Image: Creative Commons under UnsplashIn an article on the Reformation21 website titled, “When ‘If You Give a Mouse a Cookie’ Is All the Logic Left,” Justin Poythress, Pastor of All Saints Presbyterian Church in Boise, ID, offers some wise caution about the typical way in which people try to persuade each other. His words are particularly relevant to much of what goes by the name of persuasion about environmental issues, including among Christians. Here I will quote him at length and then apply … [Read more...]
Pollution and the Death of Babies: How ‘Green’ Evangelicals Imperil the Pro-Life Movement
The Bible makes a stark and fundamental distinction between intentional and accidental killing. When God instructed Israel to provide “cities of refuge” in the Promised Land, He said: If anyone kills his neighbor unintentionally without having hated him in the past—as when someone goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree, and the head slips from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies—he may flee to [a city of refuge] and … [Read more...]
Supreme Court Vindicates Cornwall Alliance on Mercury Emissions
Monday, July 1, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated the law by imposing regulations on mercury emissions from power plants without first doing thorough benefit/cost estimates. Nearly four years ago the Cornwall Alliance published a study by environmental regulatory economics Dr. Timothy Terrell, The Cost of Good Intentions: The Ethics and Economics of the War on Conventional Energy, that made that very point. Dr. Terrell comments on the … [Read more...]
Oppressing the Poor In the Name of Fighting Global Warming
"No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change." So said President Barack Obama in his State of the Union message last week. That he spent under 5% of the speech on the subject—about one-ninth as much as on the economy, one-fifth as much as on our need to overcome cynicism, and a little less even than on affordable college education—and tucked it away in a section about two-thirds of the way through suggests that the President doesn't really believe it … [Read more...]
Evangelical Environmentalists Undermine Pro-Life Movement, Again
About two years ago over 30 of the nation's pro-life leaders issued an official statement against an environmental campaign spearheaded by the Evangelical Environmental Network calling mercury regulations "pro-life." Instead of correcting its claims, EEN doubled down and expanded them, further obscuring the meaning of "pro-life" and diluting its usefulness to identify people working to end abortion on demand. First they aligned global warming to the " pro-life" cause, and then they expanded the … [Read more...]
Former National Hurricane Center Director Tells Florida Governor Fighting Global Warming Won’t Protect Florida from Extreme Weather
For Immediate Release Burke, VA, August 14, 2014—One of the world’s leading experts on hurricanes wrote to Florida Governor Rick Scott August 3 to counter an environmental advocacy group’s demand for Florida to fight global warming. Dr. Neil Frank was a household name and familiar face for Floridians while Director of the National Hurricane Center from 1978 through 1987. He then served as Chief Meteorologist at KHOU-TV Houston, TX, until his retirement in 2008. “It has come to my attention … [Read more...]
Is Fighting Global Warming a “Pro-Life” Issue and Necessary to Shield Florida from “Extreme Weather”? No, Says Former National Hurricane Center Director Neil Frank
Alerted that the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) had launched a campaign to pressure Florida Governor Rick Scott to take steps to combat global warming in order to protect Florida from extreme weather, calling it a “pro-life” issue, former National Hurricane Center Director Dr. Neil Frank, a pro-life evangelical himself, sent off a highly critical letter of his own on August 3, a copy of which he sent to the Cornwall Alliance. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” Frank said of … [Read more...]
Familiar Environmental Deceit Threatens Pro-Life Movement Again
The United States pro-life movement (also known as the United States anti-abortion movement or the United States right-to-life movement) is a social and political movement in the United States opposing on moral or sectarian grounds elective abortion and usually supporting its legal prohibition or restriction.” So begins the Wikipedia article on “United States pro-life movement.” Nonetheless, as it did on mercury emissions from power plants, the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) now wants … [Read more...]
EEN President Hescox Attacks Cornwall’s Beisner Using Straw Man and Misunderstood Evidence
Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) President and CEO Rev. Mitch Hescox introduced a blog piece November 27, 2012, titled “My Meeting with Brother Cal,” by saying, “Christian leaders making misstatements to serve their own ends, attacking other believers for not agreeing with their worldview, and misusing science turn people away from the good news in Jesus.” In logic and debate, that’s called “poisoning the well.” After having done so, Rev. Hescox said that during a radio program … [Read more...]
Carbon Dioxide and Air Temperature: Who Leads and Who Follows?
On the Evangelical Environmental Network’s Creation Care Blog, Mitch Hescox shows a slide purporting to show the relationship between air temperature and carbon dioxide (CO2) over the past 800,000 years (http://creationcare.org/2012/11/27/my-meeting-with-brother-cal/). His slide is taken from Jouzel et al. (2007) and Lüthi et al. (2008) and he asserts that “carbon dioxide levels and temperature track identically” (emphasis added) with the implication that rising carbon dioxide levels … [Read more...]
