Quick To Listen

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Quick to Listen is back from its holiday break and we are beginning the new year with a focus on the environment. We have previously published two interviews on this topic, one with Spencer Weart and one with Arthur Dahl. This third interview is with Pat Michaels, a decidely more conservative thinker than Weart or Dahl. But in keeping with our commitment to listen to all perspectives, it is important to also hear from Dr. Michaels. His bio can be found at the conclusion of this interview. We will also publish later in the week two original articles written by leading thinkers in the environmental debate. The first article is by Sir John Houghton, an evangelical Christian and outspoken advocate for environmental awareness. The second article is by Ross Gelbspan, a veteran journalist and author of two books on the environment, Boiling Point (2004) and The Heat is On (1997). 

Interview with Pat Michaels 

QTL: You have said that climate change has been happening for many years and so there is no reason to get any more concerned about climate changes now. Have you changed your mind on this perspective after the recent hurricane seasons, which saw an enormously high count in the number and severity of storms?

PM: The global number of tropical cyclones was actually below the long-term average. Reports linking Katrina and global warming simply ignored scientific truth.  Severe (category 3-5) hurricanes require a water temperature of 28 degrees Celsius.  The historical record shows that, above that threshold, there is no significant relationship between increasing temperature and stronger hurricanes.  The Gulf of Mexico reaches 28 degrees every year and maintains that threshold for several months.  Consequently the Gulf is ALWAYS primed to produce a storm of Katrina’s magnitude.

Since last summer, Katrina has been downgraded by the National Hurricane Center to a Category 3 at landfall in southeastern Louisiana.   While a category 3 storm is obviously still quite strong, the damage inflicted on New Orleans was far out of proportion to the magnitude of the storm.  It is therefore obvious that the major problems in New Orleans, as we are learning, had to do with the structure and quality of the levee and bank system more than with the severity of the hurricane.
 
QTL: Your position has been well publicized that we can’t stop climate change, so rather than waste tax payer money trying to stop what we can’t, let people keep their money and buy products that are more environmentally friendly, etc. Why do you believe that climate change cannot be stopped?

PM: Because it cannot.  If every nation of the world fulfilled their “obligations” under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the amount of warming that would be “prevented” is seven-hundredths of a degree C per fifty years.  This amount is simply too small to measure, as temperatures fluctuation .15 degrees from year-to-year. 

But any attempt to meet Kyoto is enormously expensive.  Right now, Americans would have to reduce their consumption of gasoline by 25% to meet Kyoto.  When gasoline hit $3.00 a gallon, consumption only dropped 4%!  That means that energy must become ENORMOUSLY expensive in order to meet a treaty that won’t do anything measurable about warming anyway.

This has a perverse effect upon environmental protection and energy efficiency.  Such huge costs will take away individual capital that would normally be invested in publicly held corporations.  The companies that, in general, produce things more efficiently (or produce efficient technologies) are those that will prosper in the future.  So taking away this investment capital delays the production of new, efficient technologies.

Consider a personal example.  In my family stock accounts, the largest single sectoral holding is in automobile manufacturing.  Before you label me as a complete imbecile, let me expand:  the holdings are in two stocks,  Toyota and Honda, that are leaders in the production of efficient transportation.  Their stock prices have appreciated approximately 40% in the last two years.  Ford and GM, which produce a lot of SUV’s and inefficient cars, have both seen a 40% drop in their price.

Now, consider if gasoline was around $10 a gallon or so, or whatever is required to meet Kyoto.  First, I wouldn’t have as much money to invest.   Second, the overall economy would be so damaged that real wages would be much lower.  Consequently my (and other people’s) investments would not occur and people couldn’t afford to buy new technologies.  This is precisely what many people view as the wrong course, and it would be brought upon by meaningless instruments like Kyoto.

Then there’s the multiplier effect.  Because companies that produce efficient technologies have appreciated in value, stockholders then have even more money to invest.
 
QTL: What proof do you have that your theory actually helps to reduce the problem of climate change?

PM: Per-capita carbon dioxide emissions began to decline globally in the late 1980s.  Disregarding nations that derive much of their electricity from nuclear power, the decline started in the United States, when we could afford more efficient technologies. Then, as other nations have become more affluent, their per-capita emissions also declined.  Affluence is therefore the key to environmental protection, which should be obvious to anyone who has traveled the world. Interestingly, the number of births per capita also declines along with emissions, as wealthy, educated couples tend to have fewer children than are found in poorer families.
 
QTL: It seems the solution to environmental degradation is, for you, the growth of affluence. Is the United States doing enough to help poor countries and people become more affluent?

PM: I wish I knew how to reduce international poverty. I really believe that the people (and therefore, the government) of the U.S. is largely well-intentioned, and would certainly have found a way to do this.  After all, it would be in everyone’s best interest, worldwide.  But we have not found a mechanism.  I think that’s something we can all agree on.

QTL: Some reports say that you have received several hundred thousand dollars from coal and oil interests in recent years for supporting their policies. Is this true? If so, how do you respond to those who say that your perspective on global warming is nothing more than a paid advertisement for/defense of the coal and oil industry?

PM: I have to publish in the refereed literature, and I probably get a stiffer review as a result of this, all of which is well and good.  But you should also realize that there are conflicting “policies” that energy interests have.  For example, some large coal companies very much want mandated CO2 reductions, because that will require sequestration from all stationary sources, which means coal, natural gas, oil, etc…But because coal is most abundant this means that they get to sell more, as sequestration reduces power production efficiency by about two-thirds.  So you see it is not at all very clear, is it?  And you can bet those people probably don’t like me, either!

Pat Michaels is Senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia. According to Nature magazine, Michaels is one of the most popular lecturers in the nation on the subject of global warming. He is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. Michaels is a contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His writing has been published in the major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science; and his articles have appeared also in the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, and the Journal of Commerce. He has appeared on ABC, NPR’s All Things Considered, PBS, Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, BBC and Voice of America. He holds A.B. and S.M. degrees in biological sciences and plant ecology from the University of Chicago, and he received his Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1979.

by Roy Howard

Merciful God of all people, we remember before you the people of  Pakistan in the hour of their grief and the crisis of their nation. In this time, work with those who seek the peace of all people, that the leaders of Pakistan, along with other world leaders, would be instruments of wisdom and reconciliation. May every diplomat be an ambassador of hope and calm in the face of chaos.

Turn our grief to courage and our despair to hope in solidarity with the people of Pakistan, in the name of the One who was born to bring peace and good will to all people.  Amen.
 

by Jim Burklo

O little town of Bethlehem
A wall thee now divides
Above thy concertina wire
The silent stars go by
Beyond the wall the soldiers
Aim rifles toward the sky
Militias roaming streets inside
Ignore the baby’s cry

The settlements and suicides
Injustice, greed and hate,
O little town, you seem to drown
In tears for your hapless fate
But hear the choir of angels
Their great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!

Dead dogma burdens Bethlehem
With grudges from the past
Muslims, Jews, and Christians, too
Say their claims are the last
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

The baby’s voice is calling us
To Bethlehem again,
Where walls divide may grace abide
Forgiveness enter in
The morning stars together
Proclaim the holy birth
And praises ring, for Love we sing
And peace to all on earth!

by Fred Weidmann,

Forgive me for dipping again into the waters of the Chronicle of Higher Education (see “Jesus’ Extreme Makeover:  Breaking the Aggression Cycle,” posted on this blog on Oct. 17, 2007) for my subject.  It is, frankly, a pleasure to observe that that weekly journal, often seemingly oblivious to church and church-related institutions, is itself revisiting church practice and teachings.  It is also interesting, and perhaps not surprising, to find in the pages of the Chronicle both colorful and challenging, as well as thin and painfully stereotypical, notions of church life.
     In a recent column, “The Limits of Community” (Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 7, 2007 section C p. 3), the author, who writes under the pseudonym “George Theodore”—I wonder whether that choice of name has anything to do with a certain George Theodore who was a likeable, slightly gawky, almost good-enough-for-prime-time outfielder for the hapless New York Mets teams of the mid 1970’s—argues that the “pragmatic demands of academic life mean that church-related colleges can’t always demonstrate compassionate Christianity.”  Having myself grown-up within, attended, and served such church-related institutions, I can certainly confirm, and have indeed experienced (!), much that is cited in the article.  I do, however, have two important concerns about the author’s stated assumptions about church vis-à-vis academy, which go to the often harmful (mis)perceptions of both. 
     First, the article includes several positive ways “in which community was fostered” at the author’s institution.  Unfortunately that fostering did not extend to clear guidelines and frank discussion regarding review process and expectations.  Had such been in place, including a serious annual review process, the individual whose plight is recounted in the article would have had the opportunity to gauge and improve performance and those colleagues variously supporting or inclined toward not supporting the candidate (perhaps for pernicious reasons, perhaps out of genuine concern and respect for the overall mission of institution) would have had the opportunity to voice their concerns.
     Second, and perhaps even more importantly, I am concerned by the author’s presumption that “church-related colleges are not the same as churches” because churches are defined by “the purest forms of community” while academic institutions must face such “pragmatic demands” as “the need to offer quality….”  Talk about damning with faint praise!  Churches are great communities, they’re just not built for, or particularly capable of, quality.
     The author sets up a false and harmful dichotomy.  Why?  Precisely because “pragmatic demands” are the stuff of community!  Successful churches, like successful institutions of most any kind, have in place the very kind of processes to support and promote effective leadership as are discussed above.  Without such, community can and will indeed break down—as it did at the institution described in the article.  “Compassionate Christianity” exercised in the name of community and leadership cannot and does not avoid clear expectations, goals, and frank discussion; it promotes them.  You don’t believe me?  Go read a parable. Or, visit a successful, quality church (of which there are many!).
     With prayers for strength, courage, quality and pragmatically demanding community life in and among our churches and church-related institutions…

by Jim Burklo

“He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.”

A lyrical manifesto for economic justice.  There it is, in chapter one of Luke, at the beginning of the Christian story.  Mary’s “Magnificat”, her song to God after learning of her mysterious pregnancy, is full of hope for a structural transformation of society.

Volunteering and making donations to causes that serve people in need are powerful expressions of our faith.  Charity takes hard work and sacrifice; it always will be a necessary and honorable way to live out the Christian life.

But right next to charity is Christianity’s imperative to change economic and political structures.  It is a beautiful thing for me to be able to use our church’s “Pastoral Discretionary Fund”, maintained by the charitable donations of our members, to help those among us who don’t have money or insurance to pay for essentials like medical care.  Every bit as beautiful is the work of California Council of Churches.  For years, the Council has been lobbying hard in Sacramento for universal, single-payer health insurance.  Such a systemic transformation would protect the significant number of people in our congregation who have inadequate health coverage, or none at all. 

Two thousand years later, Mary’s Advent cry for justice still rings.  But churches are often intimidated by it.  Unlike most charitable efforts, working for social change is often controversial. So churches often stick with charity and avoid advocacy that might cause arguments among members.  But if we really care about the sick, the poor, the homeless, and the victims of wars or disasters, the church won’t ignore the social structures that allow these problems to continue.  Surely we can find a way to advocate for justice while prayerfully honoring our differences about how to do it. 

It’s a good thing to feed the poor.  Our church’s Wednesday free lunch for the low-income people of our town makes me proud to be the pastor here.  But getting corporate money out of politics might turn out to be an even more effective way of alleviating poverty in America.  The hard political work required to clean up our deeply corrupt political system isn’t as immediately satisfying as personally filling a plate of food for someone who can’t afford a hot meal.  But if we took special-interest money out of campaigns, we might get structural change that prevents people from going hungry in the first place. 

Mary’s “Magnificat” song makes it little wonder that, years later, her son would turn over the money-changers’ tables in the Temple, where the common people of Israel were being fleeced systematically.  Jesus fed the 5,000, but he didn’t stop there.  In a time when corrupt, unregulated tax collectors could reduce families to starvation, Jesus spoke out for justice. 

Jesus healed not only the sick, but also the systems that sickened them.  He fed the hungry while attacking the structures that starved them.  May the first candle of Advent light our way as we follow him in practicing both charity and change.

by Steve Rankin

I hate to admit it, but I just turned 53 years old.  I was born smack-dab in the middle of the Baby Boom.  On my birthday a few days ago, my wife and I were headed to a worship service out of town and stopped at McDonalds for a cup of coffee.  Two cups cost $1.07.  I was surprised and commented on the price.  The sweet young woman at the cash register smiled and said, “It’s the price for seniors.”  Ouch.  After church we went to a restaurant that had a buffet.  The waiter who came to ask about drinks also asked, “Is either of you a senior?”  Now, this is cruel and unusual punishment for an aging Baby Boomer on his birthday. 

Those of you old enough to remember, do you remember the 1968 movie, “Wild in the Streets?”  Among other au-dacious happenings, a 24-year-old gets elected President of the United States.  The tagline of this film was, “If you’re 30, you’re through!”  Although I was a young teenager and did not ever see the film (my parents probably wouldn’t let me, so my memories come from previews), I remember thinking how racy it all seemed.  We thought we were shattering all the rules. 

We Boomers tend to hold on to this image of being young, even though we, too, are going the way of all flesh.  Jean Twenge, in Generation Me, has argued persuasively that Baby Boomers, who think of our generation as having re-defined popular culture (I’m amazed at how many of us believe that Woodstock [1969 version] really did change the world), do not even hold a candle to the young people of today on pushing aside traditional expectations.  I work with college students and love the job.  That said, I’m feeling increasingly “geezerish” on an almost daily basis.  This generation of emerging adults (an actual sociological term nowadays) is mystifyingly paradoxical to me.  They are brazenly self-assertive, even “in your face.”  At the same time they are surprisingly passive and vulnerable, in some ways really fragile.  They are very opinionated, yet when challenged (even gently and respectfully), they tend to wilt.  They have opinions, they just don‘t know how to support them.  Now, I know these observations are, for the most part, my own anecdotal, very unscientific, observations.  But some of them seem to go along with what I’m reading.

One of the most paradoxical qualities that I see in young people is their passion and hunger for God (coupled with a deep desire for community) and their detachment from organized Christianity.  It is increasingly the case that I en-counter students on the campus where I teach who think of themselves as deeply committed Christians, who do not participate, who do not engage, a local church at all.  In other words, they never or rarely go to church on Sunday.  They may consider chapel their “church” for the week or it may be a small group or some sort of “Bible study” with friends.  In keeping with the brazen, opinionated quality I just mentioned, I overheard one student (a self-identified Christian) describe church as “boring as hell.”  He doesn’t go.

What do we make of this picture?  I honestly don’t know.  As Christian Smith has recently written (see “Getting a Life,” christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/006/2.10), the one thing we don’t do is lurch between anxiously grasping at “relevance” or rigidly demanding that young people do church the way we oldsters think it ought to be done.  One thing that is still critically important – relationships.  But relationships with young people will likely be more off-putting in certain ways and bumpier than we’d like.  We’re going to need a huge dose of humility and pa-tience…and love.  In a word, the American church needs to repent for ignoring its young.  I’m working on this kind of penitence every day.  I admit, these young ‘uns do make me scratch my head.           

by Jarrett McLaughlin

Writing “Thank you” notes was never a personal strength of mine.  It really wasn’t until I got married that I ever really wrote one.  Suddenly, my wife Meg deposited into my lap a ten page spreadsheet of all the people we needed to thank for our wedding.  Notes to the wedding guests were easy enough: Thank you for the frying pan, thank you for the salt shaker, thank you for the salad bowl.  Those were the easy ones. 

Then came the close family; then came the dear friends.  Suddenly, these thank you notes were simply overwhelming.  I’d come to one of my groomsmen on the list and I’d remember how he hugged me tight before the ceremony.  I’d come to my parents and remember how my father stood next to me, teary with joy throughout the ceremony.  I’d come to my ‘new’ uncle George and remember how he stood behind me during the family photo and afterward threw his arms around me from behind and bellowed “WELL, YOU”RE ONE OF US NOW!”

These were the moments that overwhelmed me with thankfulness.  So how do you say ‘thank you’ for that?

Luke tells us about some other people who were overwhelmed by a great gift.  In chapter 17, Luke tells us about ten men with leprosy who cried out to Jesus for mercy.  Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the Priests, and along the way they were healed.  One of the men returned to Jesus to give thanks to God for this great gift, nine of them did not. 

Martin Bell writes in his book The Way of the Wolf: “Ten were cleansed and only one returned.  It must be nice to be able to do that.”  I think he’s right…sometimes finding the right words or the right way to say ‘thank you’ is the most difficult thing to do…especially when the gift is so overwhelming. 

And yet the one does return.  The one does give thanks to God for this miraculous healing.  So my question is not, like Jesus, ‘Where are the other nine?,’ but rather ‘Why did the one return?’  Where did he find the courage and the strength to be thankful in the face of such an overwhelming gift? 

As always, the Biblical text is sparse on details.  It rarely gives us a peek into the inner thoughts and feelings of its many characters, and this one healed leper is no exception.  If I may speculate a bit, though, I like to think that this man never lost sight of the gifts of God.  I like to think that he always had his eyes trained to see the gifts of God.  After all, the text says “One of them, when he SAW that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.” 

I believe that this one man who returns, who gives thanks to God for his healing, this man demonstrates one thing – Thanksgiving is a choice.  It’s not always an easy choice, it’s not always easy to find the right words to say ‘thank you,’ but this man does prove that we always have the choice to return and give thanks. 

And when we know the gifts of God, when we are thankful for the gifts of God perhaps words are not the best way to give thanks.  I like how Jesus says to the man ‘Get up and go on your way, your faith has made you well.’

It’s as if Jesus were saying to the man, the fact that your are grateful is enough.  The fact that you are able to live your thanksgiving demonstrates your faith, and that faith gives you a health beyond the simple healing of body that you received from God. 

The ability to live your gratefulness in the sight of God…I like to call that Thanks Living.  How do you say thank you for such an overwhelming gift…I can tell you that it doesn’t fit on a ‘thank you’ note.  Sometimes, the best way to ay thank you is with you entire life.

I’d like to share a prayer from a young man in Haiti named Vedrine. Vedrine was an orphan who was rescued from the streets of Port-au-Prince, and so you can imagine how cruel his life must have been, but still he finds the words to express his own Thanks Living.  This is his prayer:

 “God, I believe in you.
 I love you.
 Thank you for all you do for me.
 Is there anything I can do for you?”

by Roy Howard

Just for a day
let peace abide.
Just for a day,
let the ancient land called holy
soaked in blood, be quiet.
 
Just for a day
let peace abide.
Bring them away
from Bethlehem and Jerusalem,
from Nazareth and Nablus,
from Damascus, Riyadh and Amman.
 
Just for a day
let peace abide.
Bring them away from violence
slouching toward Annapolis;
unclench fists, open hardened hearts,
shatter foolish pride,
encourage risk takers -
Israelis, Arabs, Christians, Jews, Muslims ¬ with the holiness that births newness.
 
Just for a day
let peace abide.
Let the ancient land called holy
soaked in blood, be quiet.
For in your gaze a single day is a thousand years.

———–
Annapolis summit. 2007

Dr. Spencer Weart is Director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) in College Park, Maryland, USA. Originally trained as a physicist, he is now a noted historian specializing in the history of modern physics and geophysics. His most recent book is The Discovery of Global Warming (Harvard University Press, 2003). Gordon McClellan interviewed Dr. Weart recently. Below is the transcript of that interview.

GM: In writing the book, Discovery of Global Warming, what were the most significant insights you gained into this issue that you had not known previously.

SW: In the course of my work since the mid 1980s I became increasingly convinced that we faced serious climate change, but that understanding came from reading the scientific results as they came in, not from my historical work. Similarly for a realization that public awareness of the risk was deliberately impeded by industry-funded media campaigns.From my historical work, I was surprised to learn that it was only by good luck that we reached an understanding of greenhouse warming in time to do something about it; if only two or three scientists had been less curious and dedicated in the period 1940-1970, we would be well behind where we are now. Understanding climate change was impeded, I found, because it was dispersed among many disciplines, and it took me some time to realize that a result that was “known” was in fact known only among some scientists, and those in another field might not learn about it for many years (the situation now is much better).