The following is a guest article by Jason Mattera.

The phrase “useful idiot” referred to those individuals during the Cold War who unwittingly disseminated communist propaganda (American liberals), even if they weren’t commies themselves.

Naïfs, in other words. 

Major-league naïfs.

Today, there appears to be a growing number of young evangelicals who are intent on proving this catchphrase true — locking arms with a worldwide movement devoted to the eradication of private property, limited government, and capitalism, all under the guise of combating so-called “climate change.”

Image: Creative Commons via Unsplash

CBS News recently lamented how evangelicals are the largest religious bloc that is skeptical of the left’s global warming claims, with only 32 percent of them agreeing with the statement, “Human activity is responsible for a warming planet.”

This percentage stands in stark contrast to the 53 percent of Americans who nod in the affirmative — mankind is to blame.

Nevertheless, there is hope for the closet totalitarians, who’ve never seen a cow fart they didn’t want to regulate or an internal combustion engine they didn’t want to ban.  

And that hope resides in “young evangelicals [who] fight climate change from inside the church,” as the CBS News headline put it.

The gal profiled in this story is a 24-year-old named Elsa Barron, who works for the far-left organization The Center for Climate and Security.

To add context to this story, the Pew Research Center reported that “evangelical Protestant adults under 40 are more likely than older evangelicals to say climate change is an extremely or very serious problem.”

Elsa Barron is representative of that youth cohort.

CBS caught up with her outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City as she was “calling for the end of the use of fossil fuels.”

Barron told the news outlet that her goal is to “change the minds of those in her church who don’t believe in climate change,” adding:

“What does loving our neighbors really look like in a world where the sorts of decisions are directly impacting people’s ability to live in their homes across the world or to manage their crops or have food or water to drink?” 

For her biblical justification, Barron cites Genesis 2:15, wherein “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

This verse — premised upon Genesis 1:26-28 — is typically referred to as the cultural mandate, and it does reflect humanity’s obligation to care for God’s creation.

But is the cultural mandate a reason to adopt AOC’s “Green New Deal” or whatever “net carbon zero” policy is being championed by the Biden administration?

E. Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance answers with an emphatic “No.”  

The Cornwall Alliance describes itself as a “network of evangelical Christian scholars” who are “dedicated to educating the public and policymakers about Biblical earth stewardship,” including the politics of climate change.

Dr. Beisner has penned or edited more than 45 books and was an associate professor at both Knox Theological Seminary and Covenant College, before he founded the Cornwall Alliance.

In his book Creation Stewardship: Evaluating Competing Views, he writes:

“Energy from fossil fuels—whose energy density is vastly greater than that of wind, solar, wood, dung, or biofuels, and therefore vastly more affordable—has been one of the key instruments by which such great strides in human wellbeing have been achieved. Quite literally, these fuels have been crucial to the vast increase of human life—in both numbers… and longevity.”

In terms of the “vast increase of human life,” Beisner pegs that number at more than 7 billion today up from around 500 million people in 1700. And on the longevity front, the average American lifespan was a mere 47 years in 1900, yet had skyrocketed to 79 years by 2019.

He tells the Freedom Center that Greta Thunberg disciples like Elsa Barron have “no idea what the world would be like without fossil fuels…. There would be universal poverty, ill health, short life expectancy, and far less of all the things that enhance human health and life — like food, clothing, shelter, transportation, communication, medical care — you name it.”

Rather than repudiate Genesis 2:15 (and Genesis 1:26-28), harnessing the potential of fossil fuels actually fulfills God’s design for man to exercise “dominion” over the earth and has resulted in human flourishing.

Is Elsa Barron really loving her third-world neighbors by consigning them to a life of poverty and hardship by waging war against a natural resource — from the comforts of an air-conditioned cubicle, no less?

Hardly.

Of course, “where there is dominion, there is responsibility,” observes Beisner.

“That’s what makes us stewards, not sovereigns.”

Progressives, however, operate from the opposite first principle — as sovereigns and not stewards.

Leftists truly believe that the earth’s temperature is like a Honeywell thermostat that can be altered by the right government program, even though, biblically speaking, it is God who controls the ecosystem (Genesis 8:21-22, Genesis 9:9-11, Mark 4:36-41).

It is this humanist conceit of man’s autonomy — independence from God — that attracts progressives to the agenda of climate change: They see a vehicle to remake every inch of the world economy in their image, beginning with the elimination of free markets.

And they’re open about it, too.                        

Christiana Figueres, who was the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2010-2016, praised China’s communist system as “doing it right” and hailed the central planning goals of the Paris Accords:

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

One writer for the left-wing website Grist aired the ulterior motives more bluntly in 2018:

“The world’s top scientists just gave rigorous backing to systematically dismantle capitalism as a key requirement to maintaining civilization and a habitable planet.”

That’s the game right there — a power grab heretofore not seen on the global stage.

It truly is an attempt to play sovereign rather than embracing the role of steward.

That said, what about that parade of horrors we constantly hear any time there’s a bad storm — how climate change is causing a surge in extreme weather events, droughts, wildfires, floods, and so on?

Beisner says that the “actual data — in contrast with computer model simulations — shows zero increase in the frequency or intensity of any severe weather events.”

In fact, not only have weather-related deaths plunged by 97 percent over the last 100 years, according to Judith Curry, but as she told television host John Stossel, “Back in the 1930s, the weather in the U.S. was way, way worse than what we’ve seen in the last couple of decades.”

For those unfamiliar with her work, Judith Curry is a renowned climate scientist who previously chaired the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Think of her as a female version of Al Gore — except she’s reputable, smart, and isn’t a climate hypocrite living large in a 10,000-square-foot home that “guzzles more electricity in one year than the average American family uses in 21 years.”

Okay, but what about the much-ballyhooed “consensus” among scientists, that man’s actions are the root cause of rising temperatures?

That’s what I hear on CNN as I’m walking through the airport, at least.

Curry tells a different story.

She asserts that there is, in effect, very little consensus within the scientific community on the most “consequential issues” surrounding “climate change,” namely:

“How much of the recent warming is caused by fossil fuels?”

(“We still don’t know.”)

And,

“Is warming dangerous?”

(“There’s no agreement as to whether warming is dangerous.”)

Indeed, a “total of 1,609 scientists and professionals from around the world have signed” the World Climate Declaration, which, in short, states:

“There is no climate emergency.”

It is commendable that young Christians like Elsa Barron are passionate about maintaining a clean and healthy planet, although they remain ignorant about the unbiblical worldviews behind the global warming hysteria.

Sadly, it appears Barron herself has already been captured by these unbiblical worldviews.

She admitted to CBS News that she once was called “Creation Girl” for believing the Genesis account, but now questions her “beliefs about evolution.”

The irony of Barron’s change of heart, as E. Calvin Beisner points out, is that “climate-change alarmists have adopted the same methodology as evolutionists in dealing with critics: Declare that there’s no debate, declare that the opponents are wrong, and then refuse to debate because to debate is to acknowledge that the opponents have something worth debating.”

To him, “it’s all arrogant and presumptuous.”

The good news is that Barron and her young pals haven’t even reached the age of 30.

There’s a great deal of learning to be done if they’re open to considering alternative perspectives.

Checking out the Cornwall Alliance would be a fine place to start.

This piece originally appeared at StandingForFreedom.com and has been republished here by permission.