Last weekend in Australia, I had the opportunity to have a four-hour dinner conversation with Kevin Rudd, the new prime minister. I have written about Kevin as a new-style Labor political leader who talks openly about his faith in a secular country.

I asked him about the "apology" he made to the Aboriginal people of Australia as his first act of government. "It is the thing I am most proud of," he told me. Just days before, the newspapers all carried a front-page picture of Rudd and his cabinet ministers lined up on chairs in a meeting with Aboriginal elders at an Indigenous community in the Northern Territory (the heart of the Aboriginal homeland). They were there to discuss how to narrow the gap between the health and life expectancy, education, income, and a whole range of other key indicators between the white and Aboriginal populations of Australia.

During the day we met for dinner, Rudd had been on the Great Barrier Reef, inspecting the "bleaching" of the spectacular Australian treasure due to global warming. He told me that environmental protection and climate change were issues on which he wanted Australia to lead.

Rudd is a Catholic and the first time we had dinner a couple of years ago, he told me he had been a longtime reader of Sojourners and my books. He is indeed well-read theologically, and we had a very good discussion of Catholic social teaching, church history, spirituality, faith, and politics in both the U.S. and Australia, and the power of revival to spark social change -- the theme of my latest book.

He has a special fascination for and attraction to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who helped lead the "confessing churches'" resistance to Hitler. I must confess how unusual and enjoyable it is to discuss Bonhoeffer with a prime minister; he has even written about the theologian in one of Australia's leading magazines -- an article that could easily have been in Sojourners. What most draws Rudd to Bonhoeffer, he writes in the article, was his insistence that the vocation of the church is to be "a voice for the voiceless" and "to speak truth to power." I've always thought there was no better description of the role of the church in the world.

I encouraged the young prime minister not to underestimate the influence of middle-sized countries, like Australia, in providing global leadership on some of the most important issues of our time. I heard Rudd's assessment of his first G8 meeting this spring, of the U.S. image in the world, of our presidential candidates whom he is eager to get to know better. Rudd is very committed to addressing global poverty and climate change, and to making Australia a leader on both.

We sat for several hours at a lovely outdoor restaurant up in Cairns, the tropical northeast corner of the country. Security was certainly much lighter than a similar meeting with a U.S. president is, and I enjoyed how ordinary people would come up with their children to meet the prime minister. Every time, the Australian head of state would extend his hand and a warm smile to say "Hi, I'm Kevin." Very nice indeed.

The new 2007-2008 UN Human Development report is focused on "Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world." According to news stories, the report clearly links overcoming climate change with global poverty:

"The poorest countries and most vulnerable citizens will suffer the earliest and most damaging setbacks, even though they have contributed least to the problem," the report says.
…

As the world's richest countries bear the greatest responsibility, the UN Development Programme called on them to bear the largest burden in cutting emissions and in providing financial aid to the poor.

And, as is true with so many of the big issues facing us,

"The world lacks neither the financial resources nor the technological capabilities to act," the UN report said. "What is missing is a sense of urgency, human solidarity, and collective interest."

I have had some respectful debate with Chuck Colson in the past, but I can't help but applaud - with a standing ovation, actually - his recent statement about the environment. True, his statement could be cynically judged as an attempt to help certain evangelicals save face - in particular, evangelicals who have been anti-environment on the basis of not believing the growing scientific data about global warming - too often supported by truly sketchy biblical proof texting. But in the interest of saving the planet, and saving millions of lives in it, I'm all for anyone saving face who needs to do so. We are, after all, in a faith that is all about saving love.

Colson says:

But for Christians, the question of global warming should not stop us from identifying a critical worldview issue here—one on which every Christian can, or should, agree: and that's the importance of good stewardship toward the rest of creation. There are things we can do now to be good stewards that do not require us to get all of the answers that are going to come on global warming.

Later, he asks:

Can you think of one instance where Scripture praises excessive consumption or waste?

And concludes:

I can't ... Working with institutions to reduce their energy usage ... is good stewardship. And it does not depend on what the scientists eventually can prove about global warming. It is all laid out for us already in the scriptures.

Chuck is spot on. The truth is, large sectors of our religion have become "worldly" in a subtle but powerful way: we have been guilty of an unholy but socially acceptable syncretism between our faith and consumerism. One can't help but applaud Colson's desire to address this compromise.

In my recent book, Everything Must Change, I describe our consumerist system as "insane and suicidal," tempting us to:

act as though the resources we consume are infinite and the wastes we produce are invisible. Just as our bodies consume food and produce excrement, in this economy we consume trees and produce smoke, consume clean air and produce smog. ...

Socially ... we consume time and produce fatigue; consume art and talent and produce entertainment and amusement; consume work and leisure and produce paychecks and heart attacks. And ultimately we consume communities and produce extended families; consume extended families and produce nuclear families; consume nuclear families and produce individuals; consume individuals and produce consumers; and finally, consume consumers themselves and produce disembodied fragments called 'wants' and 'needs' and 'markets' and segments' and 'anxieties' and 'drives' that the economy consumes and excretes and reconsumes in a kind of cannibalistic ferment or rot.

A social system thus based on consumption and excretion, I conclude, can aptly be described as an "excrement factory." One can only thank God that Colson is adding his voice and influence to a call for a better way of living - a life of careful stewardship rather than careless consumption and excretion. May we, as Colson says, "stop arguing long enough to start being good stewards today." Amen, Chuck Colson!

Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) is board chair of Sojourners, and author of Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope.

Last week, the Nobel committee announced its annual Peace Prize, awarding it jointly to Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is a significant recognition for Gore, who has been transformed from a presidential candidate who lost (even though he won) into an environmental evangelist who has changed public opinion on the threat of global warming. His response to the award was that he will use it to continue his work to increase awareness of "a true planetary emergency" and press the world's nations to combat its threats. "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity," Gore told the press.

Gore spent years slogging through presentations to small audiences with a slide show. Now the slide show has become an Academy Award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and its author has won a Nobel Prize. His deep and passionate commitment led to his persistence, and that persistence is beginning to show results.

The issue of climate change was there all along, but it took the research of an international committee of scientists and an evangelist who publicized their research to make a difference. Critics say Gore is alarmist, but that's always the role of an evangelist. There is doom to come if you don't change your ways. But redemption is always possible with conversion leading to a change of mind and heart – that leads to a change in direction and life choices. Many of our most effective social change movements have been spurred by spiritual transformation.

There is more and more evidence that the warnings are not exaggerated. The polar ice caps are melting at a shocking rate. In September, the Guardian reported that in one week an area nearly twice the size of the UK had melted in the Arctic. In fact, I recently heard that over the past year, an area as large as the U.S. east of the Mississippi melted. It is indeed a crisis of biblical proportions.

I congratulate Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize. He deserves our gratitude and thanks. But more importantly, we need to respond to his altar call and change our lifestyles before it is too late and the doom is upon us.

Last week, I wrote about U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon's speech to a dinner hosted by the National Association of Evangelicals and the Micah Challenge. While the main part of his speech was on the challenge of meeting the Millennium Development Goals, he closed by linking that to "another moral imperative" – acting to stop global warming.

On this Blog Action Day for the environment, the words of the Secretary General are worth emphasizing. He noted that

Climate change affects us all, but it does not affect us all equally. Those who are least able to cope are being hardest hit. Those who have done the least to cause the problem bear the gravest consequences.

He cited the dependence of "hundreds of millions of people in Asia and the Americas on mountain snow and glaciers for their water," and the catastrophic threat as the ice and snow melt. Growing droughts in Africa due to climate change threaten the lives of those dependent on subsistence agriculture for survival. Then came his call:

We have an ethical obligation to right this injustice. We have a duty to protect the most vulnerable. Without a strong global effort against global warming, we will fail in achieving the Millennium Development Goals and the implicit human right to economic justice and development.

Without a strong global effort against global warming, humankind could even be wiped out, along with other species. Our earth is God's creation. We are its custodians. We can no longer look the other way.

The good news is that people and institutions of faith all over the world agree. This gives me great hope.

There is now a strong consensus among scientists and the religious community, including evangelical leaders, that while the hour is late, we still have a chance to make a difference. If we are to honor the biblical commandment to be good custodians of God's creation, we have no choice.

Bill McKibben wrote the first book for a general audience about global warming, The End of Nature, way back in 1989. His new book is Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future .

If a glacier falls into the ocean, and no one is there to record it, did it really happen? Perhaps anticipating the question, artist Katie Paterson has created an art installation in which the sounds of Iceland glaciers are recorded through a real-time feed from her cell phone. Audiences that see her cell number displayed at an art gallery in London can call the number and listen, live, to the sounds of large pieces of ice groaning, cracking, and breathing their last.

As global warming changes the landscape and seascape of our planet in a way that feels as permanent as it does ominous, people are already finding ways to remember the natural world as it once existed, or at least bear witness as it changes. In Greenland, glaciers are melting fast, too, reports The Washington Post. One woman marvels at the fact that global warming seems to have left a permanent mark on the island. "Already we are starting our sentences by saying, 'In the days when it was cold … We're starting to talk about it like it was history, and it's only been about five years."

Human civilization has always found ways to remember what is important to its essence. The Inuits of Greenland use good old-fashioned oral history, and a British art student uses a cell phone. But are these acts of remembrance thinly veiled resignations—signs that we're giving up hope for the planet? Or, on the other hand, can they help to inspire us? In the Hebrew scriptures, the God of ancient Israel repeatedly called the nation to remember their roots, often as a way of waking them up. Maybe the fact that our ice caps are becoming history should serve as a wake-up call for us.

Jesse Holcomb, a former Sojourners intern, performs content analysis at the Project for Excellence in Journalism and is a graduate student at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs.

I've been thinking about the recent controversy regarding James Dobson and other conservative religious leaders who wrote a letter criticizing Richard Cizik and the National Association of Evangelicals for taking the threat of global warming seriously. They described global warming as a distraction from the top moral issues of the day. Their perspective made many of us from an evangelical heritage feel that we are living on another planet from these religious leaders.

I don't know why I never thought of the comparison before, but this evening the biblical story of Joseph came to mind. He issued a warning - with no real scientific evidence - of a coming drought. The leadership of Egypt heeded his warning and began stockpiling food so that their people wouldn't starve if and when the drought materialized.

As scientists go beyond identifying the threat of climate change to predicting its impact on global civilization, I wonder what it might look like for our nation and the nations of the world to take joint ameliorative action regarding greenhouse gases, and to take precautionary action regarding water and food. I wonder what it might be like for people of faith, like Joseph, to take a catalytic role in these efforts. And I wonder what mischief we might be legitimately distracted from if we came together around a cause like this.

The biblical story of Noah comes to mind too, because so many species have already been pushed to the brink of extinction and beyond, and with rapid climate change, this tragic trend is likely to skyrocket. What would it be like for people of faith to follow Noah's example in preserving species wherever possible - by preserving natural habitat, and in other cases, creating "arks" to preserve species whose natural habitats are destroyed by flood or drought or melting ice or rising sea levels. People of God, both the Joseph and Noah stories suggest, are keenly interested in the common good - the good of all human beings and the good of all living creatures.

Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and others have complained recently about the ways that religious people use sacred texts for violent and cruel purposes. Perhaps stories like these can fund our imaginations in more constructive ways.


Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) is an author, speaker, Red Letter Christian, and serves as board chair for Sojourners/Call to Renewal. His most recent book is The Secret Message of Jesus, and his next book, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope, will be released later this year.

I agree with Brian McLaren: The recent letter written by James Dobson and others to the National Association of Evangelicals - in reference to Rev. Richard Cizik’s leadership about global warming - is a sign of progress; evidence of the growing numbers of evangelicals who embrace environmental stewardship as a Christian duty. I am also grateful for the courage and leadership of Rev. Cizik. He has certainly taken a risk to preach the truth about creation care, and in doing so he empowers others to do the same.

It is also refreshing to see that James Dobson and friends acknowledge that “the earth is warming.” This is consistent with reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of 2,500 climate experts from around the world who synthesize climate science findings and present them to the world’s political leaders. The most recent IPCC report not only documents the warming of the planet, but demonstrates with even more confidence that the changes in the climate are a result of human actions. Further, the scientists tell us if we continue current levels of carbon dioxide emissions, we can expect warmer, rising sea levels; increased frequency of droughts, floods, and fires; increased intensity of hurricanes; and shifts in growing seasons and infectious disease patterns, just to name a few likely consequences.

Sadly, we can expect these consequences to take the greatest toll on communities who are least prepared and least able to protect themselves – the global poor, coastal communities, and low-income communities here at home. Among other factors, a lack of adequate medical care, secure housing and good nutrition makes such communities more susceptible to the impacts of climate change. Incidentally, these communities have historically contributed the least to the global warming problem. The United States, which comprises only 4 percent of the world’s population, has contributed over 25 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions. If global warming does not qualify as one of the great moral issues of our time, something is wrong with our moral compass.

Rather than dwell on the potential consequences, I want to emphasize that the story is not finished! The scientists tell us that we have time to avoid the most devastating impacts of global warming if we begin to act now. Remember the story of Jonah, who was called to preach the coming destruction of Nineveh? The people heeded his warning and turned from their ways, repenting and seeking God’s mercy and forgiveness. We, like the people of Nineveh, can heed the warnings and take steps to be better stewards of the earth - not only for ourselves, but for our neighbors, our children, and God.

It seems to me the message of Deuteronomy 30:19 is relevant: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” In my travels around the country, I see evangelical Christians and people of all faiths choosing life, embracing their call to environmental stewardship in unique and inspiring ways. I see them choosing to conserve energy, choosing energy efficient technologies in their homes and congregations, and advocating for renewable energy sources and community-wide solutions. I see them gathering in worship to offer prayers of thanksgiving and petition for God’s creation. With this growing momentum, people of faith can turn the tide on global warming and other threats to God's creation. The question remains: how will you respond in light of the biblical call to stewardship?


Lyndsay Moseley is Associate Representative for Faith Partnerships for the Sierra Club. Learn more about the Sierra Club's work with communities of faith. Click here for ten things you can do to reduce global warming today.

You can almost hear the desperation creeping into James Dobson's voice. His attacks on Rich Cizik (and all the other millions of evangelicals working on creation care) are ludicrous. There is not a "heated controversy throughout the world" about whether global warming is real. Instead, worldwide, there's melting ice, gathering storms, and spreading disease. The U.N. estimates that climate change will produce 150 million environmental refugees by mid-century. And very few of them will have done anything to cause the problem - while we in the U.S. produce a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide. Jerry Falwell talks about the need to preach the gospel. Well, the "love your neighbor" part isn't going so well at the moment. It's more like "drown your neighbor" right now.

Here's the really sad part: this is one of those moments for which the church was born. It will be hard for society to make the changes it needs to make, but our churches can actually remember some reason for human existence other than accumulation. They can summon up the love, hope, and faith necessary to take difficult steps in the years ahead. And it's starting to happen: at Stepitup07.org, we've been hearing from faith communities across the religious spectrum, who are organizing rallies for April 14 to demand real carbon reductions.

Dobson, Falwell, and their ilk are the voice of a Christianity so deeply compromised by its embrace of American materialism that it needs to treat as a threat our brothers and sisters in Christ who come bearing the news of physics and chemistry. Rich Cizik has been faithful in reading the signs of the times, and so it is unsurprising he is under attack. But one way or another, his moral clarity will prevail.


Bill McKibben wrote the first book for a general audience about global warming, The End of Nature, way back in 1989. His new book is Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future .

James Dobson’s letter attacking Rich Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals has caused a firestorm, and maybe the beginning of a really good dialogue. Brian McLaren’s post yesterday pointed out that the letter from Dobson and friends actually acknowledged that there is a real debate among evangelicals about the seriousness of climate change and the reasons for it. So instead of calling for Cizik’s resignation for saying global warming should be a moral issue for evangelical Christians, why don’t Dobson and his friends accept a real debate on whether climate change is, indeed, one of the great moral issues of our time? A major evangelical Christian university should host just such a debate.

But I want to focus on the following very clear statement from Dobson's letter:

More importantly, we have observed that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children.

That is indeed the key criticism, and the foundation for the real debate. Is the fact that 30,000 children will die globally today, and everyday, from needless hunger and disease a great moral issue for evangelical Christians? How about the reality of 3 billion of God’s children living on less than $2 per day? And isn’t the still-widespread and needless poverty in our own country, the richest nation in the world, a moral scandal? What about pandemics like HIV/AIDS that wipe out whole generations and countries, or the sex trafficking of massive numbers of women and children? Should genocide in Darfur be a moral issue for Christians? And what about disastrous wars like Iraq? And then there is, of course, the issue that got Dobson and his allies so agitated. If the scientific consensus is right - climate change is real, is caused substantially by human activity, and could result in hundreds of thousands of deaths - then isn’t that also a great moral issue? Could global warming actually be alarming evidence of human tinkering with God’s creation?

Or, are the only really “great moral issues” those concerning abortion, gay marriage, and the teaching of sexual abstinence? I happen to believe that the sanctity of life, the health of marriages, and teaching sexual morality to our children are, indeed, among the great moral issues of our time. But I believe they are not the only great moral issues, and Dobson says they are.

So Jim, let’s have that debate - the big debate. What are the great moral issues of our time for evangelical Christians? You’re right, a new generation is embracing a wider and deeper agenda than you want them to. I think that is a very good thing. You think it is a bad thing, and want to get people fired for raising broader issues than those connected to sexual morality. So, today, I am inviting you to have that debate about what the great moral issues of our time really are. Again, let’s ask a leading evangelical university to invite us both and host a public debate, and perhaps ask a major evangelical publication to co-sponsor it. Let’s have that debate, Jim, and see what America’s evangelicals think the great moral issues of our time really are. How about it?

Once again, the hard-core Religious Right has gone on the attack, orchestrating a new campaign to advance their Far Right political views. In a letter to the chairman of the National Evangelical Association Board, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, and their cohorts claim that “The existence of global warming and its implications for mankind is a subject of heated controversy throughout the world.” And even more bizarre, there was another report this morning that in his sermon last Sunday, Jerry Falwell claimed the debate over global warming is a tool of Satan being used to distract churches from their primary focus of preaching the gospel. Falwell, Dobson, and their friends are wrong, and this time their attack shows just how far outside the evangelical mainstream the Religious Right's views have become.

The truth, which almost everyone except them acknowledges, is there is little reasonable doubt left about the threat posed to the earth by climate change. There is an international consensus among scientists, religious leaders, business leaders, and economists that we must act, and act now, to preserve a world for our children. Just a month ago, the leading international network of climate change scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, concluded for the first time that global warming is "unequivocal" and that it is with 90% certainty due to human activity. The New York Times called the report “a bleak and powerful assessment of the future of the planet....” You can read the full report.

But the Religious Right is also now personally targeting the NAE’s vice president for governmental affairs, Rich Cizik. They claim that Cizik is “dividing and demoralizing the NAE” by orchestrating a “relentless campaign” opposing global warming. And they end by suggesting that “he be encouraged to resign his position with the NAE.”

Cizik, far from dividing evangelicals, is part of a broad evangelical consensus on global warming. He is a respected evangelical leader who is bringing Christians together to address the growing danger of climate change, and is literally a hero to a new generation of evangelical students and pastors. That new generation has made “creation care” a mainstream evangelical issue. A statement last year by the Evangelical Climate Initiative, signed by 86 national evangelical leaders, including 39 Christian college presidents, noted that “we are convinced that evangelicals must engage this issue without any further lingering over the basic reality of the problem or humanity's responsibility to address it.” The statement added: “Love of God, love of neighbor, and the demands of stewardship are more than enough reason for evangelical Christians to respond to the climate change problem with moral passion and concrete action.”

Sen. John McCain, in an op-ed with Sen. Joe Lieberman, recently declared: “The debate has ended over whether global warming is a problem caused by human activity. … There is now a broad consensus in this country, and indeed in the world, that global warming is happening, that it is a serious problem, and that humans are causing it.” In a powerful commentary in this morning's Washington Post, "The Climate Change Precipice", David Ignatius wrote, "The scientific debate about whether there is a global warming problem is pretty much over. ... Skeptical researchers will continue to question the data, but this isn't a 'call both sides for comment’ issue anymore. For mainstream science, it's settled."

But the Religious Right is so used to being able to veto debates by their proclamations that when they see they are losing, they go on the attack. So if they think the debate is not over, let’s have a debate. We will respond; stay tuned next week.

I have a lot of heroes, but Cal DeWitt is high on the list. Before anyone else, he was at work building the religious environmental movement in this country, and he has never wavered – the fact that evangelical leaders from across the theological spectrum last year signed a statement of concern about climate change owes more to his leadership than anyone else's. So he was one of the first people I turned to when we launched Stepitup07.org. He immediately sent a letter to 60 evangelical seminaries and colleges, and wrote a post for our blog that ended like this:

I am pleased to join you in taking one spring day and use it to reshape the future. Science is on our side; and the deep ethical and moral fabric of America is on our side.
We now need a movement – one that will produce the largest rally ever to address – seriously and NOW – the great emerging crisis of global warming and climate change!

And with his help that's just what we're delivering. Parts of the faith community are stepping up to the challenge with real vigor. Not only evangelicals but also Unitarians, Presbyterians, Orthodox Jews, and everyone else who can feel the horror of the de-creation we're now engaged in. (Since I'm an old Methodist Sunday School teacher, I'm always glad to see one of those Wesleyan congregations signing up on our Web site.) One group has even launched an interfaith walk across Massachusetts in the early spring to draw attention to the cause!

But we need more religious involvement, because it's one of the ways we can show wavering congressmen and women that this isn't an "alternative" movement – that instead it comes straight from the heart of America. And straight from the heart of the gospel tradition, with its paramount call for love of neighbor. At the moment, the 4 percent of us in this country produce a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide – once you look at maps of rising sea levels and spreading mosquitoes, you realize that we've probably never figured out a way to hate our neighbors around the world much more effectively. That's got to stop – and with your help on April 14, we will take the first big steps to making it stop.


Bill McKibben wrote the first book for a general audience about global warming, The End of Nature, way back in 1989. His new book is Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future .