Ideas Have Consequences
Everything that we see around us is the product of ideas, of ideologies, of worldviews. That's where everything starts. Worldviews are not all the same, and the differences matter a lot. How do you judge a tree? By its fruits. How do you judge a worldview? By its physical, tangible, observable fruit. The things it produces. Ideas that are noble and true produce beauty, abundance, and human flourishing. Poisonous ideas produce ugliness. They destroy and dehumanize. It really is that simple. Welcome to Ideas Have Consequences, the podcast of Disciple Nations Alliance, where we prepare followers of Christ to better understand the true ideas that lead to human flourishing while fighting against poisonous ideas that destroy nations. Join us, and prepare your minds for action!
Ideas Have Consequences
Climate & Energy: Bonus Episode
Join Scott, Dwight, and Luke to discuss this week's interview with Calvin Beisner and David R. Legates, authors of Climate & Energy: The Case for Realism. Our question is, how do Christians provide a Biblical worldview perspective to this discussion on climate change? As the sons and daughters of the Creator of this planet, how can we fulfill our mandate to work this garden we have been given and keep it?
Hey everyone, thanks for joining us. This is a bonus episode to the discussion that we just got off of with Cal Beisner and David Leggetts on our episode of Climate and Energy the Case for Realism, which we just titled after their new book, which also shares that title. We all thoroughly enjoyed that discussion. I found it fascinating. It's something I've wanted to hear more of a biblical worldview perspective on for a long time, and those guys, I think, are championing that really well. Dad, dwight, you guys were on the call. What did you think? What were some of your takeaways?
Luke Allen:I love the cover on their book. Buy the book just to look at the cover. It's really cool. It's got a picture within a picture, but anyway, no, I loved it. Wow, where do you begin? One thing that stood out to me was Calvin's perspective on worldview and how he went straight to it at the beginning.
Luke Allen:Like worldview matters at the most fundamental level, which is one side says we're animals at the highest level, but that doesn't give us any more merit or dignity or reason for existing over the fly or the ant. And so for the survival of the planet, they say, you know, it needs to be winnowed down to 300 or 800 million, whatever it was, and that's 95% of the population being lost. And so that's one side, and the other side is no. God made us, he gave us to have dominion, he put us here to steward, to create, to develop, and it just leads to a whole different scenario and view of this whole issue. So yeah, I was. I could say more, but that really impressed me.
Scott Allen:Yeah, I thought they were so like-minded and so, you know, in terms of just approaching this from a theological, scientific, cultural you know standpoint, but also with a real tender heart towards the poor and the people living on the margins, you know, and so I felt just a completely kindred spirit to them. I also, especially with David, I appreciated so much that he was a true scientist and had done a lot of deep thinking and research, you know, into the subject. So I mean that would have been an area where I could have just really done a lot of—I had a good time just asking him a lot of the questions I still have on this, just because it's such a privilege to be able to talk to a scientist on this subject. And I think another thing that—I think where Christians stumble the most on this and you saw this with Gavin Ortland is just on science itself. And if there's a consensus amongst scientists, an overwhelming consensus, then it must be true.
Scott Allen:And I think I thought they did a pretty good job of kind of describing why we have to be skeptical right now of scientific consensus. It has a lot to do not with science, you know, if science, when it's properly put into practice, is a search for truth. Science, when it's properly put into practice, is a search for truth, I thought, but I liked what David said. There really isn't ever a scientific consensus. You know, science is a process and it's a process of conflict too, where you put forward a hypothesis and people challenge it and trying to build a consensus around science is typically yeah, it's rather it's really trying to build a consensus around a narrative using science is kind of what's going on with that.
Luke Allen:So I just think, what did they call that? Again, they had a title for that.
Scott Allen:Yeah, what was that? Dwight, you are the one that kind of drilled down on this Post-normal science Post-normal science. Post-normal science. Yeah.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I mean, it's the whole idea that we don't know the future. So let's extrapolate everybody's ideas from every corner, including theologians and philosophers and economists, and put everybody's ideas almost equal. And science is just one factor, and then that's even guided by narrative, so it gets really skewed.
Scott Allen:Well, exactly, dwight, and you and I both have followed this probably the closest on the whole Darwinian debate, because Darwinian evolution is also quote-unquote settled science, or that is the scientific consensus. But when I started drilling in on that to me that was many years ago, but it was completely eye-opening it was the first time I really tried to kind of say, wow, do I have a right to question what these brilliant scientists are telling me about something like evolution or climate or whatever it is? And what I discovered there that was life-changing was that these scientists, brilliant though they were, were driven more by a worldview. You know, in this case they didn't want God to exist. They were driven by a worldview called naturalism or just, you know, atheism. And so, consequently, they shoehorned their science into that box, their science into that box, and they weren't uh, you know, they weren't following the data wherever it led in some kind of an objective way. Um, they were driven by, you know, a desire for a particular set of assumptions. Um, so they they're, in other words, they're human beings, right, they're prone to, you know, biases. And then they use their science, and the using of the science to further a narrative is not science actually.
Scott Allen:This is actually scientism, and this is where Christians have to be careful, because so much of what goes by the name of science today is scientism.
Scott Allen:It's starting with a set of assumptions that science can't prove, but then using science to kind of further those ends.
Scott Allen:And you know, it's kind of post-modernism plus science mixed together in some ways.
Scott Allen:And so Christians of all people actually have to be the advocates for science proper, which is a search for the truth. You follow the evidence wherever it leads and you try to put your particular biases to the side. And we don't have to be afraid to do that as Christians, because we have this—you know, if it's truly God's world as we believe it is, then it's going to conform itself to what we read about in Scripture, and we shouldn't be afraid to look deeply at those kind of questions. But anyways, I just—all that about science, because I do think this is where so many Christians do stumble, because, yeah, you know you're a climate denier, but right there, that's propaganda as well, because that's a play on the Holocaust deniers, right, and so it's putting people into this kind of conspiracy theorist in a deadly way in some ways. So you're a climate denier, you're denying science, and I think a lot of Christians are still like too prone to kind of be to be played with those tactics. We have to be eyes wide open now with that.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I mean, it is scary to feel like you can disagree with the science.
Scott Allen:Right.
Luke Allen:And when I first started understanding that is that there is actual science that follows the truth wherever it leads, and then there's a scientism that really is just biased back to science, I was like, ok, but how in the world am I going to sort through this and actually find the truth? I'm just me, I'm not a scientist, I have a hard time reading scientific papers and whatnot. But just a shortcut there is you look for truth, and when people are suppressing the truth, that's usually a red flag. Stay away from that. If they're not interested in debate or possibly saying they're wrong or being open-minded or trying to throw a pejorative or strawman, you usually they're not on the side of truth or on the side of good science.
Scott Allen:Yeah, that's a really good point, luke, and I think back to the Darwinian discussion, there was the intelligent design movement. It's just simply a branch of science that's saying, hey, everywhere we look in creation, we see evidence of design, of purpose. We don't see randomness and chaos. We see design, intelligent design. But the scientists that were guarding the dominant narrative would not have anything to do with that. They didn't want to debate that. They called that pseudoscience and that, like you say, it's a red flag whenever that happens. Let's just debate, right, don't be afraid, just debate. Let's hear what you have to say and make your case on why this is scientific. You know and I think you see so much of that here in the climate thing too because, as these two gentlemen said at the end, you know there's yeah, there's a reluctance to engage with what they're saying as opposed to really giving them a fair shake and listening. You know.
Luke Allen:Yeah, this reminds me of a quote I saw from Oz Guinness that I love. It's either we conform our desires to the truth or we conform the truth to our desires. Yeah, well said Luke.
Scott Allen:Yeah, and Oz, I mean, it really does kind of boil down to that. No, it's true. Yeah, that's right, dwight, what were you going?
Luke Allen:to say For me it's yeah, I've thought about this in other contexts, you know why sometimes you know, you're listening to the climate discussion and, of course, carbon fuels are the evil.
Luke Allen:And I'm sitting here going okay, god made man, he made him in his image, he created him to create. He actually put him in charge of this world and said steward it and work it, make something of it. And then he put billions and billions and billions of tons of carbon fuel in this earth. And whether it was from the dinosaurs that died, I don't know what, but there's a ton of carbon fuel in this earth. And I'm going why would you do that, lord, and then tell man to have dominion over it and then set us up for catastrophic climate change here in 2024. And my view of God doesn't align with that.
Luke Allen:It's like, yeah, we're fallen men, but he still gave us dominion. And over the years, we've fallen men, but he still gave us dominion. And over the years we've figured out how to solve problems. Yeah, sometimes that's led to pride and arrogance on the part of humans, but oftentimes it's just us fulfilling our common grace, calling, as people made in the image of God, to have dominion. And I'm thinking, you know, I think that the Christian approach to this is how do we have dominion? We're screaming in fear and we're running you know, and it's catastrophic.
Luke Allen:I think as soon as you label something catastrophic, good thinking, problem solving goes out the window, and I think that's where you have to go. What's the problem? Let's really investigate it. Let's not come up with false solutions. And then look at the trend of mankind. They were falling back on this. The guys were saying look, it's what happens to the development of man over the years. Lifespan is longer. People are living better in warmer climates. If you actually want to survive, go to a warmer climate. Uh, if you have more carbon dioxide in the room, you actually grow more plants.
Scott Allen:So and where there's more economic prosperity, the environment is more protected. It's cleaner.
Luke Allen:The air is cleaner.
Scott Allen:It takes some resources and some development in order to have the bandwidth to care about it and to do something about cleaning and caring for the environment.
Luke Allen:Right, and those things are all historical truths. Yeah, when you see this, it's actually true. It actually improves. We don't we, we don't need to go back to a subsistence, living with 300 million people. We can actually develop our earth and not destroy it, and we can go forward, and we can. If there's a climate issue that we need to deal with, we deal with it, but not by, not by being crazy about it. That's's my perspective on it.
Scott Allen:There's people that are pushing this view of both draconian population reduction and going back to some kind of a pre-industrialized hunter-gatherer kind of I'm always like, well, why don't you show us the way. Why don't you volunteer?
Scott Allen:to start controlling population with your own family and then sell your car and your plane and become hunter-gatherers. So it's always good for the—that's always a test too. It's like can you that are advocating this live with what you're talking about, or is it just something you're going to use your power to impose on other people talking about? Or is it just?
Luke Allen:you know something you're going to use your power to impose on other people you know. And one other thought I've had is is I sometimes feel like evangelicals with our eschatology play?
Luke Allen:into this fear and saying, well, yeah, the world must be coming to an end with climate change, because that has to happen before Jesus comes again, there has to be all kinds of climatic chaos or whatever. And we kind of say, yeah, let's just throw up our hands and I'm thinking, no, no, we're called till the day we die. We're called to exercise the cultural mandates.
Luke Allen:So keep going. I'd like to run something by you guys. It's the tension right there in Genesis Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. And then he goes on and says to Adam and Eve be stewards of my creation and have dominion over my creation. There seems to be a bit of a paradox there. Attention, almost, it's not that they're opposites, but stewarding, I think of taking care of and protecting and respecting, and then having dominion of, I think of creating and pulling apart and innovating and changing. And you know, it requires, it requires that push and pull.
Luke Allen:And when I hear this argument sometimes I kind of hear those two, not polls in a way, but an overemphasis on one of those two sides. Either the either the side of we need to preserve this planet so perfectly, it's this overstewardship is we cannot touch it, it's perfect, we need to protect it and that's our only mission as people. Or on the opposite side, we need to have dominion, which means we need to cut down all the forests and use that lumber to make humans better, or we need to fish the ocean so that humans can have more nutrition, or whatever. And it's this over dominion where it looks like more of like dominance, you know, and I hear people going too far on that side, whereas what we're saying is no, there should be a tension here, and be very careful if you lean on one side or the other. Am I totally making this up or is that— Well, no, and there is tension.
Luke Allen:but I think Genesis 2.15 says Adam and Eve are the man in the garden and he said work it and care for it. That's your two words right there steward it and have dominion over it. I think dominion's got a bad rap because we look at it as dominate, we tie it to dictators and pollution and destruction of the earth. But dominion in the biblical sense is subdue and rule, which is work it, use it for its best purpose, whatever that means yeah, I think maybe I have a wrong definition of dominion there.
Luke Allen:That's probably more of the issue here. What I think is the issue is what I'm pointing to is humans and our selfishness. Right, we see God's beautiful creation. We think, well, I can exploit this for my own benefit. I'll do that. You know that's classic fleshly desires of humans.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I mean that's just a sin factor. Yeah, I mean that's what we have to. We have to fight against destructive dominion.
Scott Allen:Yeah, and that's real and we should speak up for that. I think you know of, oh, this came out a few years ago and I remember being kind of upset about, you know, just, some of the farming techniques you know that were being used in certain countries where, well, including the United States even the raising of livestock, where the view behind it was very short-term and it was to enrich myself to the maximum degree, without any kind of concern for what happens with the land after I'm gone. And you know that's real short-term selfish instinct can lead to the stripping of land. Or it can lead to treating even something as simple as chickens for eggs like machines and, just you know, just treating them with—pumping them full of chemicals to get as many eggs out of those guys as I possibly can as opposed to treating them like creatures made by God, you know.
Scott Allen:So we have to be ready to speak out against that kind of—that's not godly dominion, that's destruction for short-term selfish gain. And that's real, that's very real, right, Right.
Luke Allen:Yeah, when I think of dominion and a bad example of that, I remember being in Uzbekistan years ago, driving through the country and it was completely denuded and a guy said this used to be the fertile landscape here. And I said what happened? He goes well, when the Russians collectivized in the Soviet Union, collectivized agriculture, they brought in agricultural techniques and irrigation techniques. They brought in agricultural techniques and irrigation techniques. They drained the aral sea. They and ended up salting all of the land with a very poor irrigation technique and it completely destroyed millions and millions of acres of land and drained a beautiful sea and I thought I, my heart was just like, oh my goodness, how could they do that?
Luke Allen:you know? But yeah, it's an example of fallen dominion, and we see it everywhere.
Scott Allen:You know the overfishing of the oceans and you know just it's so. Yeah, but the opposite of that isn't to swing all the way over to say human beings are destructive forces in you know, and so we should just leave it alone.
Scott Allen:I mean, so that is wrong as well. When exercised properly, stewardship and dominion lead to flourishing. They lead to new resources and just this idea that creation alone in our fallen world is somehow better than when we interact with it. I thought Calvin did a nice job of talking about how we take things like even corn or oil and you know that were irritating and a problem, and you know we can create things from them. Or even, you know, I think about it in a very simple way.
Scott Allen:Sometimes I'm, you know, here in my neighborhood, some of my you know neighbors. They haven't landscaped their backyard, and if I go to their house and I look at their backyard, it's just completely choked with weeds, right, so they haven't touched it. I guess that's the ideal, right, but it's a mess. Now, on the other hand, I would like to apply my sense of dominion and stewardship to that little tiny piece of land by doing some landscaping to it and improving it. You know, and I think it's a small example, but I think it's relevant God created us to take what he has made and make it better, actually to make it more fruitful, to make it more beautiful, and I think we have the capacity to do that without destroying it. That's the—and just the opposite actually improving it. That's the, that's the and just the opposite actually improving it. And I think that's what the climate change worldview, the secular worldview that's rooted in Darwinism they don't. They just don't account for that at all.
Scott Allen:You know that, and most Christians don't understand that either. I don't think, frankly.
Luke Allen:Yeah. What I have a hard time with, though, is we kind of just described two views is either, you know, we rape and pillage the earth for our own benefit or we protect the earth.
Luke Allen:One of those sounds a lot more virtuous. So at least you know a lot of people. I know they want to be on the side of the virtuous side and not as soon as they raise any question about if you know there is climate change, but how much is it changing and if that's really bad, and what are the solutions we come up with. If they raise any questions along those lines, they're immediately thrown in with the people that are just destroying the earth and then they're called a climate change denier and you lose all credibility.
Scott Allen:I don't want that to happen. I'd rather stay on the virtuous side. That's a technique of propaganda, you know. Yeah, but it happens.
Luke Allen:Oh no, you know yeah but it happens.
Scott Allen:Oh no, I know, I mean it's real and we need to recognize that, that that's being deployed in order to control people's thoughts and whatnot and actions. But we need to see through it, we need to see it for what it is, and so yeah, I mean, sometimes you can argue a viewpoint.
Luke Allen:just well, let's say that Scott didn't. Are you saying it'd be better that Scott? You know if you're denying involvement in nature, so Scott should just leave his backyard and go to weeds, you know? Is that better?
Luke Allen:Is that more virtuous? Well, they would say, the forest that was there before the neighborhood would have been better off without the neighborhood.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I mean in some cases you could potentially say that, but then again, I've seen a lot of places that are choked with weeds that are swamps that are.
Scott Allen:You know that are you know there's been? Yeah, so I would say there's lots of improvement that that people have made to whatever landscape you're looking at.
Luke Allen:So that's one of the complaints against cities is that they, you know they eat up valuable forest land, but people admire cities. I mean I remember Daryl going to Singapore and coming back and going that's the most beautiful city I've ever been in. And we just saw the Olympics in Paris and people were going, oh, it's such a beautiful city. I mean, well, is it better to have a weed?
Scott Allen:patch there. Whatever was there before Paris was there.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I mean, is this now ugly? Yeah, I mean, there are parts of Paris that are probably ugly in Singapore, but man can be. I've seen a lot of beautiful spaces and cities and I prefer it over just looking at the desert.
Dwight Vogt:I mean desert's nice, but they forget that humans are part of the landscape and we have to live here too Good point yeah, we have to live here too Good point.
Luke Allen:Yeah, it's hard to argue.
Scott Allen:I thought. Another thing I really appreciated was you know so much of what is being proposed as solutions to climate change, these draconian solutions. Let's get rid of all fossil fuels, all fuel-burning vehicles. Let's, you know, get rid of all kind of productive farmland. Let's spend those productive farmland in the world. In places like holland it's being bought up so that it can no longer be used as farmland, you know, um, because cows, you know, have flatulence and put methane into the atmosphere or whatever it is.
Scott Allen:You know, all of that is justified through these really alarmist things which I have heard over and over again. I mentioned how I love watching nature shows and I can always hear Sir Richard Attenborough, the narrator of these British nature shows. Just man, there's pictures of the polar bear floating off on that iceberg, all alone, because we're destroying the polar ice caps and there's no more polar bears. He would go on and on about reefs. I happen to love, you know, scuba diving and snorkeling. Just one of my great passions in life. I love reefs. I just think they're one of the most amazing, most beautiful things ever. So I was always very sad when I I I heard him say, you know, and then they would show pictures of of these dead reefs, you know and it always grieved my heart, but I was never quite sure what to make of that Like.
Scott Allen:Here's this guy you know saying this, he's showing me pictures of it and they just countered that completely and they said the reefs are doing fine, the Great Barrier Reef is actually growing. And it reminded me of something that I read just recently by, I mean, a person that would be very like-minded to their position is the Danish scientist Bjorn Lomborg, and he had an article that was in the Wall Street Journal so this is a pretty, you know pretty big publication on July 31st, not long ago, and the article was titled Polar Bears, dead, coral and Other Climate Fictions, and he made the same point. He said that the propaganda behind this is that they're going to they, being the people that are pushing this dominant narrative on climate change are going to use these examples like the polar bears or the destruction of the reefs, but then later, when it shows you know, science shows that they were wrong and actually polar bear populations now larger than it was 10 years ago. Reefs are healthier. They don't ever say anything about that, right? So they just completely ignore that and you have to actually go hunting to find out that.
Scott Allen:But when I read that I was like, oh, this is so. I'm so relieved, you know again, not that we shouldn't care for our reefs, and you know we have to care for the ocean. I care particularly about that. But yeah, tell me the good news too, you know. If you're just telling me the bad news here, you know, then you're trying to spin me, you know.
Luke Allen:Yeah, the problem is Dad, the good news doesn't sell.
Scott Allen:Well, it doesn't sell their narrative, which they're pushing Right, that's for sure.
Luke Allen:Bad news sells. You know, that's the headlines always. Right you know when we think about these things. They talked about the UN a lot the UN's um, the reports that come out of the climatologists on the change in the world every year. They're extremely reasonable. I've I've spent a little bit of time reading them. Those guys can, you know, decipher through them a lot better. You know, they're just raw science, usually without bias, much yet.
Luke Allen:But then they are taken by media and whoever's pushing these narratives and speaking heads and they're twisted for whatever use they want, and then they're spouted out and they hardly look even remotely the same as the initial reports. But fear sells.
Scott Allen:Yeah, no it does.
Luke Allen:And again, there's a lot of this virtue signaling going on. I, where I live here in Oregon, all this stuff is absolutely settled science. But not only that, but people feel like they have to add it in randomly into every conversation they have. It feels like sometimes.
Luke Allen:You know, I went on a bike ride and blah, blah blah. And then climate change and I'm helping the climate, you know They'll spin it in. I'm like, why are people such evangelists of this? Why do they feel like they have to push it so hard? But I think a lot of it is because it sounds very virtuous. You know, I care about the planet and it makes them feel good and I'm such an opponent of.
Scott Allen:I don't care how this makes you feel. What I want to know is is it actually caring for the environment? And I thought the discussion around fossil fuels versus electric cars is really good on that, because the science now shows pretty clearly that this idea that electric cars, battery-operated cars, are cleaner or more healthy to the environment is wrong. More fossil fuels into the air and the production of those batteries, not to mention all of the slave labor and you know injustice that goes into the making of these things now, and but people don't, you know, but they feel good, right, and so, again, I'm not, you know, by driving that car or whatever it is, and I'm like I'm not interested in what makes you feel good. If we really want to care for the environment, the question, the only question that matters, is what is cleaner. You know what is cleaner, and right now it's still.
Luke Allen:You know these gas-powered cars that have become highly efficient, by the way, and quite clean it's not that that's not that they can't be cleaned up even further, but yeah, and the goal is that they'll keep getting cleaner. Right, the goal is that they can't be cleaned up even further. Yeah, and the goal is that they'll keep getting cleaner right.
Scott Allen:The goal is that they keep getting cleaner, and they are getting cleaner and maybe, if we eventually leave fossil fuels behind.
Luke Allen:that'll be good, but right now we have to always look at ROI, you know, and the return on investment still at this point when you're comparing cost efficiency, and you know the outcome that it actually has on our climate.
Scott Allen:You know you justaboo on this variables and run it through there right is recycling, which obviously I love to recycle because I care about the environment. I want to be a good steward of the environment. But I heard recently that that you know, and there's a lot of science to back this up the worst thing that you can recycle is plastics. They just it's not cost effective. Yet we're told always. You know, recycle the plastics, recycle the plastics. And what happens with plastics is they end up getting put into these giant bulk kind of you know, crushed down and put into these boxes and shipped off around the world. They just kind of ship them, move them from one place to another, because nobody, it's not right now cost-effective enough to recycle them and they usually end up in the ocean. So but people still recycle plastic because why it makes them feel good.
Dwight Vogt:So again, I don't care how it makes you feel. I want to know is it actually helping the environment.
Luke Allen:You know we're doing our best, dad. In the meantime, listen, you know recycle.
Scott Allen:You know recycle aluminum, recycle cardboard that's really important, those things. But plastic not yet don't tell me that I I don't care about feeling good, I want to know is it actually ending up in the ocean? It'd be better to put in a landfill than have it sit in the middle of the ocean. One of these big drifts of plastic. Go ahead, dwight, yeah.
Luke Allen:I was just going to say. What's the Christian response, then, to stewardship of the environment?
Luke Allen:I would love to conclude on that point, but before we get to that, I'd love to talk a little bit about poverty and what was that term they used about colonialism?
Luke Allen:climate colonialism Is that it I thought that that term they used about colonialism climate colonialism oh yeah, Is that it? Uh-huh? Yeah, I thought that was fascinating. That talks a lot about what we do here, and ideas do have consequences, and the consequence of some of these ideas is they are very harmful on the impoverished of our world, and as Christians, we're called to look out for the poor. So what do you guys think about that part of the discussion?
Scott Allen:Super important. People need to know it and this is real. I remember Sri Lanka here not too long ago. Sri Lanka, like a lot of countries, is a developing country, a lot of poverty, but on the cusp of really expanding its economy and moving people into the middle class. That's what we want to see. We don't want people to be living in utter poverty with high infant mortality rates. I mean, this is you know, dwight, you know this right.
Scott Allen:This is you don't want to live that way you know you don't want to live in that kind of utter poverty that we see around the world.
Luke Allen:And here's Sri Lanka. Back to Sri Lanka. Yeah, I got what they do there.
Scott Allen:Sri Lanka was just on the cusp of moving into kind of an industrialized more towards an industrialized nation. Why? Because its cash crop is rice and there's been such dramatic improvements in fertilizer, and so the fertilizers are able to produce greater yields of rice, healthier rice, a lower cost and, um, even more nutritious. So but the climate change folks have said, you know these uh fertilizers are made from fossil fuels and so the pressure was from elite groups on down world you know the united nations world economic forum and these groups and the pressure was brought to bear on a vulnerable country and they were essentially denied their fertilizers and their rice crops crashed and lots and lots of people suffered as a result. You know in that country. So that's real. That's one example. There's many, actually, you could go down the list. These countries need basic, simple, clean fossil fuels. We've enjoyed economic development on the basis of them and yet we in the West turn around and say no, you can't. That's the colonialism that he's talking about.
Scott Allen:It's real and it's evil frankly.
Luke Allen:Yeah, we've got to this point of prosperity on the back of the industrial revolution right and fossil fuels. And then we look at poor countries and say, well, no, you have to use windmills, even though they're right, or we take away their fertilizer and we, you know they're living on the edge as it is.
Scott Allen:So there, there goes your cash crop, there goes your economy. You know, yeah, and it's it's.
Luke Allen:It's unrealistic between finding, you know, a climate, friendly way to you know, respect your community, or to feed your kid.
Luke Allen:You're going to choose your kid, you're just going to do that and calvin bison, or no, david leggetts, his chapter in this book was actually on carbon fuel and and that effect of carbon. From our current understanding of carbon, that's like some poison gas, tons of poison gas. And he's saying the science doesn't say that doesn't show that it's assumed that that's the result of carbon. But he's even saying that's a wrong assumption, potentially. And then he goes to the greenhouse effect and says if you put more carbon in and says you know, if you put more carbon in a greenhouse you grow better plants. And the Sahara is shrinking these days because what I don't know, but it's shrinking. So that's the thing I think. You're asking parents to make a bad choice based on wrong knowledge, wrong information. So it's criminal.
Luke Allen:Yeah, well, and I think that's the other thing is a lot of Christians, they think of all the issues in our world and they're like man there's, you know, we got abortion and we got. You know, we have the breaking of family and we have, you know, there's these churches that are, you know, have false teaching and there's so many issues I can't keep up. I why do I care about the trees? You know, that seems a little bit lower on the list, but when you hear it from these guys and the way they're breaking it down, this is a pretty important issue that we have to worry about, because it's a wrong view of what it means to be human and the solution looks extremely deadly. It is and will move us backwards in time, as far as you know what humans do on this earth, which is continue to innovate and work and create and have dominion in stewardship and clean up the environment.
Luke Allen:I mean, actually you guys live in Oregon. Oregon has a pretty good track record for ecology and environmentalism. On the positive side. I mean, I can remember swimming in the Willamette River through Salem when it was basically a toxic waste dump. And the governor came in and said we're going to clean up the Willamette River.
Scott Allen:This is true of states and cities around the country, the rivers, the water is cleaner, the air is cleaner, yet there's more people and there's more cars, and the reason is that we've been able to invest in cleaning up the environment, and it requires just like we were talking about. It requires a certain level of economic development in order to do that. You have to help people to develop, and that's how you protect and clean up the environment. It's not the other way around, moving them back to the Stone Age. That's just going to. When you do that, people are going to cut down the trees and burn them for fuel, because you've got to have fuel right at some point.
Luke Allen:Yeah, you mentioned Bjorn Lomberg. That's when he's asked what's the one thing we can do to improve our planet and he says lower the rate of poverty If there is less people poor. I mean it's proven.
Scott Allen:It's proven.
Luke Allen:Once you get to a certain economic place in life, you start caring about the environment, but before that you don't care.
Scott Allen:You can't, you don't have the margin to care. You just got to get food in your stomach, you know.
Luke Allen:Yeah, so step one.
Luke Allen:And that's a whole nother topic what poverty cure.
Luke Allen:Yeah, poverty cure. So I mean that's. It's also driving some of the economic world economic theorem is because they say, well, we can use this climate catastrophic, global warming initiative to move wealth from the rich nations to the poor, and that was one of the ideas behind it. That's in their book as well, and uh, so it's the idea well, let's, let's defeat poverty by moving wealth. But is that? You know how do you cure poverty?
Scott Allen:and it's anyway another discussion, sorry well, yeah, I know, dwight, what was your question? I think that was maybe a good one to wrap up on there. What, what is?
Luke Allen:Oh, just you know, if we go back to the dominion mandate we're put in this world, on this planet, we're told to have dominion and rule over it, work the earth and care for it. We don't have all the information we need, we don't have all knowledge. We still don't. It's a fallen world. So what do we do's our? How, as a christian, should I walk into life and how should I deal when I hear things like catastrophic global warming that's going to destroy all of us? You know?
Luke Allen:well, one response is don't don't be afraid. Yeah, I see a lot of fear. Be afraid. I see a lot of fear.
Scott Allen:We're not called to fear anything but god don't be afraid yeah, I think for me, a simple principle is that the Bible puts forward this remarkable view of what it means to be a human being, and that is that, even though fallen, we can be creative, we can have a positive effect on this world and we can actually leave it better, wealthier, more beautiful than we found it. And so one of the questions that I'm always asking myself is, yeah, what can I do to leave things better for my children and grandchildren than I found them? You know, and that, so what you know, it's not what makes me feel good, but what's actually going to and and you know, I don't want to in any way contribute to the raping and the pillaging of resources or land or whatever it is for short-term economic gain. You know I don't want to. You know, I've got to try to understand what's causing that. I don't want to be a part of that.
Scott Allen:I want to leave things better than I found them, you know, and I think that's possible, and that's possible in the short term. Even you know just what you know, dwight, you're really good at this. You know you buy a house. You leave it better than you found it. You know, and you can do that. I mean, that's just part of what you know, and that's true for our stewardship of creation as well. Leave it better than you found it. So you know I camp a lot.
Scott Allen:I like to camp and I always say leave that site better than you found it, and I believe in that right, and so try hard to do that. Go ahead, Dwight, I'm going to cut you off.
Luke Allen:No, no, no, exactly. Just that includes water and air and whatever you, whatever resources, exactly you know, so and I think I think this idea, uh, you know, deborah, always my wife, she always says you know, a decision made out of fear is never a good decision. A decision made out of calculated understanding and doing your best, that's okay, and there's cautionary decisions, but fear-based decisions usually aren't good, yeah, and always be aware of people that are playing on your fears, because usually it's a sign that they're trying to control you for whatever ends they have in mind.
Luke Allen:Yep, and then yeah, back to our first point is just keep looking for the truth try to search for the truth. And in this whole area, I think the simple question is okay, the climate is changing, yes, but how much? And then the solutions you're proposing how much of an impact will those actually make?
Scott Allen:just those simple questions will they make it worse?
Luke Allen:yeah, yeah, or will they make it worse? Just ask those questions and search for the answer. That's right, and be open to whatever you find.
Scott Allen:Yeah, and again, I just would recommend Climate and Energy by Calvin Beisner and David Legates, and anything written by Bjorn Lomborg is also very worth looking at, and there's others that I think are truly—not only are they doing good science, but they're starting with much more biblical assumptions about the dignity and the value of human life. Awesome guys. Well, good discussion. We're going to keep this discussion alive and going because this is really an important one, so thanks for listening to this bonus episode of Ideas have Consequences. The podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance.