The Christian left and the environmentalist left have teamed up. The Evangelical Environmental Network is planning an ad campaign in selected states, including North Carolina, based on the theme, “What Would Jesus Drive?” EEN argues that “transportation is a moral issue,” which apparently means that Christians should use transportation options sanctioned by the environmentalist left.
As EEN notes, “if a personal vehicle is essential” we should drive electric cars and avoid sports utility vehicles. But ultimately, we should rearrange our lives so that we can walk, bicycle, or use mass transit. As an aside, EEN does not suggest riding an ass, which Christ did choose and which, like the horse, severely polluted the environment with disease-carrying waste and rotting carcasses.
Neither the environmentalists nor the religious left hold the moral high ground on environmental issues. EEN’s campaign is arrogant, paternalistic, and based on ignorance. Given that Christ has complete knowledge, His personal decisions about transportation would certainly not be based on the junk science employed by the environmental movement.
Consistent with other left-wing environmentalist advocacy groups, EEN puts global warming at the top of its agenda. In doing so, it accepts the most controversial formulations of global warming theory and refuse to recognize scientific realities. For example, in its “campaign discussion paper,” EEN states that, “as far back as 1971 evangelical Christian ethicists started to warn of the dangers of global warming.” Not noted is that these warnings have been discredited by facts. The two most reliable and accurate measures of global climate, satellite and weather balloon data, show no evidence of warming.
This is consistent with the conclusions of noted climate scientist and a prominent member of the National Academy of Science panel convened to study the issue, Dr. Richard Lindzen, who wrote that, “there is no consensus…about long term climate trends and what causes them.”
In spite of the evidence, EEN suggests that it is a Christian’s duty to drive cars that emit less carbon dioxide, which is not a pollutant but a part of God’s creation that is essential for all life onEarth. EEN suggests it is a Christian’s moral duty to support the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol, forcing Americans to dramatically reduce their consumption of energy. This is where EEN’s ignorance leads to moral bankruptcy. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, the Kyoto Protocol would, if implemented, throw 1.4 million Americans out of work, including more than 70,000 North Carolinians. These economic losses would leave millions of citizens without health insurance and without many of the basic necessities of life. Even proponents of the Kyoto Protocol admit that any resulting increases in global temperature over the next century would be only an undetectable 0.25 degrees (F).
This is not the only instance where EEN is willing to invoke a perverse sense of morality to justify a left-wing political agenda. As part of its campaign, it suggests that Christians support mandatory gas-mileage laws known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. These laws force auto manufacturers to produce cars that are lighter and smaller than consumers would otherwise choose. But the evidence is that CAFE does not lead to reduced gasoline consumption. People drive more when their cars get better gas mileage and, because smaller cars carry fewer people, there is less-efficient and less-frequent use of car-pooling.
But probably the most morally reprehensible oversight in EEN’s agenda is its refusal to acknowledge that CAFE laws have led to thousands of highway fatalities. According to studies published by the Brookings Institution and the University of Chicago’s Journal of Law and Economics, the smaller and lighter cars produced because of CAFE lead to as many as 4,500 accidental deaths annually. The EEN needs to explain how its support for this blood-for-oil tradeoff is consistent with Christian ethics.
If the EEN is going to be so presumptuous as to tell millions of American Christians that their choices of what cars to drive, where and how to live, and what policies to support are immoral, then the group should have solid scientific evidence to back it up. It does not. In fact, it refuses to acknowledge any studies or data that don’t advance a left-wing policy agenda. This suggests that the WWJ Drive campaign is more about political opportunism than true Christian ethics.
Dr. Roy Cordato is vice president for research and resident scholar at the John Locke Foundation.