A Pivotal Place for Politics

It is election season and I will not tell you for whom to vote. I hope you are relieved to hear that. As a pastor and a Christian, however, I will attempt to be helpful in cleaning the lens through which one sees the election. There is a way to cut down the noise and static to make the fast-paced, confusing communications sound clearer.

There is one moral issue that trumps all the others, because if we do not resolve this one, it renders the others irrelevant. I am speaking of global warming. We may all have strong opinions on the economy, abortion, taxes, the war in Iraq, gay marriage, and health care. But if we do not give priority to global climate change in our thoughts and actions, other issues will matter not at all. All political issues are about people. If we do not deal with the greenhouse gas emissions fueling global warming, the continued existence of people on planet Earth is in serious doubt. That will render the other issues meaningless.

Here are two true statements about global climate change.

Statement One: Global warming is real. Scientists are as unanimous on this as scientists ever get.

Statement Two: Human activity is largely responsible for global warming.

I encourage you not to take my word for this. Be a critical thinker. Do some detective work. Use websites that are neither Democrat nor Republican. The magazine Scientific American, at http://www.sciam.com/ is a good place to start as these authors have been publishing science since 1845. If you're serious about science and enjoy complexity, you can check out Science magazine, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at http://www.sciencemag.org/. For easier reading try Popular Science at http://www.popsci.com/. Any of these or other nonpartisan science periodicals will aid a reasonable person to understand climate change.

Having viewed what magazines like this have to say, and assuming you agree with my statements after checking them out, discover what are the positions of all four presidential and vice-presidential candates on the issue. A reliable place to do this is with the article by the Council on Foreign Relations at http://www.cfr.org/publication/14765/, which states the candidates' positions on the issue, quoted from the candidates themselves in various news media. It is also possible to obtain literature from the League of Women Voters and other nonpartisan sources that collect information about candidates' positions on issues.

Then search your own mind and heart. As a Christian, global warming is a moral question of the highest importance. The First Commandment in Genesis, appearing even before the Ten Commandments, is "Tend the garden." The planet called Earth is our garden home and it is our responsibility to care for it. There is room for improvement here, to say the least, and we need leadership to accomplish that. Which of these candidates seems to have the clearest insight into global climate change? Who appears to have the best understanding of its dimensions? Who is best prepared to lead us in confronting this issue and the major economic and lifestyle changes it necessitates?

The rest is up to you.