Cedars, October 2018

October 2018 4 OFF CAMPUS by Breanna Beers F or the past few decades, one question has dominated environmental poli- cy worldwide: Is the climate getting warmer? “The answer is yes,” biology professor Dr. Bill Jones said definitively. “The real is- sue is, to what level are humans responsible for this?” On this question, Jones continued, the evidence is mixed. On one hand, pollution has dramatically increased since the Indus- trial Revolution. The warming effect of green- house gases is a known phenomenon; it’s just a question of how great an impact it really has on the temperature data scientists are seeing. “We’re puttingmillions of tons of carbon compounds into the air,” Jones said. “You can’t think that nothing is going to happen.” However, while man clearly has at least some role in climate change, the environment may also contribute to global warming, in- dependent of human activity. According to Jones, the climate tends to shift by a few de- grees every 1,500-2,000 years betweenwarm- er and cooler cycles. Some scientists suggest that the current trendmay simply be the earth entering a new warm phase; others counter that the recent spike in global temperatures happened much too fast to be solely natural. The current climate data can’t definitive- ly prove the effects of either human or envi- ronmental contribution to global warming; it only shows that climate change is happening. So how serious a risk does it actually pose? Jones described several ways global warming is slowly beginning to affect the experiences and livelihood of people around the globe. There are nine fewer frosty days on average for Ohio farmers, for example, which could lead to an additional crop cycle and/or the earlier invasion of insects and pests. Mosquitos are taking on new dor- mancy patterns in the north and tuna are moving into arctic waters. While these may seem like tiny, insignificant shifts, they have a greater impact than many guess. These small but cumulative effects of climate change slip under the radar for many of us, said biology professor Dr. Mark Gathany. The majority of Americans don’t live in areas or work in industries that demonstrate daily evidence of the effects of climate change. Besides, he said, America has more resources than most countries to cope with these changes. “We live most of our lives in 70 degrees anyways, winter or summer,” Gathany said. “It will be more of a problem for other people internationally than it will be for us, because we’ll have the money to adapt where other nations won’t. But if you travel abroad, you’ll talk to people who are feeling it already.” Gathany described crop irregularities in southern Africa leading to famines, melt- ing of glaciers in the Andes disrupting local ecosystems, and droughts in Sudan trigger- ing waves of political violence. The creation mandate in Genesis 1:28 calls us to steward- ship of the earth, Gathany said — not for the sake of the earth itself, but for our common good and for God’s glory. Caring for the en- vironment is caring for people. However, when it comes to predicting what will happen if this trend continues, Jones was hesitant to make any outright assertions. He emphasized that while pre- dictions have value, it is important to rec- ognize them as what they are: guesses about a fundamentally unknowable future, based on models with a limited amount of data. “As believers, we ought to start looking at ways to address this issue,” Jones said. “But there’s been a lot of speculation in the past that hasn’t come to fruition, so I’m cau- tious about speculating on what’s going to happen in the future.” Enter the politicians. A 2012 study by Yale professor Dan Kahan and several co-authors published in the journal “Nature Climate Change” found that scientific litera- cy, mathematical skills, and logical reason- ing abilities had little to no effect on Amer- icans’ concern about climate change. What did? Political party. Kahan and his co-authors found that when participants were sorted based on their answers to various questions designed to reveal political positions, the results be- came clear: hierarchical-individualists (aka Republicans) tended to see little danger attached to climate change, while egalitar- ian-communitarians (aka Democrats) tend- ed to respond with more concern. Politics professor Dr. Marc Clauson was unsurprised by these findings; the po- liticization of this issue was inevitable in an age of pettily polarized debate. Climate change is an ideal campaign issue, he said, due to the emotional response of voters, the extremist views at either end, and the sub- jectivity of the data to interpretation. “It’s good for getting elected,” Clauson said. “Neither side wants to go toward a moderate position; they both want to move toward opposite poles to oppose each other and to draw the voters they need to draw. And then we don’t even think; we just use the parties as our proxies.” The Kahan study also found that, counterintuitively, both views tended to strengthen their positions with increased scientific literacy. In other words, more ed- ucated Republicans tended to be less con- cerned about climate change than their less scientifically minded counterparts, while more educated Democrats were moreso. These results show that there are intel- ligent, informed individuals on both sides of the debate — and that these people are even more talented than the rest of us at organizing the facts to fit their own ideas — what Kahan calls “motivated reasoning.” When engaging with issues such as climate change, theology professor Dr. J.R. Gilhoo- ly cautioned Christians in particular against letting their ideology become their identity before the outside world. “It’s common in these discussions for there to be a viewpoint that becomes neces- sary to have to maintain the identity,” Gil- hooly said. “Then, from the perspective of the outsider, they see our view on something like climate change as being essentially of the same importance to us as our view on, for ex- ample, the authority of Scripture. And they shouldn’t be the same in importance.” While Christians can and should be actively involved in the political sphere, Gilhooly said, too many believers consider themselves Christian conservatives rather than conservative Christians. The confusion of political agenda with biblical worldview becomes a turnoff to unbelievers from going anywhere near the church. “We want to be careful about letting the gospel be in the center, and if there’s implica- tions for gospel living in other areas, making a clear distinction between, ‘This is how we’re applying our best wisdom to these decisions,’ and, ‘This is essential to our identity,’” Gilhoo- ly said. “Particularly when we’re acting as a political faction as opposed to God’s church.” So how should Christians engage wisely in this sphere, on this issue? To an extent, that comes down to each individual’s con- victions. Various solutions have been pro- posed, each favoring a different side in the controversial balance between industrial production and care for its costs. Gilhooly pointed out that even if climate change is totally unaffected by human activ- ity, it still seems like a good idea to reduce emissions, despite potential economic costs. “I’m not sure that the pursuit of mate- rial prosperity is what constitutes human flourishing, so if there had to be a forestall- ing of some of these things so that we pollut- ed less, super,” Gilhooly said. The challenge, however, is that these economic costs do come with serious conse- quences — not just for individual business- es, but for the national economy. The reality is that if climate change is truly a global phenomenon, it will take glob- al-scale effort to slow or reverse it. However, any global climate accords, such as the Paris Agreement of 2016, are likely to give the Unit- ed States an especially heavy burden as one of the world’s leading producers. While it makes sense for the U.S. to take responsibility for its contribution, Clauson said, heavy limitations on emissions often restrict economic output. According to Clauson, as a world leader in power, profit, and pollution, the United Analysis: A Heated Debate Climate change and the Christian dialogue