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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
My understanding is that you publicly rejected an offer by the leaders of the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation to join forces.
I said, "Not for now." Look, there are those in my community who are concerned that environmentalists are advocates of population control, of big-government solutions, or New Age religion, and have apocalyptic tendencies. In the latter case, there's some irony in my opinion. It's like the pot calling the kettle black.
I am trying to reason with my community that we've earned our spurs in co-belligerency -- collaborating with groups we wouldn't otherwise work with, in the name of the common good. I say, if we've worked with Free Tibet on religious freedom, the Congressional Black Caucus on slavery, Gloria Steinem and feminists on rape, and the gay and lesbian lobby on AIDS, why can't we work with environmentalists?
So you are confident that your community will come to see the common goals it shares with environmentalists?
So long as we explain it the right way. Take mercury. If you reframe mercury regulations as a pro-life issue -- curbing mercury emissions protects children from learning disabilities and unborn children from brain damage -- that gets people's attention. Last January, Jim Ball of the Evangelical Environmental Network and I carried a placard to a pro-life rally that said, "Stop Mercury Poisoning of the Unborn." I distributed fliers showing that one in six babies is born with dangerous mercury levels, and urged protesters to demand improvements in the Clear Skies Act. People were a little perplexed at first, but they got it.
Is there a clash between evangelical beliefs and science?
For some people in the evangelical community there is a mistrust of science in general and a mistrust of science on climate in particular. There is a basic formula that goes: Science supports evolution, evangelicals oppose evolution, ergo there's a conflict between science and evangelicals. Evolution is like the third rail -- if you touch, you die -- sort of like Social Security. We need to move beyond that. Happily, there's a growing number of evangelical scientists who are helping us overcome this barrier.
Have you endured criticism from other evangelicals over your environmental advocacy?
There are those who are concerned that by going down this road of creation care we are saying that plants and animals are superior to people. Again, much of the challenge is reframing the environmental issue for the evangelical community as a people issue. We have to say, for instance, that addressing climate change is a way of saying we care about the millions of people worldwide that might have to endure tremendous suffering and displacement from the drought, hurricanes, and flooding associated with global warming. Certainly the human trauma caused by Katrina has brought this issue home.
What is your opinion on the Bush administration's environmental track record?
I am a pro-Bush conservative, but I believe this isn't a conservative issue, a liberal issue, a Republican issue, a Democrat issue, a red issue, a blue issue, or a green issue. Has the Bush administration done what I think it should do in terms of reducing pollution and resource consumption? No. But I am modestly optimistic that there has been some momentum in the discussion in Washington and the public at large. I am confident that the administration can change its direction, and we can help them do that.
How much influence do you think you have on the direction of the Republican Party?
Our membership is 30 million strong, with 45,000 churches, 7,000 megachurches, some with billion-dollar budgets. We represent 40 percent of the Republican Party. There is a saying that "as evangelicals go, so goes the West" -- meaning our community sets trends. Is everybody in our community ready to support a creation-care agenda? Certainly not. But conservation is conservative at its roots, and they can be regrown.
Did you have a conversion moment of sorts on this issue?
Well, I grew up on a farm in the Pacific Northwest, and you know how they say: You can take the boy off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy. I've always had a love for nature. I've often joked that I learned growing up that climate can seriously impact a farm family's income. There were a few rainstorms that came along and destroyed our cherry crops. We learned the hard way that you can't subdue Mother Nature.
Later in life I had a conversion experience on the climate issue not unlike my conversion to Christ. I was at a conference in Oxford where Sir John Houghton, an evangelical scientist, was presenting evidence of shrinking ice caps, temperatures tracked for millennia through ice-core data, increasing hurricane intensity, drought patterns, and so on. I realized all at once, with sudden awe, that climate change is a phenomenon of truly biblical proportions.
What have you done in your own life to reduce your environmental impact?
Most importantly we sold our R.V., which got about five miles per gallon, and bought a Prius, which gets about 10 times that. I ought to get a commission from Toyota for the number of people I've converted to the Prius.
