Environmentalist Misanthropes [The Pugcast]

0:00Hello, welcome to this edition of Theology Pugcast. It's great to have you here with for this show. I'm Sierra Wiley, I'm a pastor and I am a senior editor at Touchdown magazine. Okay Tom, how about you? I'm Tom Price, I teach theology, Christian ethics and philosophy and I write and speak and do a bunch of other things. And Glenn, this is your show so go ahead and introduce yourself and then take us into the subject of the day. I'm Glenn Sunshine, I'm a retired history professor and senior fellow to Colson Center for Christian World View. I also write and teach and do a variety of other things like Tom. Although I don't actually do them like Tom does. Anyway, today I want to talk about something that I became aware of from an article from the Colson Center actually. And I'll just read the first paragraph or so out of this and I think that will set

1:00the stage for what we want to do. A group of scientists are once again predicting imminent disaster because of overpopulation. Quote, it might sound like the plan, the evil plan of a nefarious villain, a recent daily male article, right? But scientists now say we need to have Earth's population to save the planet. The researchers have even offered quote non-corrosive measures to lower the global population to 4 billion by the year 2200. Of course, that includes quote providing women in low income countries with family planning services. Their plan according to the daily male is similar to that of Marvel Villain Thanos who thought he would eliminate suffering by eliminating half the human race. Okay, so one would think by now that Erlich's book, The Population Bomb, which came out in the 70s, would be dead and gone by now. The fact is that

2:01you know, Erlich was predicting an imminent collapse of everything if we didn't reduce the population. At that point, there was 3.8 billion people in the world. Today, there's over 8 billion and we have not seen the disaster that he predicted. But and actually what we're seeing is birth rates below the rate of replacement in almost every, well in every developed country around the world. Some like in South Korea, it's disastrously low. China is realizing that they're one child policy, which by the way seems to have been influenced at part at least by Erlich's book, is facing the very great likelihood of severe economic contraction as you have an aging population and an ethos that says that you shouldn't have more than one child, which guarantees a shrinking

3:04population. How do you support the the elderly under these circumstances? And so on. And so we see the disastrous effects of declining population, you know, of reproduction below a replacement rate. We have not seen the predictions of disaster come into effect. And yet somehow you've got this group of scientists who are saying that we need to have the Earth's population in order to save it. Yeah, I, there are a lot of things to come to mind and you brought up a couple of them and that is we're already on our way to doing what they want. So they should be applauding and encouraging people to even just keep going as you're going. In other words, everything you've noted, if I understand the way the numbers work with demography will get us to what they say we should be, where we should be

4:04without any new efforts or initiatives. So that's where I'm at. Yeah, and I mean, I think I'm always fascinated as a theologian looking at the theological vision that underpins these, you know, they're basically so teoriologies. They're, their views of salvation, right? The high priest scientists are going to deliver their prophetic word and prognostication and solution. And but it is interesting that in this case in particular, this is just a kind of rehashed spirituality, the images of God are the problem again. And in some sense, they're right. The image of God have done and re-tavoc on each other and the world. But their solution is basically just start having less and less image bearers around. They again, it's outside of their competence to have a vision of trans, you know, where you can transform and transfigure. But it is interesting that in Christian theology, where you have the, how

5:10fundamental the salvation of the world is to the image of God, that it's so much so that it groans until the children of God are liberated back into being full image bears. And so it is interesting to see how those visions contrast. They're left without a set of resources here. And so the thing they have to fall back on is just natural science. It's somehow can we can implement to limit the population because somehow that's going to save the planet. And again, one of the things that intrigues me about these guys is they don't seem to have gotten the memo that their authority is fully in question for many people because of people actually doing what they've suggested in the past and discovering that there was really bad advice. You know, we can look at a lot of kinds of things. But also, there's never seems to be

6:10any interest in exploring positive trends. So I remember when I was, you know, in my teens, we were all concerned with acid rain or we were concerned with the hole in the ozone layer. And both of those things appeared to at least have somehow just kind of faded away in terms of being problems. But there was never any celebration. There was never like, you know, end of ozone hole day. It's probably because all the women in the 80s finally stop using aqua net. But wasn't that one considered one of the clubs? But that actually gets at it, I think something worthwhile. A fairly modest solution. In other words, it wasn't some grand you end imposed thing that led to a positive outcome. It was just some fairly modest changes in

7:11how we do things led to some good outcomes. You know, I think about like the Bald Eagle, we thought it was gone. It was like the, you know, you remember all those in the late 60s, early 70s films, like, you know, a plan of the apes or like, you know, Megaman or exwelling green where it just ecological collapse and everything is just going to be awful. And now, you know, we have problems with eagles like messing with people, attacking people on who are just minding their own business. And stuff, you know, it's a very different world. But there's like, but, but no celebration. You know, the bison is back. You know, there's just all of these different things that we can look at and say, you know, we don't have to resort to these kinds of draconian measures to, to address problems. Yeah, well, and on top of that, it, it simply ignores the history. One of the things, the breakpoint noted that an obituary to Aarillic admitted, quote,

8:14his ideas encouraged masterlization programs in India and the one child policy in China and influenced our children everywhere were viewed and valued. So what we see is, part of the effect of this is the devaluing of children in the face of imminent ecological disaster. The one these days is anthropogenic climate change, which we can talk about later. But it ignores the fact that their own population more than doubled since Aarillic wrote his book. And on top of that, you have increased crop yields and global rates of malnutrition and starvation have been reduced by more than half. While the population more than doubled. What it's ignoring is that that human beings, yeah, we make a mess of some things, but we're also really good at finding solutions. Yes, that's what I was going to say in human

9:19ingenuity. So what it comes to these increased yields, when it comes to the various things that have been done to, what are we dealing with today? We're not dealing with starving children. We're dealing with fat kids. There's an epidemic of obesity in the world. So the things that we were worried about have proven to be things we shouldn't have worried about and things that we didn't see coming or were inadequately concerned about have become major matters of concern, dropping population, obesity, these kinds of things, which makes me wonder, what are these people have against the human race? Because that's where I go. There is a deep anti-natal, anti-human bias. In all of this. That was my thing. Something about the image bearing that they can't stand.

10:23These people are creepy. One thing I should note, by the way, is that there are places where children are starving, but mostly it's places like Sudan that are torn by war that has completely disrupted things. But that brings up actually another point, along with this anti-human thing, which we need to talk about, where is population growing? Africa, primarily. So basically what they're saying is we want less black people. Yeah, I think that's a pretty logical inference. You know, I talk about birth control and things like that in developing countries. They're thinking Africa. Yeah. We have fewer and fewer developing countries, by the way. We can't think of India as a developing country anymore. Certainly China is no longer a developing country. Now, there are certainly large areas in those places that are still in Poverst, but that was truly the United States up until 70 years ago. Dolly Parton, someone we just said goodbye to,

11:28she was born into a cabin out in the middle of the Appalachia, Appalachian mountains, without running water, without electricity. That was Dolly Parton. And they had to pay for the doctor for delivering her with a sack of cornmeal. Yeah. So we, yeah, we, it's not been that long since even white people, even some white people were pretty poor. Yeah. So the, the, the, um, misanthropic, um, of view of this, that sees human beings as parasites on the planet as, as the problem, rather than a source of solutions, is one of the things, again, it's counter history. It's counter the, the observed track record of dealing with these kinds of problems. Um, and everyone of our own predictions has gone spectacularly wrong. Yeah. Um, and yet somehow this idea still persists. Do you remember the club of Rome?

12:34Um, there was basically a think tank. When did they do their work? Is it in the 60s, wasn't it? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. But they're like this guy, you know, Ehrlichman, he, just everything was wrong. But there was this, uh, Paul of just the sort of like gray and just, uh, apocalyptic thinking that just came over the Western world in the late 60s and early 70s. And we're still not gotten out of it. We had a brief period of time where we, we're thinking positive thoughts again in the 1980s. It seems like, but that those are days, they're long gone. Well, that's also interesting that way you'd think of the kind of grim character of Christian conception of the human as fall and broken. All the traditions hold it one way or the other, whether it's utter depravity or just, it's affected everything. But you'd think that would be the pessimistic view that would want to limit the amounts of sin-bearing human. And yet it's exactly opposite. That there is still even under the conditions of the

13:38fall that mandate, it will come with struggle and suffering, but it will also produce many good things. And the many good things through the use of human gifts and endowments, even natural ones, have produced stunning amounts of ways of negotiating the brokenness of the world and its challenges. And so it's not a pessimistic view, even on the, on the worst doctrine we have, if you will, concerning the humanity in the future of the world apart from, from its redemption. And it's still sustained and it still has all kinds of magnificent endowments that allow it to continue. And then double that with the effects of grace and light of Christ and Christians and salt and light. And it's just enhanced those capacities to deal with these kind of challenges. Not perfectly, we can get it wrong, destructively. You have to be vigilant and sober about it. But we don't have

14:40to go to these extremes where we wipe out or stop having human beings or get rid of human beings because we're so concerned about the world, which isn't conscious by the way apart from us. So is the creation sitting around worrying about this? Yes, it does grow. It wants its perfection. But it's not, where the consciousness of it. Yeah, but since you've observed time, I think, accurately, that the fallenness of human beings can't be the reason why there, you know, somebody is anti-Natal or, you know, we just think about the Roman Catholics who up until very recently were known for having big families, in that case anymore, unfortunately. But it seems as though places where you still see a lot of kids being born, there's a very strong sort of Christian, at least when we're thinking about the Western world, basis for it. But where does this antipathy to the image of God come from? Where does this hatred

15:46for children come from? This impatience with, you know, seeing other people. You know, I get the sense that these scientists just don't like a lot of people. They're like, Sart, who's the hell other people, right? Perhaps I'm being unfair, but it's hard to reconcile a cheerful disposition and a sunny humanism with this prognosis or this recommendation that we just get rid of a bunch of people. You know, a few years back, there was a scientist in Texas who was talking about how we needed a really good global pandemic to kill off a lot of the population. He suggested Ebola might be a good choice. Yeah. So this is the thing. And you got to plot it at the conference. Well, it's made up of a bunch of people on the spectrum. That's why these people are all autistic. You know, but it's always somebody else that's going to be suffering and dying now. Sure. Yeah,

16:50I mean, every time I run into a prescription on what we need to do to save the planet, my first response is after you. That's right. You lead the way, buddy. You know, if you really think this is what is necessary after you, if you really need to say we need to cut carbon emissions after you, get rid of your yacht, get rid of your plane. Yeah. You know, and live like the rest of us do. Yeah. You know, even when we think about energy, you know, it wasn't that long ago that people were absolutely confident that we were going to run out of fossil fuels and then human ingenuity kicks in once again. And then, you know, early on with fracking, there was a lot of concern about environmental effects, but I was just an Alberta. And so I spent a lot of time when I was there

17:50with people who were in that world fracking and that kind of thing. And what they've shared with me is that they're getting more and more efficient so that there's less and less actual physical disruption that occurs through the techniques that they employ. So they're doing things much more efficiently. So you're getting more out with less put in. And this is just kind of the trend. And nobody talks about it. By the way, it seems as though the concerns related to fracking have now shifted to data centers. And now data centers are the thing. So now I'm not a huge AI guy when it comes to the humanities, but I think that there's a lot of really excellent ways that AI can be employed to help us out and make life better. And so I'm supportive of AI in so far as that's the case. But I've never been like a super anti-data center guy. But I do think that we're going to get more efficient that the, you know, the artificial intelligence, if things develop in the way that I hope

18:55they will, will make, you know, leave a much smaller footprint in the future than it does today. And on the big, the place I hope that to be the case above all else is just in terms of our personal daily lives with, you know, how we use it. We don't like have it do everything for us. But I'm just thinking mainly in terms of, you know, energy and other resources that it's required for it to work. I'm hopeful that I will see these same kinds of improvements over time. I'm hopeful. I can't predict that that's okay. But yeah, well, from us, guys, is why we're going to have our data centers in space rather than here anyway. Right, right. That's all. It is interesting to different ways, different scientific conceptions of a technology develops on the one hand needs the human to use the technology. Right. And so even if it in some sense kind of undermines aspects of the human being, the image of God, or enhances it into places that maybe are, you know,

20:01iffy in terms of whether it's good or not. On the other hand, you need them to be around in order for it to do its thing. And so I imagine that there is between these, the ones that are committed to basically narrowing down the, the amount of humans in the world are probably, probably the kind that are a little bit at war with that kind of technological developing. So even within different, I guess, different ends of science and technology, they're they're they come to they come to different places. I don't know that they don't, I mean, they may end in the same place, but they're coming from different places. One, really is, I mean, maybe they want to develop technologies to limit, maybe through medicine or something else, limit the population. But the benefit of technology doesn't have its totalitarian itch field if you don't have enough humans around to benefit from it. Yeah, that's right. I like the way you put that down. Yeah. Well, another aspect of this is that

21:06nobody ever really seems to talk about what are the consequences of declining population. You know, I mentioned briefly, China earlier, China is facing a rapidly aging population without enough young people to sustain it. So the net result is more and more of their economic resources are going to have to be diverted to taking care of the elderly while they've got a shrinking population to supply those resources. So the net result is, you know, a lot of a lot of economists I've been reading are saying, yeah, you know, China is going to be in real trouble within the next couple of decades because of the because of just that problem. It's one of the reasons why they're trying to create AI robots to take care of the elderly. Right. And, you know, we have the same thing here. I know some people who are involved in that effort. I, you know, even when you do something like that,

22:09just maybe out of necessity. Is there anybody who can truly celebrate people substituting robots for human companionship? I think that's a fairly good measure of whether you're on the spectrum or not. If you don't see that this is a downgrade and something that is tragic that, you know, might be necessary, but should not be celebrated. Then I don't know what, you know, where your head is. I'm not sure I want to know. Well, along with that, you know, the overall idea that you're going to be able to with a shrinking population, people will be able to maintain their lifestyles as nonsense. You have a shrinking population. You always have a contracting economy and even on a per capita basis. Historically, there's no exception. Yeah, there's going to be big holes that equity will leave behind when the population shrinks for

23:14the reason you just said. Let's just think about a place like Detroit, which just essentially over the course of the last 20, 30 years, bulldozed entire neighborhoods. At one time, the homes that were in those neighborhoods had value. The value just evaporated and wish you have now are just empty blocks. Now, you can have a situation like that happen and hopefully there's a recovery. And there seems to be some indication that Detroit might finally be turning at a corner there. But that's going to happen all over the place. We see it happening in Japan. We see it happening in Italy. Just whole regions where you can buy a house for a buck and you're basically living in a town by yourself because the entire population is either died out or moved away. How do you think you're buying medieval villages for that reason? Right. Yeah. But then you find yourself in a situation where the drug store is 30 miles away

24:16and anybody who can work on your plumbing is also 30 miles away or whatever. Well, some of the medieval villages I looked at didn't have much in the way of plumbing, which is one of the reasons why it was really serious about buying. But even in a story and has those limits. The funny part about this is not terribly funny actually, but I remember talking to my students at one point about climate change. It was being called global warming then. And I told them that I really didn't take it too seriously. For the simple reason that I remember every environmental disaster that was predicted since the 70s. I remember all of them and none of them happened. None of the predictions surrounding global warming have occurred. I mean, and I said, I just, you know, I'm sorry. I, you know,

25:23they've cried wolf one too many times. I'm just, I just don't buy this. And the reaction to the students was stunning to me. I mean, you know, I gave what I thought was a reasonable explanation. And I had one student who was absolutely horrified and looked at me and said, how can you say that? They're not, they've been trained not to think in any other way, other than apocalyptic disaster. Well, and two, they've been divested of any ability to avail themselves with some other more reliable source of information. So they really are ultimately depended upon the collective wisdom of their no-nothing friends and their no-nothing social media. It's a bad situation. Well, and I think that, you know, it kind of goes, I mean, I've talked on this and done other things. I mean, it kind of goes both ways. You often see the others, you know, oftentimes, what consider kind of, you know, kind of American conservative that just sees there's no

26:27environmental issues whatsoever or problems, you know, destruction of environments and, you know, places and habitats and stuff. But it is the kind of, it's the extreme indifference on one hand and the extreme, you know, this is a apocalyptic crisis. And where you have figures maybe like, well, if you want to just pass, Wendell Berry or someone to try to balance these things and whether they did it perfectly or not, they had a way of appreciating creation and not trying to just ransack forms and final causes just for the sake of self-benefit. But on the flip side, recognizing humanity is to benefit from the creation as well. And keeping that balance there without falling into those polarities has always been something that a bit of a tight rope walk. And you get looked at, you know, or you know, basically seen as just, you know, some, you know, in a dream hippie if you're trying to walk that balance.

27:30And so this is what I would suggest because I agree with you, Tom. I would suggest that if we, if the folks on the environmental left, spent more time celebrating successes that were brought about because of modest changes, you'd find more support from average people. Because I think a lot of folks, they want their local streams to be good places for fish to live. And they want, you know, the visual beauty of, you know, the countryside. They want these things. It's the tendency of the environmental left to take a problem and turn it into a sort of moment for cultural sort of total transformation that just annoys everybody to know in. Yeah. Yeah. And it makes you not want to be a part of it unless you're already disposed of that kind of radical, you know, bent. And that's what I think they end up hurting the cause and, and turning more people off

28:34than otherwise would be on board. And like you said, the local dimension is much more, it's much less radical and it's much more productive. I mean, what better than people who own a house or have family generations in a place who want to take care of a place and would be invested in that versus some, you know, set of scientists way off telling us what to do and imposing it kind of like, well, a Connecticut, you know, with the, with the ban on plastic bags or the, you know, charging you for nickel and diamond you for every single bag you use has it stopped the same amount of flow of plastic bags. No, they're at, you know, it just brought in a lot of revenue, but it's caused a lot of backlash. People kind of just have adjusted to it, but it didn't solve anything. Yeah. The, it's important to note that as Christians, we should be the best environmentalists. The key word here is the best and unfortunately a lot of what passes for environmentalism isn't.

29:40It's really a mask for other things or it is, it catastrophizes things that really aren't that they're not things that we can change so readily. Like for example, climate always changes. We can't stop it. Now, we can contribute maybe a bit, but yeah, we can't do it. Now, it's important to note that in Genesis, you know, people, there have been Christians who have looked at the Dominion mandate and said, therefore we can do anything with the earth that we want to as long as we develop its resources and so on. But the instruction Tatum in the garden was to tend and protect it. So we are supposed to develop the resources. We're supposed to tend it, but we're also supposed to protect it. We're supposed to do it in non-destructive ways, non-exploitive ways. So again, maintaining that balance is really, it's difficult, but that's where we need to be. Yeah, I think with regard to that, we've discussed some of the changes that

30:47took place that made the modern world what it is and the ideas that formed those changes, obviously Baconian science and the divestment of spiritual and symbolic meaning when it comes to the physical world. But we've empowers ourselves when we did that. At the same time, when it comes to sort of the, you know, the measures that we've taken to improve the environment, and as you know, Glenn, there's been a lot of counterproductive stuff in that respect as well. So it's not as though we can look at everything that the environmentalists have endeavored to do and celebrate it. So for example, here in the Pacific Northwest, we have wildfires, they're almost every year. And a lot of the blame for the wildfires I've been told can be leveled at the environmentalists.

31:50And the reason is they have this sort of, well, we're soian kind of outlook on how nature should just be left alone. And anything that would mitigate the possibility of a wildfire like clearing underbrush and things like that is frowned on. We, what we want is just a pristine environment that has no evidence of any human management or activity at all. And so what we end up with is wildfires. No, it's not like wildfires didn't happen before that, but I'm told that they're more frequent now than they used to be. And they're more severe. Yeah. The other thing that's worth noting is that when you run into a lot of the prescriptions that people give for solving the problems, almost all of them involve shifting more power to the government. Right. And decreasing your, your, your freedoms almost inevitably, they go in that direction.

32:56So, and one of the effects of that is a land management that is done in such a way that it ignores the realities of wildfires. And so you end up with these, you know, if you've got an old growth forest, you can actually get away with not going in and clearing underbrush because it's already taken care of just by the natural thing. But we don't have old growth forests anymore. What we've got are things that do need to be managed because, well, frankly, they're never going to last long enough to be old growth forests. You know, so they have to be managed to get a, get them to a place where it is, it is stable, it is sustainable, and it isn't going to result in these completely out of control wildfires when they do start. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing, when you're living a place like the, the American West, you can find yourself in places where there's no

33:59sign of human civilization as far as the I can see. And when it comes to even places like New England where I remember when I was, you know, growing up in Western Pennsylvania, when I would imagine the East Coast, it was just like Brooklyn forever. You know, I had this image of this sort of unceasing urban sprawl, you know, from Boston to Washington, and I didn't, I didn't have an ability to think otherwise. And then I came East, and then I, you know, as a young man saw that there are actually large stretches of the Northeast that are pretty raw and uninhabited. So, you know, what I would like to know, getting back to this original recommendation from this group of scientists in the UK, if I remember correctly, that's where they are. What is, is, is, what is the

35:05argument? Is it just that maybe we're afraid of climate change, or is it because we're afraid of, say, extinction, kind of, you know, species going out of existence, that kind of thing. There's a term that I'm just failing to remember for that. But, you know, do you remember precisely the things they identified as being these will all turn around because we don't have as many people around? Actually, it didn't, the Daily Mail article that we got didn't get into that. I, and I haven't linked to their actual paper, so I don't know the answer. But their fundamental argument is that the Earth can't sustain 8.3 billion people, even though it seems to be doing you a rather nice job at it right now. Thank you very much. Right. Yeah, I guess that's the thing I'm getting at is, it seems to be a very empirical kind of thing going on here, because

36:12my understanding is, you know, if you're going to make an argument based on the way the physical world is working, that you need a little evidence, you know, you need to have some studies and things to work with. I think it's, you're just dealing with all kinds of causal fallacies. I mean, the more, when you start looking at them, I mean, like you say, you can get, you can just go up in what they hate, the airplane, look down and see not only how little you are, but how, how, how much territory is uninhabited or very small uninhabited, not, well, just not a lot. I mean, I just got back from Colombia. Yeah, it's amazing to see people get all the way up those mountains and everything else stunning, but on the whole, how much compared to the mass up amount of mountain and everything else? Well, yeah, I was just in Alberta, and let me tell you something, they like climate change because there are vast swaths of Canada that would be

37:13positively affected by a global increase in temperature. So, so that's again, the thing we never talk about, yeah, you know, it might be a little more difficult to live in some places, but it'll be a lot easier to live in others, and a lot of those other places are pretty vast. Yeah, the, I've just scanned the article briefly. They're talking about resource extraction, carbon dioxide, all sorts of things like that. That's what they're focused on. Again, ignoring the fact that we have always, to this point, found ways to get the resources we need through improving technologies and things like that. But along with that, it's also worth noting that one thing nobody ever talks about with the increase in carbon dioxide, the amount of green on the amount of vegetation on the surface of the planet has gone through the roof. I mean, we've seen a vast increase in the amount of plant life. Well, this gets me back to my earlier point. These people

38:14don't seem to celebrate the positive developments. They only seem to focus in on the fears that they have about downsides. So where was national bald eagle day? Yeah, let's celebrate. The bald eagle is back. Let's celebrate the fact that we've got the herds of bison returning. It's not obviously what it was, but we're not thinking about extinction anymore either. Now, I'm all for saving species that look like they're about to wake out. So let's do the best we can and make sure that we do those things. But they also celebrate when we've done it. Yeah. Yeah. And the problem fundamentally, it seems to me, or at least one of the problems, along with the misanthropic outlook, is that we assume that very large and very complex problems that we do not really understand all the parameters for

39:21can be solved with simple solutions. Yeah, it's the causal, the causal fallacies involved. That's the thing. They don't understand all the causes of these things, much less whether or not they're as they're measuring based on a certain set of assumptions that reality may just outrun. Do you know what I mean? And we've seen this before. Maybe that's their best educated guesswork. But when you go dismantling humanity, something that should at least have a certain kind of preciousness to it, for a scientific hypothesis, the stakes are high to say the least. Yeah. I also suspect that there is a tendency for people to look at the world and recognize that things aren't right. And then they look for something to blame for it. And then once they have

40:24the thing to blame for it, they propose solutions or push for solutions because they don't really care for the notion that there's nothing that we can do about it. We need to be in control. So we need to cut carbon emissions or we need to drop the population in half or we need to do X, Y, or Z to save the world because we know something is wrong with it. And the notion that we are not in control is somehow unbearable to them. And so there has to be something that we can do. Yeah. I think you're right, Glenn. There also tends to be a tendency to lose sight of the things that we can't control politically. So for example, when it comes to the efforts to reduce say carbon emissions, the Western world has done everything and hardly anybody else has done anything.

41:27And it's just the evidence of that is everywhere. So would they be okay with like the West taking over the rest of the world in order for us to have the mayor wear with all to control this kind of stuff? Because it doesn't seem like the Chinese or the Indians are going to be on board. And to look at things from their perspective, what they could say is, well, you guys, in the West had the freedom to burn all the coal you wanted to burn until you got to a place where you didn't need to burn anymore because you had alternatives. But this still remains the least expensive fuel source and in order for us to get where you are, we're going to need to burn a lot. And I think that's a fair argument, frankly. But I almost never see it dealt with honestly by these sorts of people. Right. To drive Europe to net zero will have effectively no impact on the

42:31amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because China is expanding their coal burning plants at a break-knit pace. So what you get is the industrialization of Germany and all of these other countries, draconian regulations, when people are dying of the heat this summer, bands, telling people don't use air conditioning. Right. Because if you use air conditioning, it will make things warmer. Right. You've got all of these kinds of things going on. And it will have no practical impact on actually the amount of carbon going into the atmosphere. And by the way, it isn't clear that carbon going into the atmosphere is anything to do with warming. There's a computer model that they developed that says that that's what happens. But there's no real evidence that it does. As a matter of fact, carbon dioxide is practically a trace gas in the atmosphere. Water vapor is a much better greenhouse gas than carbon is. And water vapor far

43:35outweighs the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Yet somehow they obsess over that. Because a computer model that they wrote, which gives the results that are programmed into it, says that it should cause heating. But again, this kind of gets back to the dishonesty, the incoherence of the case that's been made. And no modesty in terms of the cause for radical action. So I just roll my eyes and throw up my hands and say, what do you do with these people? You brought up earlier something Glenn that probably is a big concern for me. And that is the utter dependence of younger people upon these authorities for the things that they think and believe. And they don't see that this way. They just really

44:35don't have much interest even in sort of looking into that. Now, I would say that there's some hope, I see evidence in certain spots where people are willing, younger people are willing to question this stuff. And maybe that'll continue to develop an increase in number, those number of those people. But yeah, I mean, it just kind of gets back to this whole matter of a need to believe in something in the passions and just kind of, I don't know, just almost like you know, mob thought, sort of mob dynamics. And it gets drummed into them from every angle. I mean, that's the other thing. It's, you know, education in particular for a lot, not everyone, but you know, they go through and you, you know, again, after, especially after. Once the universities were radicalized and they produced teachers that were rattled,

45:39collized, it's just one drum beat over and over again. And so by the time they're in university, that's just the accepted consensus to them. And so, you know, it's, you know, now some contune it out. And some actually have have thought about it even who have come through that process. I mean, I teach in a university setting where I was very, I was very optimistic after I heard, I asked them, you know, just the question, you know, how significant has the postmodern been for any of you. And one of the guys said it has no significance at all. So even if it does, at least the term itself has now been a faded coin. And so it's not as pronounced some of these things as they were. Again, the terms may not be used. The ideas and their consequences are. And it is kind of an elderly turn, the early stuff that, you know, a lot of us were educated in a long time ago. But

46:42nevertheless, it just does show that there's a liability there. These terms have no meaning. So they're just, they're being taught things and they don't know really how to, they don't even have categories for them. But on the other hand, they do, they haven't been quite as, well, let's put it this way. I'm seeing a generation of students that doesn't come as pre-programmed with the same set of programs that we've had to contend with that buy into this kind of stuff. Yeah, I'm encouraged as well along that line. What I'm talking about it mainly, I'm seeing at a distance. Yeah, when it comes to my own personal life, say, for example, my church, most of the young people are pretty much inoculated to the nonsense on the left. And if anything, they're just are exasperated and don't know what practical difference they can make when it comes to changing this stuff. But when it comes to their own personal lives, they, they're like Soviet citizens in the late Soviet Union who are just

47:47like, you know, you pretend to pay us, we pretend to work. You know, just like, what do you do? I mean, yeah, we have this crazy, nonsensical thing that we're all kind of having to live with. And in some sense, we got to go along to get along, but we don't really believe it. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's encouraging on one level, on another level, it could also be connected to a fundamental distrust of all institutions, which is deeply embedded in the Zoomers right now. And COVID was a good part of the reason for that, but they don't, they don't trust anything anymore. Yeah. And who can blame them? Yeah. You know, yeah, when it comes to what do they trust, I think, you know, interpersonal relationships still are valued, although, you know, those are under pressure because of social media and AI and stuff like that. But I do think that kind of face to face local, small, that still

48:52can be very healthy. I know it's, that's the case in my church, my church is, I would give it high marks in terms of congregational health. Yeah. And I think that is that there is, there are some very helpful trends. Now, after the last episode, it may sound strange to me to say that. But, but I think you predicted the end of the world there, Glenn. Well, not exactly the end of the world. I'm not, I'm not a Achilles or anything, but, they get their way, it will be very passive next week. But, but, you know, things like the, the growth in classical Christian education, which is all of everything, but it's important, homeschooling, homeschooling co-ops, all of these kinds of things provide at least some hope to me that there will be enough good thinkers and well-trained leaders in the upcoming generation that could make actually a significant difference.

49:56But, you know, we got to wait and see how that actually plays out. Now, in that episode last week, you gave a pretty bleak take on things. So, let me return to that bleak take and present a possibility that nobody, I know, none of us want to see, but let's say the radical left is able to acquire the levels, the levers of power in our country and succeed in outlawing homeschooling, outlawing private education of any sort, classical Christian education, just regular private schooling, except for their kids, of course, who will go to exclusive, you know, schools on East Coast. But, for everybody else, you know, we are going to be subject to the the great homogenizer, you know, the dumbing down institution. You know, it's just a fact that,

51:03with you study, or if you have access to the test scores for graduate school admittance, invariably, no matter what school you're talking about, the lowest scores are in the education department. I mean, way down, I mean, like 30 points below everybody else. It's just awful. And we hand our kids over to these people and they have no imagination and they just basically drumbeat, whatever they've been told to drumbeat into the heads of kids. So, in a world like that, okay, now let's revisit the future, Glenn. Sorry to do that, do you? Well, in a world like that, what ends up happening is probably what happened in the behind the air in Curtin, where, you know, if you read, live, not by lies, there are parents who supplemented in deep programs, their kids who were going to the state schools.

52:07Yeah, I think that's what would end up happening, I agree. Yeah, and it's, I mean, even with surveillance that happened a lot, even in within homes and everything else. But yeah, I mean, the Christian survived still. You know, it came at great cost. People would leave, especially artists that were not going to play the game that get exiled and right from from outside of it. You know, you, when you are able to discern and not go along and you realize you have to, I mean, there, you do what you have to do. You know, and you have to trust the, you know, providence with the, with the larger picture. You know, the church itself has been through the catacombs. It's been on the run. It's been, it's been tried to be extinguished and over and over again. The gates of hell won't prevail. It, you know, whatever havoc can be done, one thing isn't going to happen. Creation isn't going to be undone. And the gates of hell are not going to prevail against the kingdom of God. But in the meantime, you know, what do we do? Well,

53:14we have to draw off of the endowments and, and, and any spiritual vision we have that can counter and keep us from being pulled along with it. And I think that's why vigilance, vigilance is a big deal, you know, being vigil. And that's sort of what the show is. It's kind of like these things are down there. They're out there. You know about them. But let's keep reminding ourselves about them. Let's keep thinking about what ifs. That's part of vigilance. It's part of being ready. Can never be fully ready. But it is part of being ready. Whatever comes that, that you realize, you know, might get challenging, but we've, we've got to still keep going. Yeah, that was really the inspiration and impetus for the, for the podcast. And you know, when we started, we were concerned about cultural Marxism. And it's a pervasive influence in the academy. And that was what inspired the show. We talked about education a minute ago. But I think this also can apply to

54:16just everything from growing your own food to, you know, being able to get access to the kinds of food that you'd want. So for example, with regard to, you know, even property rights, like in the West, there are places where you cannot harvest the rainwater that falls on your roof. Or even take advantage of the wind for power, powering your house because these things are seen to be, well, somehow undermining kind of the common good because you do any things. You know, someone like Joel Salatin, who's become kind of a cult figure, you know, just kind of a folk hero for many people just because, you know, he's not going to let the government determine, you know, everything he's going to do in his farm. He's going to do some things that he,

55:20that he has good reasons to believe are good things to do, whether the larger agricultural sort of and sort of kind of, I don't know, Leviathan agrees or not. So, you know, education, food, you know, imagine a world where you just can't have chickens, where you can't even grow your own tomatoes, you know, that, that, that kind of thing is not that far out when it comes to these sorts of people. Yeah, during the new deal, I think it was, there was a guy who, he was sold, he could farm 11 acres of wheat or something like that. And he ended up farming more for personal use, just for the family. And the Supreme Court ruled that that was illegal on interstate commerce grounds because that meant that he was not buying grain or buying wheat on the open market, which affected farmers in other states since he was no longer, you know, engaged in it. So, you've already got,

56:23I mean, that's 80 years ago or something. Yeah, right. That you, so you've already got crazy things like that that have happened and that, and nobody to the state that law has not been overthrown through that, that ruling has not been, been rescinded. I mean, it's, it's the degree of control that we have seeded or that we have allowed to, to be taken from us, you know, even in terms of our own property is absolutely crazy. Yeah. Well, we should probably bring this to a close, anything you want to add, Tom? Not fully. I mean, I know that this kind of, you know, one side is a kind of romantic environmentalism that it's, you know, kind of an irrational approach that, you know, sacrifice anything for the greater good of the planet. That doesn't end well. There's the scientism approach that thinks it's just going to solve it with, you know, kind of utilitarian means,

57:26if that means, getting rid of humans fine. Then there's the sober approach that this is creation. It has a kind of natural goods and the more we cultivate and protect and allow those things to flourish to their maximum, it becomes plentiful. It helps heal itself. A creation grows until this stuff gets released. And that's what good science with good wisdom has the capacity to do. And I think that what would you call it basically alternative environmentalism and an alternative science that is steeped in rich wisdom about the nature of created things and their purposes and then utilize those things to help bring about bringing, you know, protecting and cultivating those. All right. Well, Glenn, do you want to give us the final kind of wrap up? Well, yeah. Another thing we haven't even talked about is the idea that our work in the world is a zero-sum game. You know, that the more resources we take, the less resources there are. And yet

58:28this ignores human creativity. It ignores all of the ways that we have proven that wrong over the centuries. Like I said, population more than doubled since 68 when our looks book came out. And yet the percentage of people living in extreme poverty or hunger has gone down. And despite this huge growth in population, you know, something like close to five billion people more for an half. So, yeah, we need to recognize that human creativity that it's possible, not just to buy pies, but to bake them, you know. That sort of thing needs to be taken into account. But at the same time, we have to recognize that we need to do this carefully in a way that is environmentally responsible without going off the deep end and expecting, you know, or promoting all these catastrophic scenarios that that's so many people advocate. Well, it's good no dinner. Well, thank you for listening to this

59:32episode of the Theology Podcast. And we hope it's been an encouragement. Why don't you go outside and grow some tomatoes? Why don't you go inside and have some more kids? Anyway, that's enough for now. Thanks a lot and bye-bye. Bye-bye. Theology Podcast is a ministry of Westminster Presbyterian Church and Battleground, Washington. The Theology Podcast is produced and edited by a widely craft productions of Nashville, Tennessee.