Happy Earth Day! Perhaps you are aware I’ve been preaching for a month or so on the theme Origins: God’s Green Earth. The series is all about the earth, the environment and the end times. This whole creation/evolution debate is a worship issue in that it’s about who gets the credit, the glory and the praise. I encourage you to tune in via the podcasts if you are outside the area.
This past weekend was especially important as I connected the dots between the population control movement and the global warming movement. This is not just about how we all need to drive hybrids and use high effeciency light bulbs. What we have here is an evil, unholy end-time alliance. (DVD’s of the message are available – you’ll want that over the audio-only version as some key video clips and charts that I used in the message are only on the DVD.)
Here’s the deal, media mogal Ted Turner is pouring his billions into Algore’s three-year propaganda campaign. If you haven’t seen the Ted Turner clip I showed a few weeks ago, check it out for yourself. He says “we’ve got to stabilize the population – there are too many people.” He advocates getting the planet from 6 billion people down to 2 billion through global one-child per family policies like they have in China, through forced sterilization and by getting reproductive health care services within walking distance of everyone on the planet. Of course that is all code for “abortion.”
First, the problem the globe is facing is de-population not over-population. We need more babies right now not less. Second, we all want to save the planet, especially Christians. God gave us the mandate to steward the earth and we abdocated that mandate and the world has picked up the “green mantle” in a misguided way. Third, Satan is at war with God and, people, human-beings are the only thing in the created order that bears the image of God. Satan is a liar and a deceiver. He knows people won’t buy the “kill people” agenda so he’s packaging it “save the planet.”
All this fuss over whether it’s getting warmer or colder is just a smokescreen for something far more devious. It’s like the devil is distracting mom and dad by getting them to fuss over the thermostat all the while he is taking their children.
Jesus spoke of the convulsions in nature as sign posts of the end of the age. He said it’ll all be like birthpangs. We know there will be false prophets at the end of the age, but if it’s like “birthpangs” then we can expect some false alarms, some false labor. Just like years ago when I rushed my pregnant wife to the hospital and they sent us home a couple hours later because it was “a false alarm,” Jesus is saying “heads up, there will be some false alarms before this all comes to pass.”
Think about these things as one billion people today, earth day, sound the “alarm.”
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April 22, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Happy Earth Day « The Black Cordelias
[...] Also worth taking a look at today: Killing People to Save the Planet – part one « Gate Post [...]
April 22, 2008 at 5:06 pm
asimplesinner
Now might be a good time for Christians everywhere to reconsider the direction that has been pervasive in all non-Catholic communities since the Anglican communion ok’d birth control at Lambeth in 1931… Today there are no more than a handful of Protestant communities that affirm the traditional ban. In 1931 there was not even a handful of communities that questioned it.
At the very least, the difference with distinction should be made that pro-life Christians cannot in good conscious use “the Pill” for birth control – it does not prevent conception, it prevents implantation. It often acts as a chemical abortion in preventing newly concieved souls from implanting… And the toll it is now being shown to take on the environment and women’s bodies is rather stupendous.
Sadly, even well-meaning Christians are being duped by these sleak lies as we rush head long into depopulation… It is refreshing to see this being talked about in non-Catholic pro-life circles.
April 22, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Joshua
You really think there are not enough people on the planet? Seriously? Just 100 years ago, the planet had less than 2 billion people. Now, we’re over 6.5 billion.
If there is any problem with low population growth, it is that it reflects as low economic growth in most cases. It is the fault of this stupid capitalist system we have that we need constant growth just to avoid recesssion. It is like what the Red Queen says in Alice in Wonderland: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
Now the problem with constant running is that you can’t keep it up for long – you get tired as you run out of energy and you risk heatstroke as your body gets very hot. The exact same thing will happen if we keep increasing our populations in order to stay economically ‘in the same place’. We will run out of energy resources and we will pollute the atmosphere so much that we will overheat.
Remember, the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Tim 6:10). How fitting to this verse it is that, in order to preserve our economy, we cause many people (and animals) to suffer from starvation and pollution, and decrease the quality of life for all other humans to come in the future.
God told Adam and Eve to “fill the Earth” (Gen 1:28), not to overfill it. We also know that as long as we stick to what God has told us, the environment will be good (Lev 26:3-5). The corollary to this is that if we disobey God’s commandments, like the one to “fill the Earth” by having too many children, the environment will suffer. Which is exactly what we see happening today…
April 23, 2008 at 12:00 am
asimplesinner
“God told Adam and Eve to “fill the Earth” (Gen 1:28), not to overfill it.”
TO be not only provacative but insatiably Catholic…. Who exactly are you to determine what is overfilled or when there is just enough?
I know we (Catholics) get accused of being top-heavy in our reliance of magisterial direction (something much exagerated by those who are without) but on the flip side, your confidence in your ability to interpret how to fulfill scriptural mandates or when we have done so and done just enough comes from where exactly? Your final authority being your personal judgement? You do you know if you are right or wrong? It is kind of important – perhaps now more than ever – to have a certitude as to your corectness beyond your private opinion or reading – a lot of smart people approach the same texts and come forth with readings and interpretations to rivael Babel.
“Remember, the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Tim 6:10). How fitting to this verse it is that, in order to preserve our economy, we cause many people (and animals) to suffer from starvation and pollution, and decrease the quality of life for all other humans to come in the future.”
Conversely one could point out that no one starves for love of money, but a good deal of souls are never born, aborted, or avoided for love of it. All the famines of modern eras are associated with wars, and wars born of ideology at that. No one in the third world starves if an American has another child! Why do people starve? More from – at the most – our government’s complicity in not confronting idealogues and cleptocrats who steal from their own in love of money.
“The exact same thing will happen if we keep increasing our populations in order to stay economically ‘in the same place’. We will run out of energy resources and we will pollute the atmosphere so much that we will overheat.”
And in the worst case scenario not have our money, wealth, luxury and comfort be as valuable any longer? All the world’s population could have an acre in TX – this isn’t REALLY about making so many babies that they will start falling off the edge of the planet – especially not as Russia de-populates at the rate of 0.7M per annum.
Is their discipleship and willingness to be open to the lives that the Lord the giver of Life sends, or is their first and foremost concerns about our own comfort and lifestyle couched in terms of misplaced concern and compassion for areas where some in a world with no lack of resources are unnaturally lacking in recourse to those resources?
April 23, 2008 at 3:56 am
Joshua
“Who exactly are you to determine what is overfilled or when there is just enough?”
Well, if we accept for a fact that the Earth can be filled (as that verse suggests), then it is obvious that at some stage, population growth will have to stop. You can’t just keep adding more people to the planet and expect it never to fill up.
Maybe a good indicator of when the Earth is too full is when all the resources start to run out and all the arable land gets used for farming or living (as we have to start farming rainforests, which can’t sustain crops for more than a year). Which is exactly what is happening now.
“Conversely one could point out that no one starves for love of money, but a good deal of souls are never born, aborted, or avoided for love of it.”
Firstly, it is obviously not a sin to decide not to have children, because otherwise abstinence would be sinful. So there is no problem with “souls never being born”. Your objection to abortion I can understand (I don’t agree, but that is beside the point), but not all birth control involves abortion. In fact, abortion is a very minor part of birth control. In Germany and Spain, abortion is only legal to protect the health of the mother and/or embryo/foetus, but those two countries still manage to have a very low fertility rate of 1.4 and 1.3 children per woman respectively.
People do certainly starve when Americans have another child. Each child in America will use an enormous amount of resources. America gives away their food surplus as food aid, so if Americans are eating all their food, where will the aid come from?
“All the world’s population could have an acre in TX – this isn’t REALLY about making so many babies that they will start falling off the edge of the planet”
Each person uses far more than just the room they need to sleep. Each person needs land to grow their food, land to produce the materials and resources they use to live, and land to digest the waste they produce. This measurement of land is the ‘ecological footprint’, and currently it is estimated to be 7.5 hectares (0.03 square miles). As far as the planet goes, the total footprint of the human population is about 25% more than the land area of the Earth.
As far as that measurement goes, we are more than “full.”
April 23, 2008 at 4:10 am
Joshua
Just to clarify, that 7.5 ha measurement was for the average US citizen. It’s much less for all other countries except the United Arab Emirates. Which is why one fewer American child makes a far bigger impact on the world than one fewer Somalian or Afghani child. Population control starts at home – lead by example!
April 23, 2008 at 7:19 am
Steve Hickey
Simplesinner – thanks for your comments!
Joshua – Thanks for commenting. Have you seen Demographic Winter yet? An additional thought on the fears of us having so many people we use up the earths resources… that’s old Malthus thinking – he didn’t factor in technology and agricultural advances – farmers yield far more per acre than they did a hundred years ago. We have yet to farm the sea, the desert, etc. The answer is to focus on how best to use the earth, not how to kill people. Here’s what is mostly being overlooked when we talk of the earths “limited resources”… God provides our daily bread. This will be nuts to many, but he can feed a multitude from a few fish – provide manna from heaven. The issue is looking to him not the earth.
April 23, 2008 at 9:31 am
asimplesinner
“God provides our daily bread. This will be nuts to many, but he can feed a multitude from a few fish – provide manna from heaven. The issue is looking to him not the earth.”
In no way shape or form am I disagreeing with this sentiment, and not to detract from it…
But one of the causes of concern that Christians must deal with is our resource allocations. Monies spent on certain technologies and endeavors (our stewardship as individuals and nations) should always be examined. We have the resources and technologies for de-salinization, and irrigation systems and crops developped that could make the dessert bloom if we will consider turning away from some of our wasteful ways. As a nation we built a pipeline from Alaska – decades ago. If we had the same wherewithall to build such pipelines for de-salinated ocean water into the dessert to irrigate crops (for example).
Certainly He will provide. One of the ways He has done so has been through our knowledge and technologies. I feel a lot of the scary things certain in the zero-pop-growth community tell us are predicated on an understanding that the status quo would or should have to be preserved… rather than a wider imagining of the good things that can be done.
April 23, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Joshua
Yes, I’m not doubting that technology can allow us to grow more food on less land, but that technology has to come from somewhere and use something. Fertilisers use petrochemicals, and farm machinery use oil-based fuels (diesel, gasoline). The earth has a finite amount of those, so we can only keep up this technology-assisted farming for a while – certainly not for the next few hundred years. Maybe we could move to sustainable fuels and fertilisers, but those are unlikely to be as cheap and effective.
I have serious doubts that the planet could sustain any more people, or even the current population, for much longer without seeing severe problems – problems that will see many people suffer because of our lack of foresight.
April 23, 2008 at 8:15 pm
asimplesinner
Joshua I am still not anywhere near being sold on the idea that the costs of better farming outweigh the potentials for more production… (In fact I am also a critic of a lot of the bureacracy and non transparency of governments that prevent greater levels of efficiency and do not promote better technologies… that is perhaps for another post.)
Ultimatey – necessity being a mother – costs are going to be brought down and/or fuel efficiencies increased on alternative fuels. The real bottom line worry for a lot of folks in the west is simply this “Will my affordable luxury be affected?”
April 24, 2008 at 7:37 am
Steve
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) at its World Food Summit in Rome reported “Globally food supplies have more than doubled in the last forty years… at a global level, there is probably no obstacle to food production rising to meet demand… simply with the present technologies fully employed, the world could feed 30-35 billion people, i.e. roughly six times the present world population.” My source- Population and Development, Eamonn Keane
Can’t find it at the moment, I think it comes from Bread for the World, but the basic idea is the American’s alone throw away in left-overs, wasted food and restaurant waste enough calories a day to feed the starving world. Supermarkets throw a third of their fresh produce away. And even before it gets to the consumer, between the farm gate and my plate half of what is produced is wasted. That alone is half the food needed for the whole of Africa. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/the-16320bn-food-mountain-britons-throw-away-half-of-the-food-produced-each-year-790318.html
We don’t have too many people and the problem isn’t a shortage of food.
April 26, 2008 at 2:58 pm
hortonhears
“Fertilisers use petrochemicals, and farm machinery use oil-based fuels (diesel, gasoline). ”
Most farm machinery use diesel fuel. The diesel engine was originally designed to run using peanut oil! During the summer months, we run all of our diesel vehicles on used vegetable oil we get from restaurants, and I’m not worried about a vegetable oil shortage any time soon.
April 26, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Joshua
If all the other farmers did the same as you, I’m sure there would be a shortage of vegetable oil.
April 26, 2008 at 11:06 pm
asimplesinner
On the other hand if all farmers did as her family, would there be a shortage or would the system of supply and demand cause the industry most affected – farming in this instance – to seek recourse to greater efficiency?
I am exhausted after a long day so I will make this quick, but my biggest criticism of the “ZPG” crowd and the folks who speak of doomsday scenarios for “over-population” is the all-too-often total lack of imagination or understanding for how markets and innovation work. One friend I have who is big into zero-pop-growth seems to be acting on an understanding that mankind is not that resciliant and when the last drop of oil is pumped we will just collectively say “oh crap” and then either lay down and die, starve, or have some sort of post-apocalyptic “Mad Max” existence.
I simply don’t see that.