I just posted the following comment to the above comment on a UMNS article on UMC.org, the website of the United Methodist Church.
” Not only that, but surely there are much more pressing issues for our communities world wide”
Certainly a matter of debate. OTHER MORE PRESSING is not an argument that should prevent us from addressing ANY problem. OTHER MORE PRESSING is often the sign of avoiding problems. And then the issue of MORE PRESSING is entirely questionable, since the actual fate of the earth and its climate and averting further trauma to the environment is, actually, VERY URGENT. This is what the climate scientists have been telling us since 1988, when the world’s climate scientists (not just “liberal” or “radical” ones, but ALL of them) began looking urgently close at this issue and arriving at the consensus that YES, it is a HUGE PROBLEM, and is being made worse as our CO2 levels rise, and emissions around the world are having the feared effects (and most possibly, effects we haven’t even discovered, or experienced yet).
I was flabbergasted that Dean actually dismissed the problem of increases in CO2 with the observation : “we exhale that, and plants breathe it” , which is NOT the problem AT ALL. Of course we do and they do, but the problem is that we are pumping toxic levels of it into the atmosphere at a level the atmosphere was not DESIGNED to endure. And the idea that “God created it” therefore “we cant destroy it” is amazingly naive and just BAD THEOLOGY. One might as well say that “God created me, and therefore NOBODY can kill me”. See the problem? See the issue of free will impinging on that? God does NOT ensure ur safety. He gives us what we know as “responsibility” to be “good stewards”. There are consequences for usurping that responsibility, which we do in the name of the almighty dollar. We are participating in an idolatrous relationship with the allure of money and short term gain. God has higher expectations and hopes for us than this. Theology of Creation has become a crucial issue for us that demands MUCH MUCH greater attention. Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything actually says it will take a massive reworking of our economy to do so. To many , this is tantamount to blasphemy. It is simply a matter for us of being faithful to justice-seeking worldwide, for ALL OF THE WORLD’s PEOPLE.
