“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know, it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” — Mark Twain
A science poll taken in the 1990s suggested only half of Canadian adults knew that the Earth travelled around the sun.
The same poll suggested half of the respondents thought that humans co-existed with the dinosaurs (I sure hope it was the same half of the respondents).
This illustrates one of two things: either we watch too much reality TV or we watch too much pro sports (is there anyone left who I haven’t offended?).
This ignorance of basic science is integrally related to the natural human tendency towards wishful thinking. It’s bad enough that we don’t understand basic limits to our profligate lifestyle, but there’s also the very understandable wish to see some sort of magic bullet that could come and save us.
There are two types of magic bullets. The first are conceivable and depend on human ingenuity. Some have even been built and function perfectly. However, we don’t yet know if they will be economic enough to be built in large enough numbers. Or else nobody has bothered to figure out the amount of inputs they might require from finite resources that continue to get more and more expensive, such as crude oil. A large number of alternative energy schemes fit into this category, such as cellulosic ethanol, thorium reactors and thin film solar photovoltaics. This is where government and industry funding for basic and applied research is so vitally important.
But it’s the other type of magic bullet that I want to talk about in this and the next couple of columns. These are the concepts that clearly violate the basic laws of science.
One of them relates to the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs mentioned above. There are a very significant number of people out there who believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and that at some time in the near future, the “rapture” will occur when good Christians everywhere will be whisked up to heaven and the rest of humanity will be left to fend for themselves in some sort of Armageddon scenario.
From the environmental perspective, the danger here is that these believers may overemphasize this aspect of their worldview and forget about any moral responsibility for the health of the planet. The Bible is full of admonitions to the faithful to be good “stewards” of the Earth, but we are only human, and humans tend to have selective memories.
Of course, the other danger is that since the Bible was written long before the science of geology came into being, it doesn’t serve as a very good textbook for understanding the age and complexity of the planet.
It is arguably the greatest book (or more correctly, bunch of books) ever written, but it will never give a full understanding of the environment that we live in.
The good news is that there is an Evangelical environmentalism movement that takes the “stewardship of creation” very seriously.
There is also an “Evangelical Climate Initiative” that takes climate change very seriously.
On the latter’s website, it states: “That same drive which compels us to take the Gospel to a hurting world brings us together with others of like mind to pray and to work to stop global warming.”
Signatories to its first statement on the issue included the presidents of 39 evangelical colleges, the leader of the Salvation Army, and Rick Warren, the best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life, and one of the “15 People Who Make America Great” according to Newsweek magazine.
We are indeed fortunate to have people such as these, for it is they who demonstrate that we need not park our brains at the door when we enter a church on Sunday. And they also show us that we shouldn’t close our eyes to the evidence of the wider world during the rest of the week.
Now, if only we could tear ourselves away from the boob tube for 10 minutes . . . .
Evan Bedford is a local environmentalist. Direct comments, questions and suggestions to wyddfa23@telus.net. Visit the Energy and Ecology website at www.evanbedford.com.