People worried about putting food on the table today understandably consider that to be more urgent than reducing smog next year or minimizing global warming one hundred years from now. The Act says, "The term ‘species’ includes any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plant, and any distinct population segment of any species of vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature" (emphasis added).68  The trouble with this definition is that when most people unfamiliar with the esa think of a species as being in danger of becoming extinct, they think this means no individual organism of that genetic definition will be left anywhere–or, since the esa applies to the United States, at least there. 2. For a discussion of the American West and how different property rights systems affected stewardship practices, especially as these practices pertained to species preservation, see Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, Free Market Environmentalism (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1991), chapter 3. in Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, ed. The more fully, then, a society embodies a Christian worldview, and the more its decision makers–private and public–embrace that value framework and operate with the information and incentives provided by a private-property legal regime with exclusivity, liability, and transferability, the more decisions with environmental impact are likely to be responsible and to minimize harm to people and the larger environment. Let us say that a resource is exhaustible; hence, it is important to give future generations some voice in the choice about the appropriate rate of use. And now the climate is warming. Roger A. Mason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); George Buchanan, De Jure Regni Apud Scotos (1579); Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex (1644); and Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees, Jus Populi Vindicatum, or, The Right of the People to Defend Their Lives, Liberty, and Covenanted Religion, Vindicated (1669). The independent economic forecasting firm wefa, even after accounting for likely improvements in energy efficiency, estimates that meeting the United States targets under the Kyoto accords would cut annual economic output by about $300 billion (or about 3.5 percent of the roughly $8.4 trillion in 1998 gross domestic product [gdp]) and, by 2010, destroy more than 2.4 million jobs and reduce average annual family income by about $2,700. The most important contrary indicator is that the sequence is the reverse of what the theory would predict. 20:12; Deut. But they don't paint a complete picture of the biblical stewardship meaning. 6:7—8); proportionality (Exod. Then, when they become accustomed to the higher survival rates, and when the cost of raising children rises and the delay before those children become net producers rather than consumers grows, couples begin having fewer children. (Tempe, Ariz.: ibr Press/Institute for Biospheric Research, 1982), 73—80, esp. As history has repeatedly shown, it is the creative spirit of the human person that permits wise stewardship, and institutions that encourage this spirit are more likely to also facilitate environmentally sound ends. 34. 1. In reality, that which we grow, produce, and make is only allocated to us as payment on a temporary basis. But the data–to the extent that both sets are to be trusted–now show the opposite to be true. Giving future generations a voice is a bit awkward. Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson, "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide"; zwr.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.html. In effect, the environmental transition has already occurred in most countries with respect to these environmental amenities because most people and governments are convinced of the public health benefits stemming from investments for safe water and sanitation. The under-five mortality rate has plummeted from about 40 percent everywhere as late as the nineteenth century to under 7 percent worldwide today and under 1 percent in high-income countries. Quoted in Francis A. Schaeffer, "How Should We Then Live?" It describes fat and lean sheep. In the market arena, these agents are either unselfish contributors to the future or speculators acting on their perception of future demands for resources. 2:16); but governmental power, necessary to subdue sin and reduce its harm, must be exercised by sinful humans, who may also abuse it (Ps. That means that whatever the Bible has to say about environmental stewardship still applies, and on a larger scale. Some three to five million children under the age of five die each year from diseases contracted from impure drinking water. Our ability to act responsibly toward nature has been hindered by our alienation from God. E. Calvin Beisner, "Anomalies, the Good News, and the Debate over Population and Development: A Review of Susan Power Bratton’s Six Billion and More," Stewardship Journal 3 (summer 1993): 44—53. Nonetheless, many people still fear population growth because they believe it leads to overpopulation. Their preferences will be expressed only in people who exist presently, so it is useful to have someone stand in for them today; they need agents to represent them. "47  As the report exemplifies, it is easy for researchers to focus only on anticipated negative health effects from changes in global atmospheric chemistry and climate. 32. The transition is delayed in these cases because decision makers have only recently realized the importance of these indicators, or the social and economic consequences of controlling them are inordinately high relative to the known benefits, or both. Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesy about the dire consequences that occur when man … See also John Harris, Stanley Godlovitch, and Roslind Godlovitch, Animals, Men, and Morals (New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1972); and Arne Naess, Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy, trans. Resilience-Based Ecosystem Stewardship. In fact, for any resource to be used in the present, all who believe it has some value in the future must be outbid. Religion, Science, and Environmentalism, ed. When he created the world, God set aside a unique place, the Garden of Eden, and placed in it the first man, Adam (Gen. 2:8—15). Thus, these agents have strong incentives to be well informed and to predict correctly the needs of future generations. Dr. Thomas Sieger Derr, Professor of Religion, Smith College Richard L. Stroup, "The Endangered Species Act: A Perverse Way to Protect Biodiversity," PERC Viewpoints, April 1992, page 1. Would anyone seriously suggest that frontier America suffered from "overpopulation"? In fact, the vast majority of the three million to five million deaths each year due to poor sanitation and unsafe drinking water occur in the developing world. Editorial Board See Stephen Moore, "The Coming Age of Abundance," in The True State of the Planet, ed. 2:13—14).8. Together, these things mean that all resources are far more affordable, because they are far more abundant today than at any time in the past.28. One can conceive of many cases where a system of well-defined and enforced property rights results in resource use that seems to violate God’s standards. Resilience-Based Ecosystem Stewardship … Computed from Braudel, 1:135. Michael Bauman et al. Singer’s citations are from: [1] A. Trupin and J. Wahr, "Spectroscopic Analysis of Global Tide-Gauge Sea-Level Data," Geophysical Journal International 100 (March 1990): 441—453. 77. See Jonathan H. Adler, ed., The Costs of Kyoto: Climate Change Policy and Its Implications, and a video by the same title (Washington, D.C.: Competitive Enterprise Institute, 1997). While population grew by 19 percent from 1976 to 1994, the index of air pollution fell by 53 percent. Imago Dei and Environmental Stewardship In essence, woman and man are the embodiment of God’s sovereignty on earth. Matt. As demographer Nicholas Eberstadt puts it, "the concept cannot be described consistently and unambiguously by demographic indicators." But the issue has already been heavily politicized. 50. Yet China’s population density is less than one-fifth of Taiwan’s, and, aside from their forms of government, the two countries have very similar cultures. These facts are not vitiated by the fact that humankind fell into sin (Gen. 3). Job 31:6, Ezek. Calculated from statistics in Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, ed. Again, the appropriate question to ask is, Compared to what? But such a commitment by government turns the real value of a species from an asset into a liability–for instance, from the satisfaction one feels from having a rare species live on one’s land to the fear of losing the use of land essential to one’s livelihood. Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1995). Further, whatever rise in global average temperature occurs will likely result not in expanding but in contracting deserts, and not in contracting but in expanding polar ice caps. But it is an error to assume that, just because the market does not presently solve certain problems, government can effectively intercede to do so. But no more. "73  The answer to this problem is to attempt to restructure property rights so that exclusivity, liability, and transferability exist. Such facts help to explain why earlier generations spent a major part of each day working to earn enough income just to pay for food (excluding its preparation, packaging, transport, and serving), while we spend far less today (under 6 percent of total consumer expenditures in the United States in the 1980s went to food). A thousand years ago, human life expectancy everywhere was well under thirty years–perhaps even as low as twenty-four; today, worldwide, it is over sixty-five years, and in high-income economies, it is over seventy-six years. It is tempting to object, "This may be the case for advanced economies, but just look at the horrendous pollution in the world’s poor countries!" For instance, families, local churches, and certain clubs have elements of common property and yet are quite stable over long periods of time. These conditions–knowledge, righteousness, and dominion–provide an arena for the working out of the image of God in the human person. Dr. P.J. On the one hand, people naturally want their own homes and workplaces, and, by extension, their neighborhoods, to be clean and healthful, so they seek to minimize pollution. In many parts of Southern Africa, where full rights of access and control over wildlife have been granted to landholders (of both private and communal land), biodiversity is better conserved in the areas surrounding national parks than in the parks themselves. 6:1—3) and with the reign of the Messiah (Isa. These discrepancies were reported in a study prepared by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences and published in January 2000.36  For the period 1979 through 1998, the surface data appear to indicate an average warming trend per decade of about 0.196oC (or about 1.96 oC per century), while the satellite data37  indicate a trend of only 0.057 oC per decade (or about 0.57 oC per century). Then we started powering machines by burning coal. 24. These developments–along with the advent of glass window panes (to admit light and heat but exclude cold and pests) and screens (to admit fresh air and exclude disease-bearing insects); treatment of drinking water and sewage; mechanical refrigeration (to prevent food spoilage and consequent waste and disease); adoption of safer methods of work, travel, and recreation; and the advent of sanitary medical practices, to say nothing of antibiotics and modern surgical techniques–also help to explain why people live about three times as long now. and rev. He made it. If liability were not fully attached to one’s property–that is, one’s cattle–a person could drive cattle across someone else’s land, allowing them to remove some of the grass without providing compensation. 39. If other taxa were to exhibit the same liability to extinction as mammals and birds (as some authors suggest, although others would dispute this), then, if the total number of species in the world is, say, 30 million, the annual rate of extinction would be some 2,300 species per year. Michael Cromartie, Vice President & Director of Evangelical Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center While we understand that passions may energize in the pursuit of sound environmental policy, we also believe that reason, coupled with a commitment to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with … God" (Mic. 4:2; Luke 12:42; 16:1-2). This is because under a regulated monopoly setting, prices are cost-based, and profits are proportional to costs. For instance, air and water are the major resources suffering from pollution in certain places because they are usually treated as common property, that is, property where no one has exclusivity. 17:14—20), but also in the division of powers into judicial, legislative, and executive (reflecting God as Judge, Lawgiver, and King [Isa. All of this reaffirms the need for a biblically based view of nature and of man so that the desires represented in the marketplace will come closer to God’s desires. Genuine problems require genuinely creative solutions, and property harnesses human creativity to the realization of human needs. The trouble with the assumption–even though it seems intuitively sensible and certainly is a widespread belief–is that it ignores the stewardship role of the human person, and, consequently, is falsified by hard empirical data. in Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, ed. The Christian worldview can be promoted by preaching, teaching, writing, and the like. At the same time, however, it is not clear that any alternative democratic institutional structure would lead to a more godly environmental policy. But is mining the coal the only use for that land? 104:14—23). Similarly, the environmental transition is a way of depicting the tendency for some pollution emissions to rise in early economic growth and then decline. And dumped it into our lakes and rivers when we were finished with it. [2] D. Bromwich, "Ice Sheets and Sea Level," Nature 373 (1995): 18. Richard Stroup, one of the originators of the New Resource Economics, describes the incentives of the esa in this way: Under the Endangered Species Act, the owner must sacrifice any use of the property that federal agents believe might impair the habitat of the species–at the owner’s expense. This idea has been given formulaic expression in Paul Ehrlich’s famous equation, i = pat, where i is environmental damage, p is population, a is affluence, and t is technology. Randy T. Simmons, "Fixing the Endangered Species Act," in Breaking the Environmental Policy Gridlock, ed. We are limited by human desires, as imperfect as they might be, as our standard to measure how resources should be used. While the fact that life expectancy keeps rising suggests that the net effect of development on human life has been positive, this does not imply that every instance of development is unmixedly beneficial, either to people or to creation. This contrasts with a command-and-control approach, in which regulators are likely to mandate particular technologies and methods for pollution control with little regard for overall social efficiency. "48  What is clear is the need for added study before long-term, difficult-to-change policies are adopted. High death rates in the tropics appear to be more a function of poverty than of climate. If the landowner had exclusive control over view rights to her land, she could charge an appropriate fee, and the price system would communicate to her whether the land was more valuable left in its pristine state or mined for coal. 131 Million. On the basis of a biblical worldview and ethics, as well as of sound science, economics, and public policy principles, we believe sound environmental stewardship celebrates and promotes human life, freedom, and economic development as compatible with, even essential for, the good of the whole environment. If plants and insects are included in the calculation, 34 organisms fell extinct in the United States during the 1980s, according to a study by the Department of the Interior. "If present global demographic trends continue, the U.N. low-variant projections are likely. These agents cannot know perfectly the desires of people not yet born, but they can make educated guesses about these desires. 1 of Civilization and Capitalism: Fifteenth through Eighteenth Century, trans. Elements of this definition are found throughout Scripture: impartiality (Lev. Timothy C. Whitmore and Jeffrey A. Sayer, ed., Tropical Deforestation and Species Extinction (London and New York: Chapman and Hall, 1992). As you know, Acton has been promoting liberty and virtue for 25 years now. In part, this is because they fail to describe ecosystems as they really are, and they unrealistically attribute to large, connected regions (e.g., the Amazon rain forest) the characteristics of isolated islands.64 This means it is likely that the real extinction rate is much lower than 0.008 percent of species lost per year. 1:15—16]); the gradation of powers from lesser to greater (Exod. Christians have every reason to embrace an appropriate environmental ethic, one that honors creation but distinguishes it from the Creator. As you read this Founders’ Report – and all of them, for that matter – we hope you will see yourself not as a passive supporter, but as an active collaborator. Urban smog, largely defeated in the advanced countries of the West, remains a serious problem in many poorer cities of the world. The word “steward” and “stewardship” is used throughout the Old and New Testaments of the Bible (Gen. 15:2; 44:1; 1 Chron. The images evoked by the term overpopulation–hungry families; squalid, overcrowded living conditions; early death–are real enough in the modern world, but these are properly described as problems of poverty.31. In the contemporary world, Africa’s rates of increase are the very highest, yet rates of population growth were even higher in North America in the second half of the eighteenth century. In fact, further advances in human welfare for the poor are now often threatened by a belief in the West that human enterprise and development are fundamentally incompatible with environmental protection, which is seen by some as the quintessential value in evaluating progress. 38. It cited a 1992 survey of United States atmospheric scientists, conducted by the Gallup organization, demonstrating that "there is no consensus about the cause of the slight warming observed during the past century." If such beliefs represent a minority position, they are much more likely to find expression in a system of private-property rights than under alternative rights arrangements. The earth, and, with it, all the cosmos, reveals its Creator’s wisdom and goodness (Ps. This agenda threatens to deny those outside the West the very benefits that we ourselves have attained, and, ironically, it may burden the developing world with even worse environmental problems down the road. Both sets are essential to responsible stewardship; neither may be permitted to crowd out the other, and each must be understood in light of both the image of God and the sinfulness of man. If rights are not transferable, no such wealth loss is associated with ignoring the wishes of others. See John Knox, On Rebellion, ed. But that biblical understanding of human nature leads Christians to expect precisely what we have seen: that, particularly when accompanied by properly formed human institutions and scientific understanding built on a biblical worldview, people can produce more than they consume and can actually improve the natural world around them. 71. But for most of the 350 years from 1540 to 1890, productivity in France (which, as was fairly typical of Western Europe, suffered a serious decline in productivity at the start of that period) was well below that.16. In this essay, we shall present theological and ethical foundations we believe are essential to sound environmental stewardship; briefly review the human progress erected on those foundations; and discuss some of the more important environmental concerns–some quite serious, others less so–that require attention from this Christian perspective. The rising temperatures, they fear, will melt polar ice caps, raise sea levels, cause deserts to expand, and generate more and stronger hurricanes and other storms. Despite the reassuring picture painted by all these general observations, many people continue to fear that we face serious threats to human well-being and to the environment as a whole. Not many people search Google to find out what the Bible says about environmental stewardship. It’s a theme in the Bible you can trace from Genesis to Revelation. Property rights generate appropriate information and incentives to the extent that they embody three characteristics: exclusivity, liability, and transferability. 36. He can continue to pollute if he is willing to pay the cost, and, if he does, the additional benefits to society from the polluting activity exceed the additional costs. If those numbers still sound alarming, keep in mind, first, that they represent only about 0.008 percent of species per year and, second, that they are probably significantly exaggerated. Michael Cromartie, Vice President and Director of Evangelical Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center That becomes especially true when the benefits of additional knowledge are rejected and when it is forgotten that improved technology and increased societal wealth are what allow society to deal with environmental threats most effectively. It’s the number of people you reached through Acton over the past year. God has given us the opportunity and responsibility to manage his creation, and it therefore seems appropriate to have an institutional structure that reflects human desires and holds individuals accountable as to whether they use their resources according to those desires. E. Calvin Beisner, Associate Professor of Historical Theology and Social Ethics, Knox Theological Seminary Just as some countries went through the demographic transition long ago and others more recently, while some are in the midst of it now and others have yet to begin it, so some countries are long past the peak in the pollution transition, while others are at or just approaching it, and still others are just beginning the uptrend in pollution. Before the Reformation, few countries had widespread education, and even afterward, schooling was available principally to the rich. Not only the highly uncertain nature of both the theory and the evidence of global warming but also the unresolved question of whether global warming’s net effects will be negative or positive point to one sure policy for the present: to delay action–especially highly costly action such as mandatory reductions in energy consumption–until the matter is much better understood. While atmospheric carbon dioxide (co2) is certainly on the rise, and global average temperature has almost certainly risen slightly in the last 120 years or so, it is by no means certain that the rising temperature stems from the rising co2. The fact that the world is not experiencing overpopulation or destructive, manmade global warming or rampant species loss does not mean that a change in policies or practices is not needed to address other issues. ed. 29. Almost all of the approximately 0.45oC increase in global average temperature from 1880 to 1990 occurred before 1940, but about 70 percent of the increase in co2 occurred after 1940. National Research Council, Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change (Panel on Reconciling Temperature Observations: National Academy Press, 2000). For as people come to feel more secure about their basic needs, they begin to allocate more of their scarce time, energy, and resources to attaining formerly less urgent ends. Yet in the period only seven actual U.S. extinctions have been logged…. For behind soil erosion, desertification, air and water pollution, and all the other ecological, social, and political stresses of our time lies the pressure of more and more people on finite land and other resources, of increasing numbers of factories, cars, trucks, and other sources of pollution required to provide all these people with goods, and the worsening tensions that their needs and aspirations fuel.29. John H. Cushman, Jr., "Religious Groups Mount a Campaign to Support Pact on Global Warming," New York Times, August 15, 1998, section A. In another group are conditions related to responsibility, especially to the existence of a legal framework that holds people accountable for harm they may cause to others (Rom. The fact that a piece of property can be bought or sold means that a resource owner who ignores the wishes of other people does so at a cost to himself, a reduction of wealth. These individuals will purchase the resource in the expectation of a high future value, hold it out of consumption, and, in the process, preserve it for future generations. They are promoting a number of measures to do so, such as the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to force reductions in energy consumption. The Recent Evangelical Debate over Capitalism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 1991). Such an approach to environmental stewardship will, we believe, promote human justice and shalom, as well as the well-being of the rest of God’s creation, which his image-bearers have been entrusted to steward for his glory. See also "Issue Brief: Endangered Species Act" at www.cei.org/EBBReader.asp?ID=728, and "Species Removed from the Endangered Species List (Delisted) through February 1997" at www.nwi.org/EndangeredSpecies/Delistings.html. 10. Please enable JavaScript on your browser to best view this site. He put people in charge of running it. This high and ever-growing use of resources per unit of output explains the high extent of environmental disruption in socialist countries.23. 6 still another will write on his hand, 'The LORD's,' and will take the name Israel. This is clearly worrisome, but at an average of 3.4 extinctions per year, nothing like the rate of loss claimed by pessimists.67. Your email address will not be published. Is it any wonder that such a property rights system led to the near-extinction of the species?71. "If pollution is the brother of affluence," it has been written, then "concern about pollution is affluence’s child. Until about 250 years ago, everywhere in the world, the death rate was normally so close to the birth rate that population grew at only about 0.17 percent per year,11  doubling approximately every 425 years, instead of every forty-two years at the world’s average growth rate in the 1980s, or every fifty-one years at the average rate for the 1990s.12  Infant and child mortality rates (around 40 percent overall) were little better for the very rich–royalty and nobility–than they were for farmers and peasants, even into the eighteenth century. 16:19; 1 Tim. Sherwood B. Idso, Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, went so far as to say that belief in global warming and support for the Kyoto Protocol should be "a litmus test for the faith community. If a buffalo hunter decided to postpone the shooting of any particular animal, he had no assurance that he would have the option to exercise that right in the future. The exercise of these virtues and this calling, therefore, require that we act in an arena of considerable freedom–not unrestricted license, but freedom exercised within the boundaries of God’s moral law revealed in Scripture and in the human conscience (Exod. What holds for density and rates of growth obtains for other demographic variables as well: birthrates, "dependency ratios" (the proportion of children and elderly in relation to working age groups), and the like. However, not only must such anticipated effects be carefully justified and quantified in themselves, but they must also be studied in balance with anticipated benefits. 11:8—9; Eph. O.] Terry L. Anderson (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1997), 82. However, if we stick to real-world possibilities, well-defined rights that can be bought and sold look quite good indeed. We also find a suggestive correlation between negative sea-level rise anomalies and the occurrence of El Niño events. Even that latest prediction is likely to turn out much too high, for it still is based on models that, had they been applied to the past century, would have predicted twice as much warming as actually occurred. 28. Global Warming and Global Temperatures," in Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 25. Human initiative needs to take place within an institutional framework that promotes environmental stewardship. Transferability encourages people to seek out and engage in the United States is the biggest of all dangers... To five million children under the age of five die each year from diseases contracted from impure drinking water to! 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Human initiative needs to take place within an institutional framework that promotes environmental stewardship,! Density is one of the image of God ’ s judgments about where they to. Good thing Rothenberg ( Cambridge and New York: Blackwell, 1995 ) not a thing...