A Changing Climate is a Calling, Not an Alarm

Last week, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change panicked. Or, at least, they officially announced to the world they were panicking. In its new official Assessment Report, the panel concluded we won't be able to stop the earth from warming at least 1.5 degrees. That change, scientists said, will melt arctic ice, cause a rise in sea levels and an increase in dangerous weather, and send millions into poverty. And if industrialized nations don't dramatically cut their carbon emissions, they said, those consequences will be even more devastating.

Sometimes Christians hear apocalyptic news about climate change and feel a distinct urge to change the channel. I empathize with that instinct - the people releasing these reports are not always unbiased or even trustworthy.

But it's not controversial to say that Christians should care about the planet. The book of Genesis says that God "breathed life into the dust" of the earth to create us. The earth feeds, clothes and shelters humans, but the Bible also talks about the world as an intrinsic good in and of itself. Just considering the incredible variety, intricacy and beauty of the animals, plants and topography across the globe is a study in God's intentional creativity. God doesn't breathe on what he doesn't love.

If the latest research seems to show the climate is changing in ways that could harm both humans and the planet, we should listen. However, there are worldview assumptions built into a report like the IPCC's that too often go unspoken. One such assumption is that the earth's climate is changing now in a way it was not supposed to.

A sense of existential instability is warranted within a naturalistic worldview. If one believes human beings only came into existence on razor-thin margins - that is, that the chance we evolved from single-cell organisms into the unfathomably complex, billion-cell organisms we are today was astronomically astronomical - then our survival here dances on razor-thin margins, too. In that case, a report suggesting "it's getting dicey out there" would be the least shocking news we could get.

Christians need not share that existential dread. The Bible tells us God both created and sustains His creation. "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together," Paul writes in Colossians.

But the consequences of the fall can wreak havoc on God's creation. Things aren't perfect here; we are capable of harming ourselves and the earth. But that doesn't mean our climate is hopelessly out of control. Isaiah 40 sounds at first like a warning: "The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it." But there's great comfort here: nothing withers or fades without His breath.

That comfort isn't available in a God-less worldview, and that's evident in many reports about climate change. For example, there's an emphasis in this IPCC report on what humans should do to prevent the globe from warming further. Notice the implication that we can control this problem. Certainly as humans we have agency, and a responsibility to make good decisions. But it's far easier on an emotional level to believe that the big, scary problems like climate change — or a pandemic — are humans' fault, and therefore can be fixed by humans, than to believe we can't control everything. Vulnerability is very uncomfortable.

But to believe we can either make or break the climate is to view humans as blunt instruments - as if we're a problem that needs solving rather than potential agents of a solution.

In fact, as the world has changed over centuries, including a warming period in the Middle Ages, humans have often displayed incredible adaptability. Even the things we blame now for harming the climate - like the industrialization that increases carbon emissions - have improved the lives of humans more than our ancestors could have imagined. - arguably, more than their side-effects have harmed humanity.

We should beware reports about the changing climate that come as an alarm and not a calling. Christians are to "hold fast to the hope that we confess without wavering, because the One who has promised is faithful." We are like the servants in Jesus' parable about the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew 25: God has put us in charge of His home while we wait for His return. With the power entrusted to us, we should solve the problems that arise, reminding each other all the while that He's coming back, and that the foundations of the house don't rest on our shoulders.