I recently received this email, and as I think my response will be edifying to others, I share the email and my response below.

Email

I glanced through the website, and I was just curious what you thought about the chemical dumping into rivers that caused one river already in US history to be on fire, or the dome of pollution that used to cover LA, the connections between fossil fuel use and lung disease or cancer for people who drive long distances with their window down? I don’t have all the answers, I don’t think it’s an all or nothing on either front, but I do think there could be changes or at least to have an honest discussion about what our contribution to the problems have been, and therefore the contributions we can make as part of the solutions.

 Also, I’d be curious to know what your thoughts on recycling and using less energy, or reusable grocery bags would be?

So, I know you want to talk about what the other side is doing and how wrong they are, but as I looked through the website I didn’t really see any thoughts, plans, initiatives, or achievements on the front of what you’re doing to help protect God’s creation to the glory of God and for our health, safety, and enjoyment of this one planet He’s given us to live on. 

I would appreciate any thoughts and information you can share. God bless.

My response

Grace and peace to you in Christ. Thank you for your email.

I can give you some reasonably quick responses to some of your questions, but for a fuller picture I really hope you’ll order a copy of our book What Is the Most Important Environmental Task Facing American Christians Today? That will give you a well-rounded understanding, I think, of how environmental quality and economic progress relate over time—the former improving as the latter grows. The reasons are complex, but they boil down to this: a clean, healthful, beautiful environment is a costly good, and wealthier people can afford more costly goods than poorer people. (That’s why, if you want to see the dirtiest part of a city, you go to the poorest parts, and if you want to see the cleanest parts, you go to the wealthiest parts; likewise for whole countries, and for the world.)

Now, some brief comments on the points you raised:

• “chemical dumping into rivers that caused one river already in US history to be on fire”: It wasn’t actually just one, it was a common occurrence for nearly a century, but the one people remember is the last one, in 1968—and they remember that because it was the last. The chemical dumping occurred because, up to that time, people (the business owners, the consumers of the businesses’ products, the surrounding community) weren’t willing and able to spend what it took do something more expensive than simply dumping the chemicals. As social wealth grew, people became increasingly willing and able, and by a combination of free actions and the application of court judgments against polluters and legislation and regulation requiring emission controls, the dumping declined, the rivers became cleaner, and for the last 52 years we’ve had no river fires.

• “dome of pollution that used to cover LA”: I know, I lived in LA and Orange County from 1966–1980, the first half of which was the worst time for air pollution in the Southern California Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD). The air was so bad it forced my family to move from Alhambra, inland and right near the LA city line, to Huntington Beach, on the coast, to protect my sister, who was mildly asthmatic, from the smog. The explanation there is essentially the same as for the chemical dumping in rivers: Cars with adequate emission controls, and industrial plants likewise, to prevent such smog are more expensive than those without. As people’s wealth grew, they were increasingly able and willing to pay those costs, and laws, regulations, and personal choices reflected that change—bringing the smog levels down.

• “connections between fossil fuel use and lung disease or cancer for people who drive long distances with their window down”: I’ve never heard that driving long distances with windows down has been proven to correlate positively with rates of lung disease or cancer, so I can’t comment on that. Emissions of toxic chemicals (CO, SO_x, NO_x, etc.) do have harmful effects on human health, but the products produced from fossil fuel use (electricity, the various outputs of factories, transportation, etc.) have benefits, and the balance of the harms and benefits changes over time. Obviously we want to keep improving the ratio—benefits exceeding harms by greater and greater margins over time. But that is costly. Again, wealthier people can afford more such actions than poorer people.

• “I don’t think it’s an all or nothing on either front.” You’re absolutely right! That’s precisely the point. Life is full of tradeoffs, of accepting some risks (e.g., of dying in an accident on the way to work) in exchange for some benefits (e.g., the salary we earn by going to work, and the food, clothing, shelter, health care, and other things that salary enables us to acquire). Little by little, over time, as the value of a society’s production rises, its ability and willingness to afford the costly steps necessary to reduce pollution and other risks rise, too.

All of these points are related to one of the most important concepts in environmental science and stewardship: what’s called the “environmental transition.” As a society rises out of subsistence agriculture (during which it has very high rates of disease and premature death and therefore very low life expectancy—around 28 years before the Industrial Revolution), two things happen simultaneously: (1) food, clothing, shelter, health care, safe transportation, education, and many other benefits become increasingly affordable and therefore widespread, and so disease and premature death decline, leading to higher life expectancies (now about 70 years worldwide, 80 in most developed countries); (2) pollution from the early industrial activity rises, too, which slows—but importantly doesn’t stop—the rise in health and longevity. At various levels of economic development (which differ from society to society, and from time to time, and from pollutant to pollutant), societies become willing and able to bear the costs of reducing the pollution without reducing the production, pollution emission rates peak and then decline, and consequently pollution’s constraint on health and life expectancy diminishes. As a society becomes increasingly service- and technology-oriented and less industry-oriented, pollution levels continue to fall, and at various points (varying from pollutant to pollutant and from society to society depending in part on the responsiveness of governments to the public) the environment becomes cleaner than it was even before the industrialization.

You’re correct that we don’t write much about specific actions or policies to protect creation. Why? Because for the most part free people naturally adopt such actions and policies as they become able to afford them. That’s why economic development/growth is so important to environmental improvement. And because many policies aimed at protecting the environment actually slow, stop, or reverse economic development, the bigger challenge is helping people to understand this basic principle of the environmental transition. Recycling, various emission controls, choices of optimum technologies to provide the various services people want (e.g., choosing among plastic, paper, and cloth grocery bags) are all worthy of discussion, but best practices for those actually differ from circumstance to circumstance and from time to time, so the benefits of teaching much on those are quite limited. But this basic understanding of the environmental transition is more important, so that’s our focus.

Featured photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash.