A Response to Dr. Jay Richards
Dr. Jim Ball

The following remarks were given in at "God Is Great. Is God Green? A Conference on Evangelicals and the Environmental Task."  They are in response to Dr. Jay Richards' presentation, "Evangelicals and the Environment: How Close an Alliance?"  The conference took place in Washington, DC on November 14, 2008.

Well, normally I’d start off and say it’s good to be here, but frankly I’d rather be outside. I was outside earlier just to cool off, and it was such a beautiful afternoon out there, it was like man, let’s all go outside. I apologize for not wearing my jacket, but I didn’t want to fall asleep during my own presentation. So I’m up here in shirt sleeves.

Just to start off in terms of looking at Dr. [Jay] Richards, most of my comments are going to flow out of his paper. And he has a section in there at the beginning on theology and recognizes that Dr. Land was doing the majority of that work this morning. But I’d just like to add a few comments there.

Myself, personally, as well as EEN [the Evangelical Environmental Network], we like to have a very Christocentric emphasis in everything that we do and all the ways we talk about our work. The purpose of EEN is to declare the lordship of Jesus Christ over all creation. So I love the every-square-inch idea. So I guess we’re Reformed in that way.

But I really like to have a Christocentric emphasis and the first thing, I think, to lift up is that the triune God created through God the Son. John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1—it belongs to the Lord; it belongs to Jesus Christ. As it says in Colossians 1:16, “All things have been created by him and for him.” So who are we the stewards of? We’re the stewards of Jesus Christ. That falls perfectly into our confession that Christ is our Savior and our Lord.

In terms of the discussion about the fall, I appreciated that Dr. Richards added in his verbal comments a point I’d like to emphasize. It is that I think we need to have a little more pointed recognition that we are warped images. That instead of imaging God in our care of his creation, we have a tendency to image ourselves. And sometimes the rule of law is necessary to restrain our selfishness or to channel it. If the earth itself has been impacted by the fall, let’s not forget we’re the ones who made it fall. And that we ourselves are warped images. So I appreciate, Dr. Richards, you adding that in the verbal comments.

In terms of the emphasis on redemption, Dr. Richards talks about Christ as the new Adam, and I’d just add that Christ is the true image. If we’re warped images, then how do we know how to be, set things right, get on the right path? In Colossian 1:15 it says, “He is the image of the invisible God.” Christ is the true image, so we are to image him in our care and keeping of his creation. And in that passage too, it talks about, in verse 20, that Christ’s blood reconciles all things. Ta panta, in the Greek, and that’s everything. So the black holes and the whole thing has been reconciled by his blood shed on the cross. In this understanding of reconciliation and redemption, what is our hope? Our hope is revealed most completely in Christ’s bodily resurrection. What is the future going to be but resurrected bodies on a new earth? And so just a couple of things to add in there in terms of the theology.
 
Now turning to our relations with environmentalists, to kind of summarize what I heard Dr. Richards say, is that number one we should keep ourselves centered in our own tradition. Keep ourselves centered. Number two, that we should be careful about alliances. And then number three, that we should develop a Christian creation care ethic. And then one thing he added in his verbal presentation is an emphasis on intrinsic value, and I really appreciated hearing that.

But I agree with all three of these points that Dr. Richards makes: we should be centered in our own tradition—for me that’s the lordship of Christ; be careful in entering into alliances; and develop our own creation care ethic. This is what I personally have done. I got my Ph.D in theology precisely so I’d be centered in my tradition in terms of addressing public policy issues. And my dissertation was on how evangelicals have responded to the ecological crisis. I’ve very much attempted to do exactly this personally, and I think this is what EEN has done as an organization. We’ve been focused on declaring the lordship of Christ over all creation and having a very biblical, Christ-centered approach to creation care issues.

And I totally agree with everybody’s comments about the word “the environment.” It’s a sterile, untheological term. I didn’t name my organization. It started in 1994. If I had started it, I wouldn’t call it the Evangelical Environmental Network. But in some respects it kind of helps people get in the room in a kind of neighborhood of what we’re trying to talk about. So it has a utilitarian value, but we need to quickly move to terms like “creation care.” When I came to EEN, I renamed the magazine Creation Care. Because when you talk about creation care, you are talking about the fact that there is a creator. And I want everyone to understand that is always the case.

So I agree with these basic points. And in my tenure at EEN, we have not had any partnerships with environmental groups. Because I wanted to make sure we and the evangelical creation care movement had established our own authentic voice, our own distinctive stance, before entering into any such partnership. I actually think we’re close to being ready to start doing that. But I wanted us to be very particular and to articulate a distinctively evangelical Christian biblical approach to this issue in the public arena, and then we could start having some potential partnerships.
 
So this is Dr. Richards’ third point: attempt to have a specifically Christian creation care stance. And I think the Evangelical Climate Initiative’s ten policy principles is a good example of this. I’m sorry I don’t have copies, but it is available up on the ECI’s website: www.Christiansandclimate.org. I’m going to read some of the ten principles, or parts of them.

The second principle is:

Maximize Freedom in Solving the Problem. We believe human beings are free, moral agents whom God enables to choose to do what is right. They should be free to live the lives He intends for them. Thus, government should expand and protect freedom to allow individuals to do His will. Freedom flourishes when the rule of law prevents chaos. (There is a bit of a tension there, right?) In the case of global warming, a proper policy framework will establish the ‘rules of the road’ and what businesses call ‘regulatory certainty.’ This can enhance freedom by allowing us to begin to solve a problem whose impacts will severely limit that freedom in the future if not addressed.

To protect freedom, unnecessary government regulations must be avoided. Government policy should be structured to allow the free market to solve the problem to the greatest extent possible. We should use the least amount of government power necessary to achieve the objective.

 Our fourth principle is to “Take Special Care to Protect the Most Vulnerable.”

The fifth is:

Enhance National and Energy Security, International Religious Freedom, and Rural Economic Development. The massive impacts of climate change around the world will have serious national security implications, creating a less stable world. American reliance on foreign oil also undermines our national security and makes us dependent on undemocratic, despotic foreign regimes that restrict the religious liberty of their peoples, threaten the stability of democratic allies such as Israel, and constrain our ability to occupy the moral high ground in foreign policy on human rights and religious freedom. Thus, we are in favor of climate policies that reduce our dependence on foreign oil (for example, increasing fuel economy) and thereby enhance energy security and our advocacy of religious liberty and human rights.

The seventh one is:

Solve the Problem through the Free Market and Protection of Property Rights. Harnessing the power of the market will allow innovation, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship to generate climate solutions and will ensure that U.S. businesses can compete internationally in clean technologies. To help ensure competiveness, climate policy should provide: 1) a stable long-term research and development program; 2) regulatory long-term certainty; and 3) a robust price signal that reflects the true social cost of greenhouse gas pollution.

We feel it is important to recognize that global warming pollution invades the property rights of all its victims, and restricts their freedom by forcing them to bear costs they should not have to pay because of the actions of others—in either the quality of the air they breathe, the geography they hold dear, the insurance costs they bear, or the future environment of the children they love. Climate policy should ensure that the costs of global warming pollution are reflected in the prices of goods and services that produce greenhouse gases. When the prices are right, the free market can do its job.

Those are just a few of our ten policy principles that I think are a good example of a distinctively Christian approach to this issue. When we do center ourselves in Christ and the Bible and in sound biblical theology, then we need not fear interacting with environmentalists. While we at EEN have not established partnerships with environmental groups, I do consider the leaders within the mainstream environmental movement to be colleagues in a common cause.

I personally know many of the heads of conservation environmental organizations. They’re good people trying to reduce pollution that harms human health and to protect God’s other creatures from extinction. These are goals I share, goals I am motivated to achieve because of my love for Christ, because he is my Savior and my Lord. In my conversations with environmentalists, I share what motivates me with them. And I have discovered that some of the heads of the major environmental organizations are in fact Christians themselves. One I know to be a devout Jew. They are guided in their work by biblical values. I’ve not found what Dr. Richards suggests in his presentation.
 
While there is a great deal that Dr. Richards and I have in common at the theoretical and theological level, I found Dr. Richards descriptions and analysis of the ECI and “What Would Jesus Drive?” to be quite insufficient—no surprise here. I don’t have time to do “What Would Jesus Drive?” but I’d love to answer any of those questions during the Q and A.

Two points of clarification before I proceed. First, the ECI is not EEN’s campaign. We staff the campaign and helped create it, but it is a campaign of the leaders themselves. It does not belong to EEN. We don’t think of it that way.

Second, as I understood our task, it was to talk about the evangelicals to environmentalists, especially in terms of partnerships and alliances. So to be clear, the ECI and the “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaigns were solely evangelical campaigns and did not involve working with environmentalists. But they are in fact examples of how Scripture, biblical theology, and the ethical principles or conclusions derived from them can lead to sound policy judgments and good moral choices.
 
So on the ECI, before I go to the substance, let me address the question of voice, of who is speaking in the ECI statement and campaign—a point that Dr. Richards has raised. The very first sentence of the statement begins, “As American evangelical Christian leaders, we recognize both our opportunity and our responsibility to offer a biblically based moral witness.” So it’s clear from the very beginning that the ECI leaders are speaking for themselves in their own voice. And it is abundantly clear who these leaders are, because we put all of their names at the end of the statement.

In terms of the statement itself, it is organized around four basic claims, which again are made quite clear in the printed document and on the web. The first claim or conclusion is that “human-induced climate change is real.” This claim and the one after it answer a basic question for anything being raised as a public policy issue: Is there an actual problem? This is a question of facts, of evidence, of analysis. A basic methodological step in any ethical determination that public policy is needed, is finding the facts or highest quality evidence and expert evidence one can find to determine whether something is actually a problem.

Well, in our opinion, this is exactly what the ECI has done. Our first claim or conclusion, “human-induced change is real,” is based primarily upon the works of the IPCC, which has been emphasized or talked about today. That’s clearly put forward in the statement. While Dr. Richards has his own opinion about whether climate change is human-induced, the ECI relies on the facts and analysis of the world’s leading scientific experts—including Sir John Houghton, himself an evangelical Christian, and the one in charge of the IPCC  scientific assessment from 1988-2002—in drawing our conclusion that human-induced climate change is real. Indeed, even the latest IPCC report is more definitive. There is a 90 percent or greater probability that warming since 1950 is due primarily to human activities. But we’ve still not determined whether there’s a problem. Is this warming causing climate change, and if so is it a good thing or a bad thing?
 
The second ECI claim provides our conclusion: “The consequences of climate change will be significant, and will hit the poor the hardest.” Again, we base this conclusion primarily upon the work of the IPCC. I’ve got some facts here from the IPCC, but my time is just about up. Just to give you one, by 2020 in Africa up to 250 million will face water scarcity and crop yields could be reduced by 50 percent in some areas. It’s these types of projections from the IPCC that led to our conclusion that “the consequences of climate change will be significant, and will hit the poor the hardest.” So is human-induced climate change a problem? We believe the evidence says yes. So we’ve determined there’s a problem and that we’re helping to cause it.

Does the lordship of Christ in our lives and the teachings of Scripture call us to address the problem? The ECI’s answer is found in our third claim or conclusion: “Christian moral convictions demand our response to the climate change problem.” I was going to read quite a bit here but I don’t have time, but let me just read our middle affirmation: “Christians must care about climate change because we are called to love our neighbors, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and to protect and care for the least of these as though each was Jesus Christ himself.” So based on the evidence and analysis available, we’ve made a determination there is a serious problem, and we also argued that the most fundamental ethical teachings of our Lord require us to help address the problem.
 
Our fourth claim states: “The need to act now is urgent. Governments, businesses, churches and individuals all have a role to play in addressing climate change—starting now.” We talk a little bit about what the states and localities are doing, but let me cut to the chase here on the federal stuff. We also say, as Dr. Richards has highlighted: “In the United States, the most important immediate step that can be taken at the federal level is to pass and implement national legislation requiring sufficient economy-wide reductions in carbon dioxide emissions through cost-effective, market-based mechanisms such as a cap-and-trade program. “

We’re pragmatic and agnostic in terms of what those market-based mechanisms are. If someone wants to do a carbon tax, we’d want it to be a revenue-neutral carbon tax, so people get tax cuts for doing the right thing, but we’d certainly entertain that. It’s just that anything with a tax has a lot of political toxicity. So cap and trade is pretty much where the name of the game is right now.

So Dr. Richards asks that if the planet is warming and if we’re causing it, and it’s bad—all things the ECI publicly affirmed and elaborated on in our statement—would the proposed policies make a difference? Would costs exceed benefits? Good questions.

Now what I’m going to now offer here wasn’t explicitly in the statement, but we’ve got some fact sheets that speak to some of this. Benefits would definitely exceed the costs. The bill that’s just been voted out of the Environment and Public Works subcommittee, the Lieberman-Warner bill, is probably the framework from which any climate legislation will emerge. And there’s been an analysis by the Nicholas Institute at Duke University on the costs and its conclusion was by 2030 projected business-as-usual GDP would increase 112 percent from ’05 levels. So if we didn’t implement anything, there would be a 112 percent increase in GDP. If you implemented the America’s Climate Security Act, the Lieberman-Warner bill, GDP would rise 111 percent. So there would be a decline of less than one percent of GDP over the course of the next two decades.

Now this does not include all the co-benefits that would accrue from addressing the problem, such as the health benefits. A couple of years ago, the Bush administration did an analysis of the Clean Air Act—a retrospective analysis. They found that benefits exceeded costs by twelve times. So I don’t know what kind of rates of return you have on investments, but if you can find something where you’ve got benefits exceeding costs by twelve times, that’s one heck of an investment. So from our point of view it really is a sound investment, a really good thing for us to be doing. So I’ll stop there.

Dr. Jim Ball is the Executive Director of the Evangelical Environmental Network.