Mennonite Weekly Review

Recent letters in this newspaper and comments on our Web site about climate change — in particular in response to Methodist environmental activist and author Bill McKibben’s March visit to Goshen College — reveal differing perspectives on science and faith.

Some questions science can’t answer. Some questions faith doesn’t answer. Both pursuits have truth as their goal. Those who seek truth through either, or both, know the disappointment — but ultimately also the beauty — of realizing the truth is often incomplete.

The Bible tells us how to live as God requires, including in relationship with creation and each other. Yet it can’t tell us whether the Earth has warmed substantially over the past 100 years. It contains no charts of rising carbon dioxide levels.

Research by climate scientists can’t tell us about God’s grace. We can’t plot the Sermon on the Mount on a line graph. But scientific data can tell us about the danger in which humans have put all of creation.

Climate scientists have gathered extensive information on global warming. Data show that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” according to the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which evaluates scientific information about climate change. It further says global warming has a greater-than-90-percent likelihood of being caused by a human-induced increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide being the most important.

That is a conservative estimate, explained Raymond Pierrehumbert, professor in geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago. “There is absolutely no sound physical theory that gives you the amount of warming seen since 1970 without invoking the effect of the increase of CO2,” he wrote in an e-mail.

It is certain that humans have increased carbon dioxide levels, especially through the burning of fossil fuels at increased rates since the industrial revolution, said Pierrehumbert, who regularly talks to church groups.

Some Christians tend to distrust scientists. To be sure, some are haughty atheists with a distaste for religion. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore their findings.

Further, there are Christian scientists — including in our congregations and at our schools — who agree with their colleagues on the data about climate change. Those scientists can be valuable resources in leading us to join the broader movements to stop global warming, or at least slow it down as much as is possible.

In this cause we can find much common ground with other groups of people. The dangers posed by climate change are too grave for us to reject those who could be our allies. Our congregations ought to be discussing how to respond faithfully to this problem, not whether or not there is a crisis.

Global warming is already harming this beautiful Earth God entrusted to our care. We don’t yet know fully what the effects have been or will be, or how much damage will be inflicted. We do know the poor among us are, and will be, the most affected.

The Bible tells us God will replace the current reality of this world with a new Earth. Yet Scripture does not give us permission to damage the world ourselves before that happens.

We can’t know when or how God’s kingdom will fully break into this world. But until then we ought to live peaceably with each other and with creation. That includes doing everything we can to limit the harm we are doing to the Earth, including changing its climate.