As the Academy Awards reminded us, political and social action against global warming is the new gospel for an old, tired creation. We can save humanity, even the whole world, if we align our political and personal compasses with the green. An inconvenient truth, one not abided by in the Gore house, proposes a solution to the current and pending plight of the global poor and rich. How should Christians respond to the global warming crisis?

Evangelicals are falling into two main camps on environmental issues.  See the New York Times article here. This has clearly come to a head in the divergent open letters put out by the National association of Evangelicals and Interfaith Stewardship Alliance. Signers (Chuck Colson, James Dobson) of the latter letter are taking a more conservative approach. They claim that scientific research clearly demonstrates that human pollution via CO2 and fossil fuels produces marginal damage to the environment, and that the  resources and taxation that required to perform political overhaul will outweigh the actual contribution to our ozone. They also pull in Wayne Grudem for biblical support.

The former, including leaders such as Rick Warren and Duane Liftin are advocating increased evangelical action for the environment through the Evangelical Climate Initiative.  This statement claims that evangelicals are under a moral and biblical imperative to act enviromentally for the sake of the poor and God’s creation, claiming that humans make a significant enough impact on the enviroment to call for reform.

Where do you land on Global Warming? Will you sign the former or the latter? How has this affected your lifestyle?

Any blogger worth his salt will second-guess his motives for blogging, not just once but weekly. I posted on my blogging reservations a long time ago, when I was with blogspot. There are so many pitfalls for both blogger and reader–frittering away time, inflating the ego through comments and hits, writing for the blogosphere buzz instead of for nobler reasons, feeling like one is in-the-know, settling for information in lieu of understanding, and on and on. For all the pitfalls, is it worth the time?

And what of email? Similar pitfalls but in snail time. We send emails in the hope that we will get one back, one that will “encourage us” [=praise us]. Replies shouldn’t be too long. The medium demands speed and brevity. It hardly replaces letter writing, though that has its own set of dangers.

In thier latest issue, n+1 authors present an entertaining and insightful critique of the “intellectual scene” as it pertains to the email/blog world. Commenting on email they write: “It fits our phase of capitalism, the collective attitude is casual, natural-seeming, off-hand; the discipline is constant and intense.” In other words, it takes time and energy to look cool, hip, and in need of no-one. From selecting just the right fade and wear on a pair of jeans, to aiming for the perfect tone, length, and lightness of an email, our age is an age of disciplined casual. In reality, we want recognition from others–praise, acceptance, full inboxes, and heavy-commented blog entries. Of course, there are many unrequited bloggers and emails out there because we want recognition, but we don’t want to recognize.

n+1 continues: “Western civilization has become a giant inbox; it will swell and groan but never be empty till it crashes.” What a sad existence! What a decivilizing existence. They point out the effects of our unchecked cybersociety: “ceasing to be able to be alone, and yet refusing solitude without entering into company.” In short, community is cut off and personhood stifled. More could be said, but I’d rather hear it from you (but you don’t have to comment!). Consider the decivilizing nature of our interactions with technology, technology that “liberates in emergency uses, and decivilizes in daily use.” Consider how and why you email and blog.

In his well-balanced way, Michael Quicke brings a much-needed center to the literature on leadership and preaching:

Leadership left to its own devices can lose spiritual footing in several ways. Separation from preaching increases the dangers of leadership degenerating into humanistic advice, becoming devoid of the Holy Spirit, empty of spiritual understanding, and predisposed to puffed up pride.

Without understanding leadership, preaching becomes wooly in its piety, naive in its application, and guilty on all accounts of thin-bloodedness…Preaching urgently needs to learn from leadership about critical issues such as change, conflict, the need for intentionality, and the understanding process.

Al Gore’s Home Consumes 20x The Energy of Average Homes… (Drudge Report)

POWER: GORE MANSION USES 20X AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD; CONSUMPTION INCREASE AFTER ‘TRUTH’
Mon Feb 26 2007 17:16:14 ET

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization committed to achieving a freer, more prosperous Tennessee through free market policy solutions, issued a press release late Monday:

Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

HT: KC