Global warming exists.
Just as we can observe the temperature changing from season to season, we have also observed a rise in the Earth’s average temperature over the last century. We can also verify that the Earth’s climate is changing as a result of this warming.
Over the past forty years, climate scientists have observed global warming intensify weather patterns around the world. Areas susceptible to droughts (such as the southwestern Untied Sates and portions of Africa) are experiencing longer and more frequent droughts. Hurricanes and typhoons are striking more often and with greater intensity both in the southeastern United States and in southeastern Asia. The U.S. Navy’s records of the thickness of polar ice—records crucial to nuclear submarine navigation—show that polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate. For the first time ever, cargo ships are using shipping routes that cross the Arctic. Global warming exists.
Global warming is caused by humans.
Over the last century, Americans began burning more and more fossil fuels to drive our economy, power our homes, and fuel our cars. The United States is responsible for about one quarter of the world’s energy consumption each year and emits about one quarter of all greenhouse gasses.
When we burn fossil fuels, such as coal and gasoline, we emit greenhouse gasses. There is a direct relationship between the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted by humans, increased amounts of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, the rise of earth’s average temperature, and more severe weather patterns (such as floods and droughts). Global warming is caused by humans.
Global warming will have disastrous effects (if nothing is done).
Tens of millions of the world’s poorest people will be most affected by global warming. Famines and crop failures will cause unimaginable suffering in Africa, Asia, and around the world. Millions will starve; millions will die of disease; many more millions will be forced to abandon their homelands, becoming environmental refugees. Unstable countries will be thrown into poverty and war, creating the conditions where genocides and recruitment of terrorists often occur.
If we continue to do nothing, droughts in Africa and the Southwestern United States will continue to grow in frequency and length. If we continue to do nothing, hurricanes and typhoons affecting the United States’ Gulf Coast and southeastern Asia will continue to hit more often and with more brutality. If we continue to do nothing, floods in Southeast Asia and the along rivers in the American South and Midwest will occur with more regularity and with higher waters. If we continue to do nothing, sea levels will rise necessitating the evacuation of coastal regions around the world. Global warming will have disastrous effects (if nothing is done).
Global warming can be stopped.
Just as global warming is the result of a century’s worth of greenhouse gas emissions, global warming solutions will require decades of action. Each year that passes in which we do not dedicate ourselves to taking action against global warming, our task—and the task of children and grandchildren—becomes more difficult.
To solve the climate crisis, we must take action individually, as families, and as communities. We must take action within our churches and act as one Christian church. We must act as one unified nation and we must act as one global community.
Until now, Christians have been largely uninvolved in the solutions to the climate crisis. There is no question that Christ would join in the fight against global warming—not only to preserve the sanctity of Creation—but also to ease the suffering of those less fortunate than Himself. Jesus tells us that however we treat the least among us is how we treat Him. Matthew 25:31-46. If we act as Christ taught us, global warming can be stopped.