Climate Hysteria
Transcript
BACKGROUND BUBBLING
Global warming was the buzz phrase when I was at high school. Now the language has evolved into ‘climate change’ ensuring it encompasses any change of weather. Perhaps because in the 70’s they were warning about global cooling.
Remember them banging on about the hole in the ozone layer? The anxiety of the world imploding was drilled into us at school. Except, the ozone layer has grown back since.[1]
The poor polar bear on thin ice has become the iconic symbol of climate change. Even though in reality the population of polar bears has been increasing for decades.
“In 1989, the UN predicted “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels" by [the year] 2000.”[2]
RECENT ESCALATION
In recent escalation we have witnessed protests spanning the globe. The BBC is churning out climate change reports at a colossal rate.
Locally Manchester council has declared a climate emergency.[3] NHS organisations in Greater Manchester have declared a climate emergency.[4]
We’ve seen the rise of the group Extinction Rebellion who have protested in London and Manchester of late. And many teachers have been are encouraging kids to skip school to join the protests.
What is deeply concerning but sadly not surprising is that “A group of psychologists working with the University of Bath says it is receiving a growing volume of enquiries from teachers, doctors and therapists unable to cope…. some children complaining of eco-anxiety have even been given psychiatric drugs.”[5]
The University of Sheffield has just announced that every student will have to attend compulsory lectures on climate change.[6]
RECENT CONTROVERSY
Recent Controversies include:
Prince Harry who has received criticism for flying by private Jets and then preaching about saving the planet.[7] He recently noted that he will have just two children for sake of the climate.[8]
Greta Thunberg, the Swedish, teenage climate activist, who travelled in a racing yacht to join protests in the states. Supposedly a carbon neutral voyage, questions arose over the “three tonnes of carbon fibre, moulds for hull and deck, a number of construction materials and various resins.”[9]
And who can afford four million yachts anyway.
Climate activists dyed Zürich’s main river luminous green.[10]
Graffiti vandals have sprayed climate change slogans on war memorials.[11]
Michael Mansfield, the Left-wing barrister speaking on the launch of a vegan campaign at the Labour Party conference in Brighton is calling for legislation to criminalise eating meat, because of the effects on the climate, which he compares to a ‘crime against humanity’. He has terms it, ‘ecocide’.[12]
GODLESS HYSTERIA
What we are witnessing is Godless hysteria. What most of the media is putting out quite frankly is scaremongering. Fear motivates people to action and acceptance of things they wouldn’t ordinarily.
Executives of green companies must be over the moon with climate protests – it’s like free advertising. That is if they didn’t fund it in the first place.
SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS
What does the science say? For starters climate science is way more complicated than portrayed.[13] And, it doesn’t really matter. The consensus in science says there is no God and that we evolved over millions of years. Scientific studies can back up scripture, but it doesn’t lead the narrative.
Scientists are individuals who study through a specific worldview and it’s clear that conclusions can be led by the organisation that funds them. We’ve seen that with the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's climatic research where a scientist 'hid' data flaws.[14]
I’m not here to say the globe is slightly warming and the sea levels are rising or not. I don’t know, I’m not a scientist. What I would say it that I am very sceptical and it’s clear there are motives involved.
I will point out that because of the hysteria, “a group of 500 esteemed scientists and professionals in climate science have officially notified the United Nations that there is no climate crisis and that spending trillions on a non-problem is ‘cruel and imprudent’”.[15]
There is a sad trend now which says that anyone who doesn’t toe the climate change line is labelled a ‘climate denier’. This term stems from the phrase ‘holocaust denier’. This propaganda drives paralysing fear so that you dare not question it, otherwise you will be painted as a Nazi who pretends nothing happened. Which is kind of ironic considering it was the Nazis who used young girls with braids for propaganda. Dinesh D'Souza tweeted, “Looks like today’s progressive Left is still learning its game from an earlier Left in the 1930s”.[16] Nobody is calling them Nazi’s, to be clear. It’s the comparison of the exploitation of the young for propaganda. What they are doing to that young lady Greta is disgusting. They are exploiting her for their own gain.
The question is, who do we put our trust in?
HOW DO CHRISTIANS RESPOND?
There are groups such as Christian Climate Action who use the Extinction Rebellion logo in their branding.[17] On their website, on the ‘Who We Are’ page they say, “Christian Climate Action is a community of Christians supporting each other to take meaningful action in the face of imminent and catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. Inspired by Jesus Christ [really?] and social justice movements of the past [ah, there is a clue], we carry out acts of non-violent direct action to urge those in power to make the change needed.”[18] Further down the page under a heading “THE SORT OF THING WE THINK:” it reads: “Our actions don’t have to be perfect. [I think they are setting up an excuse here for getting arrested, which I understand some of them have] As Ghandi said, they are all “experiments with truth”.”
Inspired by Jesus but thinking like Ghandi? Mmmm. I suspect it may be a different Jesus. In a quick scan of their site I struggled to find any scripture as a foundation for their movement.
This is hopelessness – underwritten by Christians! If we don’t save ourselves, then nobody can! What? This is humanism not Christianity.
What is crazy is that many professing Christians are lapping this up, including Rowan Williams the former Archbishop of Canterbury.[19]
I suspect dominion theology is injecting stimulants in these movements, placing way too much emphasis on what we can achieve on earth, rather than fixing our hope on the future Kingdom delivered by the Lord.
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?
We don’t follow our heart, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:19). Feelings lie. Movements that appear to be doing the right thing can be very appealing and we can get sucked into ideological groups whose foundations are not of the Lord.
Let’s survey the scriptures.
First off, we understand God is the creator of all things: the one who created the water planet, who set the earth in motion, who stretched out the heavens (Job. 9:8; Zech. 12:1; Isa. 42:5), who created all kinds of vegetation, all living creatures, as a home for mankind. The God who sent up a mist to water the vegetation (Gen. 2:6), who created the planets and the lights in the sky “for signs and for seasons, and for days and years” (Gen. 1:14).
He created it. He can control it.
Then when mankind became completely corrupt, bar Noah, God caused the entire earth to be flooded for 150 days in act of judgement. You want to talk about rising sea levels – we read even the mountains were covered nearly seven metres deep (Gen. 7:20). This was four and half thousand years ago. A long time for us, but to God, it’s like a few days ago. “Count the patience of our Lord” (2 Pet. 3:15) exhorts Peter.
We panic when we record slightly high sea levels. God’s like, “as if I haven’t seen this before… you think I can’t cope with a little rise… I own the sea”.
After the flood, God promised to never “again strike down every living creature as I have done.” (Gen. 8:21). Which means that if you believe in the God of the bible you cannot join Extinction Rebellion. Because God has promised we won’t go extinct. So, if you become a member, you will be in rebellion against God and you risk personally going extinct without his promises in you.
The Lord goes on to say, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (vv. 22) Got it? It may get hotter, it may get colder, the sea may rise or fall, but his seasons, and his general format of time will continue. They indeed must, because God has promised to bring about the restoration of this planet on season, on time, on the exact appointment.
God’s rainbow has been hijacked to mean something else today, but see what God said to Noah: “the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” (Gen. 9:15-16)
His rainbow is to remind him. If you are concerned about the weather – call upon the Lord and recall to his memory (so to speak) his promises. That doesn’t mean he won’t judge locally again. We read how “the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur and fire” (Gen. 19:24) in an act of judgement.
Then we see examples like the prophet Elijah. He challenged the hundreds of false prophets of Baal to build an alter to test if their so-called gods could set fire to it. They failed. Elijah called upon the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel and he sent fire down from heaven which consumed the wood, stones, and water that had been poured on it. And though everyone doubted, “when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.” (1 Kings 18:39)
Remember the words written by Jeremiah, “Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord of hosts is his name: “If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.” (Jer. 31:35-36) The Jewish people are intrinsic to the gospel hope. He gave them festivals that align with the seasons to teach them about the suffering servant and the eschatological events of his return. God will never be finished with the Jews, so he never going to allow his created beings to ruin his fixed climate systems. Therefore, his blueprint for history will continue to be told each year. You could pump as much CO2 into the atmosphere as you like, but you’re not going to change God’s pre-determined plans.
There are other examples of how God uses things like famine to bring Jacob and his sons into Egypt – it’s the mystery of catastrophe (great book by the way). We don’t like disruption – but God disrupts our lives to bring you to him and bring people to us to point to him. Our course we could get into natural disasters and why innocent people get hurt – but that’s another video. We will see natural phenomenon, as Paul explains, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” (Rom. 8:22) The earth is under a curse because of our corporate sin – read Genesis 3.
Jesus proves he was the creator by walking on water. He calmed the wind and waves. He spoke to a tree and it withered. There was darkness and an earthquake when Jesus died on the cross. He ascended, which means he flew, through the heavens.
We learn too that when Jesus returns he will pour out plagues on the earth (Hab. 3:5; Rev 16) – that includes thunder and lightning (Rev 16:18), hundred pound hail stones (vv. 21), rivers and sea turning to blood (vv. 3-4), the suns heat will be turned up so that is scorches people (vv. 8-9), some places will be “plunged into darkness” (vv. 11), the islands will sink beneath the sea and the mountain will be made low (vv. 20)… and it will have nothing to do with our carbon footprint… more likely our Jewish footprint: how the nations have trampled them down.
Like Elijah’s day, everyone on earth will say “the Lord Jesus, he is God”. Yet though they recognise who the true God of the universe is, still some will “not repent and give him glory.” (vv. 8) And when he restores the earth, those countries who disobey his law will not be sent rain (Zech. 12:16-19) - which sounds good when you’re from Manchester, but lack of rain is bad thing biblically, agriculturally.
CONCLUSION
God is in control, he changes weather systems for signs and seasons, for agricultural cycles, for sleep patterns, for blessing and judgement.
For those that are part of Extension Rebellion, or similar groups: It’s great that you’re thinking about the future and where mankind is heading. But you have removed God from the road map. You’ve placed tremendous faith in human power, and what government with individual cooperation can achieve. With the wrong starting point, your deductions will be erroneous, and your actions out of sync with your purpose for living.
Hopelessness is a choice. Christians alternatively are drenched in hope.
Here’s the thing for Christians watching: Go and speak to them. If they are on the streets protesting, go and speak to them. They want to engage on the topic of the climate, so go and engage. They can’t say “sorry I’m in a rush”. You have a captive audience. Go and ask them what they believe and then ask them if they are familiar with what the bible says about climate change. If they don’t want to chat, they’re hearts are wilfully hardened, and they are not serious about discussion. If you can get chatting, deliver the gospel.
God, not government policies determine climate. If you are concerned, ask God what he is doing. Read the bible to see what he has done in the past so we can discover how his character may be in play now.
Let us be responsible stewards of the home we have been given, but know that it is only Jesus reigning the earth as the King of kings, after he’s poured out judgement, who will ultimately succeed in cleaning up the rivers, the climate, healing the ozone, caring for the polar bears and so forth.
Sin is the issue, not the climate. We need a fear of the Lord, not a fear of his weather system. The best thing we can instil in our children is a healthy fear of the Lord God, not deep anxiety about the climate. We need to get on our knees, repent of our ways, and humbly submit to our all-mighty creator.
We are not called to shout at the gates of parliament “save us”. We are to look to the heavenly gates and shout the ancient cry Maranatha, come Lord Jesus, to save us, cleanse us, and cleanse the land.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/05/ozone-layer-healing-after-aerosols-un-northern-hemisphere
[2] https://twitter.com/prageru/status/1176199550643499011?s=19
[3] https://secure.manchester.gov.uk/news/article/8194/manchester_city_council_debate_climate_emergency_motion
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/planet-b-not-option-manchester-16578811
[4] http://www.gmhsc.org.uk/nhs-in-greater-manchester-declares-a-climate-emergency/
[5] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/15/parents-told-not-terrify-children-climate-change-rising-numbers/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
[6] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7499689/Students-forced-attend-compulsory-lectures-climate-change-University-Sheffield.html
[7] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9860166/prince-harry-private-jets-meghan/
[8] https://metro.co.uk/2019/07/30/meghan-and-harry-only-want-two-kids-to-help-save-planet-10489008/
[9] https://news.sky.com/story/greta-thunberg-is-her-transatlantic-trip-really-that-green-11784480
[10] https://twitter.com/ErikSolheim/status/1176071229222133760?s=19
[11] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7494339/Fury-graffiti-vandals-daub-climate-change-slogans-war-memorial-protest.html
[12] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7492829/Eating-meat-crime-against-humanity-banned-says-QC.html
[13] For example see this thread: https://twitter.com/LegendaryEnergy/status/1175078447535640576
[14] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese
[15] https://www.technocracy.news/climate-scientists-write-to-un-there-is-no-climate-emergency/
[16] https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1175848457191510016
[17] https://www.premier.org.uk/News/UK/Christian-climate-change-campaigner-found-guilty-of-public-order-offence
[18] https://christianclimateaction.org/who-we-are/
[19] https://christianclimateaction.org/2019/04/15/rowan-williams-declares-support-for-christian-climate-activists/