Earth Day 2006 arrives with some evangelicals making a controversial push for radical environmental legislation | Mark Bergin
NASA scientist James Hansen delivered a doomsday message on 60 Minutes last month, declaring that unchecked global warming will reach an unstoppable tipping point in 10 years. Time magazine followed suit with a cover headline, "Global Warming: Be Worried. Be Very Worried." Such excitement is shaping public opinion and even influencing the ministerial agendas of well-known evangelicals.
The Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI), a statement signed by 86 prominent Christian leaders, outlines the catastrophic dangers of global warming and cites biblically mandated stewardship as the impetus for governmental restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. Support from such highly visible sources as Purpose Driven Life author Rick Warren and Foursquare Church president Jack Hayford gives the ECI an unprecedented measure of credibility among those typically leery of environmental causes.
The nuclear option
Despite international scorn, Mr. Bush has maintained that top-down emissions restrictions like those called for in Kyoto Protocol would cripple economic growth
President Bush has never wavered in his defiance of the Kyoto Protocol, a voluntary emissions reductions pact signed by all seven of the other G8 nations in an effort to combat global warming. Despite international scorn, Mr. Bush has maintained that top-down emissions restrictions like those called for in Kyoto would cripple economic growth, hurting poor and rich alike.
Now, other G8 nations are struggling to meet their Kyoto commitments. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of the foremost original supporters of Kyoto, has softened his stance in light of economic damages. A recent study of Italy, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom projected that meeting Kyoto commitments by 2010 would increase energy costs by as much as 40 percent and eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs.
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