technical reports, said that natural factors dominate climate, not human CO2 emissions. “The recent ‘panic’ to control GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions and billions of dollars being dedicated for the task has me deeply concerned that US, and other countries are spending precious global funds to stop global warming, when it is primarily being driven by natural forcing mechanisms," she said. Another critic, Steven M. Japar, an atmospheric chemist who contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Second (1995) and Third (2001) Assessment Reports and has authored 83 peer-reviewed publications and in the areas of climate change, atmospheric chemistry, etc., said, “Temperature measurements show that the [climate model-predicted mid-troposphere] hot zone is non-existent. This is more than sufficient to invalidate global climate models and projections made with them.”Taking from the poor to give to the rich:
As we noted two weeks ago, the Obama administration's plan to cap CO2 emissions to fight global warming and then sell emissions permits will raise energy prices around the U.S., effectively taxing the people President Obama promised would see no tax increase: 95 percent of working Americans. That cap-and-trade is a tax by another name is clear enough. But even worse, The Wall Street Journal argues that it is a regressive tax--i.e., a tax that hits the poor harder than it does the rich. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would raise the percentage of income spent on energy by households in the bottom fifth of earnings by 3.3%, but by only 1.7% for families in the top quintile. The article goes on to show that the Midwest, South, and Plains states would suffer the most because their economies rely more on manufacturing or fossil fuels. "Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street "green tech" investors who know how to leverage the political class."Now, please forward this message to your pastor, other Christian leaders, and friends and urge them to sign the WeGetIt.org 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, We value your privacy. If you received this from a friend, you can join the campaign at www.WeGetIt.org. This message was originally sent to [email address suppressed] because someone signed the WeGetIt.org Declaration as "fullname." Edit your name | Bulletin Archives | Unsubscribe | Inquiries |
