We sit, privileged — sheltered by God’s grace from violence’s shadow. Yet beyond our safety, a world seethes with brutality. I was recently at an event organized by Beyond Barriers commemorating a sanctuary for childhood’s most wounded souls. As tales of near-lost lives unfolded, the room held its collective breath—each story a whisper of children hovering on survival’s fragile threshold, rescued from oblivion by compassion’s slender thread.

Jesus, our Lord, places great emphasis on the well-being of children, highlighting their innocence and the importance of nurturing their faith. He warns against harming their faith, saying in Matthew 18:6, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

As Christian adults, we must protect, guide, and cherish children. And I believe it is well within our purview and responsibilities to provide them with a life, and a world, that is ideal for flourishing. The only problem with that: Our world is not a simple, binary, and easy-to-manage system. It is a complex web of wheels, wherein the motions of each individual wheel must synchronize to create a prosperous and safe world.

The recent attack on our children’s future has not just been matter of faith. Economic foundations currently tremble with unprecedented volatility. These aren’t mere ripples of historical turbulence, but seismic shifts promising a landscape more treacherous than any previous economic tempest.

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This is why I am concerned about the current set of economic policies being adopted globally, not just by the wealthy nations like the United States, the United Kingdom, and members of the European Community, but also by dozens of poor countries around the world. For two transformative decades, climate change has metastasized into an all-consuming narrative — a cosmic lens through which every societal pulse, every institutional heartbeat, and every human interaction is now reflexively interpreted and judged. Children are often invoked in discussions about climate change, their futures held up as the moral justification for aggressive action.

But are we really saving our planet from a certain climatic collapse — or are we implementing strategies that will ultimately come back to cause generational economic struggles?

CO2 in the Role of Villain

There is no doubt that our children deserve a pristine world — pure lands, clear skies, and unpolluted waters. Yet, a critical nuance demands recognition: carbon dioxide (CO2), that odorless, colorless, nontoxic gas that is indispensable to sustaining plant life, and hence all other life, has been maligned as a mere toxin, when it is, in fact, essential to our planet’s living tapestry.

Sunlight, water, soil, and carbon dioxide — nature’s elemental quartet — sustain botanical life. Geological archives reveal epochs when CO2 plummeted to near-extinction levels for plant kingdoms. Thanks to our burning fossil fuels over the last two centuries, CO2 levels have recovered from one of those near-extinction points. Now, with atmospheric CO2 levels harmonized with our era’s temperate climate, we enjoy unprecedented agricultural miracles blooming across global landscapes. Yet CO2 levels remain well below what they were during the most verdant times for Earth’s vegetation.

The past hundred years have seen unprecedented leaps in the human journey — life expectancy soaring, pure water flowing freely, harvests becoming bountiful, medical miracles multiplying, and energy access transforming existence from mere survival to vibrant possibility.

Once, these truths were elementary wisdom — basic science and economics that any educated mind would grasp without hesitation. Yet paradox reigns: a global narrative has transformed life’s fundamental carbon breath into a planetary villain. Reason is eclipsed by collective misconception.

New World Order

Political architects orchestrate a sweeping decarbonization symphony — ruthlessly dismantling fossil fuel energy infrastructures, compelling electric vehicle migrations, demanding air-travel sacrifices, and prescribing dietary revolutions that banish red meat and dairy from the global menu.

These proposed measures jeopardize economic progress — the engine of innovation, security, and well-being — and, with it, human health and thriving.

This isn’t a hypothetical concern; the cracks are already showing. When energy policies disrupt economic growth, the consequences ripple across every sector. Take Europe, for example, where energy costs have surged in response to aggressive decarbonization efforts. Families in countries like Germany and the UK are struggling to heat their homes, with energy poverty becoming a modern scourge in some of the world’s wealthiest nations.

Industrial sectors that were once the backbone of these economies are now either shutting down or relocating to regions with more stable energy policies. This means far fewer jobs, less innovation, and shrinking public resources to address societal needs.

For decades, fossil fuels have been the backbone of global development. They have powered factories, transported goods, and lifted billions of people out of poverty. Critics of hydrocarbons argue that renewable energy can seamlessly replace these systems, but this claim oversimplifies the complexities of modern energy infrastructure.

Renewables cannot provide the reliability (especially predictability) and scalability required to sustain industrial economies. Solar and wind power depend on weather conditions, and despite advances in battery technology, storing energy at the scale needed remains prohibitively expensive. This is not merely a technological challenge; it is an economic one. Nations that gamble on premature energy transitions risk blackouts, reduced productivity, and slower economic growth — all of which undermine the future we claim to be protecting for our children.

Real Effects of Climate Theories

Policies aimed at curbing emissions often manifest as higher energy prices, which act as a regressive tax on households. For low- and middle-income families — in both the developed West and the global South — these added costs mean less money for essentials like healthcare, education, and savings.

The long-term implications are stark. Children in economically insecure households are more likely to experience poor nutrition, limited educational opportunities, and chronic stress — all of which hinder their development and prospects.

Our children deserve more than empty promises of a greener future. They deserve a world where innovation and opportunity thrive, where their schools are well-funded, their communities resilient, and their prospects boundless. These are the gifts of a strong economy — one that can only endure if we resist the allure of politically charged green policies.

For the faithful, principled discourse transcends mere abstraction; it is a sacred pathway where conviction transforms and standing resolute becomes an act of divine stewardship, sculpting a more compassionate world for generations yet to emerge. So do not shy away from fighting for the future of your children.

This article first appeared in The Stream and is reprinted here by permission.

Photo by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash.