Action From Bush On Warming - What Will It Take? NYT

[hatrack]

"One wonders what it will take to bestir the Bush administration on the subject of global warming. Everywhere one looks nowadays - London, Moscow, even the odd precinct on Capitol Hill - there is evidence of mounting impatience with Washington's refusal to face up to the threat. While the links between global warming and Florida's serial hurricanes are largely theoretical, even the weather seems to be telling the politicians that it is time to start paying attention.

Certainly Tony Blair thinks so. In a forceful recent speech before business leaders in London, Mr. Blair, in many other respects a Bush loyalist, called global warming "the world's greatest environmental challenge," implicitly rebuking the administration for its repudiation of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Mr. Blair said he would put the issue near the top of the agenda at next year's G-8 meeting of industrialized nations, over which Britain will preside.

In Moscow, a hitherto skeptical Russian government has set in motion legislative action that could lead to Russia's approval of the Kyoto agreement. That would bring the treaty into force and enlist Moscow in a global effort to reduce greenhouse gases. It would also isolate the United States from the various mechanisms, including an emissions trading system, envisioned by Kyoto."


EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/opinion/29wed1-final.html

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Bush won't take any action

By his own admission, he's a Fundamentalist Christian and a believer in the "End Times". He feels that all he has to do is to "fight evil-doers" -- that is his role in the cosmic drama he believes in.

Other Fundamentalist Christians take a more enlightened view of the situation. They speak of stewardship, the principle that since God gave the Earth to Humanity, Humanity is obligated to care for the Earth. But Mr. Bush's holy tribe rejects that view.

Any action that has to be taken will involve some measure of pain from the industries that support Mr. Bush. So in those moments when his faith fails him, he can always look to his moneyed friends for support.

No, the Bush White House won't be doing anything to remediate environmental damage.

--bkl

[kestrel91316]

2. It's not the "fundamentalist" Christians who...................

believe in and practice the concept of good stewardship. That is NOT something any fundies I know give a rip about. You will hear about stewardship issues from the non-literalist, non-fundamentalist denominations, such as Episcopalians, Unitarians, and even liberal Mennonite groups and Quakers. Good stewardship is a liberal, not conservative, theology thing.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. I disagree, but just a little

This section from the Christian Ecology website explains the fundamentalist/evangelical roots of Stewardship theology. (Bold formatting is mine.)

In 1967, historian Lynn White published a now famous piece entitled "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis."

White, himself a Christian, concluded that many of our environmental problems could be traced to the Christian notion that God gave this earth to humans for their use and specifically directed humans to exercise dominion over the earth and all of its life forms. While it is questionable that this is what White intended, the effect of the piece has been to serve as an indictment of Christianity as the source of our environmental problems, and to render laughable the idea that Christianity might have anything to contribute to our environmental crisis. As essayist Wendell Berry has observed, "the culpability of Christianity in the destruction of the natural world and uselessness of Christianity in any effort to correct that destruction are now established cliches of the conservation movement."

Largely as a reaction and response to White’s piece, Christian thinkers have over the last three decades formulated a response to White’s indictment. The response has taken three distinct paths. One path, which can be called the Stewardship Model, concludes that God did indeed give humans dominion, but only on the condition that we act as wise stewards, exercising our dominion with prudence and care. This is the model that is preferred within evangelical and fundamentalist circles, to the extent that this wing of Christianity chooses to address the environmental issue.

Within mainstream and liberal Christianity are two more models, eco-feminism and creation spirituality. Eco-feminism observes that domination over women and over the earth spring from the same masculine, patriarchal institutions, and that salvation for the earth, women, and ultimately men, will flow from modifying those institutions. Creation spirituality attempts to help us recover the nature mysticism of some medieval Christians such as Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Mechtild of Madeburg, Hildegard of Bingen, and Francis of Assisi.

Fundamentalism and evangelicism are not supposed to be conservative; they are supposed to be fundamentalist and evangelical. But since the F/E Christian leaders made many a political "deal with the Devil," you are quite correct -- Stewardship theology has been dismissed by most Fundamentalist and Evangelical sects.

Christian Ecology is a good website for an entrée into Christian thought on environmental issues.

--bkl

[NNadir]

4. I think this would be an excellent time for Mr. Kerry to begin discussing

this issue of Global Climate Change. Let's put some fear of God in the Godists.