In his ‘Introduction to Human Behaviour Biology’ lecture in 2011, Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky explains how natural human cognition and neural processes allow people to make sense of the world by categorising things. In other words, we are intrinsically inclined to put things into boxes and label them in order to both process our reality and better understand it. This is a vital biological mechanism inbuilt in our brains and has ultimately aided us in understanding language and digesting complex ideas, however there are shortcomings to this automatic, instinctual mechanism. Humans put things into categories insofar that they risk oversimplifying things or stereotyping complex issues. The climate change movement for example, is subject to garnering contempt from anti-marxists advocates as it is portrayed as harbouring militant vegans and activists who believe the world will collapse in twelve years (eleven now). It is portrayed on the media to be comprised of largely gullible children who have fallen into the marxist, United Nations, Agenda 21, New World Order scheme spearheaded by an autistic child who’s last name cannot be pronounced by the majority of her admirers. As christians, what are we to make of these climate protests? Are we to step up to our duties as stewards of Creation or shall we edge towards the bench of onlookers comprised of largely conservative members who pity a girl who is angry with the slow policies of government, regarding their environmental action or lack thereof? The answer may be more complicated than we think. Because Climate Change and the nature of grassroots environmental movements are complex issues and a simplified solution to such a complex issue fails to fully appreciate the nature of what exactly is going on here…
So what exactly is going on? Well there are many factors contributing to the fact that environmental and climate grassroots movements are proliferating, and even conservatives can appreciate the activation of better ecological change. When people want change, they often exaggerate the issue to make this happen. Let’s look at the title of Extinction Rebellion for example. Yes, it may be a fundamentally anti-christian title, but is it an anti-christian movement? Probably not. During WW2 it is likely the inhabitants of Hiroshima rightly assumed they were going to die due to American technology. Recognising that if a polity’s mentality does not change in the face of any potentially catastrophic issue, death is likely to ensue, is not inherently a mentality of the anti-christ - it is the mentality of an observer with half a brain cell. The truth of the matter is, that if Australia and other countries keep pulling out trees, mathematically speaking, there will one day be no trees left. Our oxygen and natural air purification mechanisms will likely be corrupted. That is not to say that God or the earth cannot regenerate ecology the human has destroyed, of course the earth can if it is God’s will, but it will be much more difficult for the earth to do, and if we want to proliferate and be fruitful on planet earth as the bible commands, it is prudent to want to keep the trees in place and not get complacent with our Father and damage property because we know he can bring it back.
Now that is all well and good, but what does this have to do with Greta Thunberg? Why is she and other protesters crying out to government for swifter changes? Because the government is not smart when it comes to policies surrounding ecology. The truth is, Australia is divvying up its precious land and natural resources and giving them, on the advice worth 1.5 million dollars in a singular localised case, to the Rothschilds to then confer the land onto a third party. The truth is, Australia has ample contractual arrangements with the likes of Monsanto, who also manufactured agent orange for use in the Vietnam war. The truth is, Australia’s eastern forests are being destroyed catastrophically to make way for industries that are inherently based on wants before needs. Our greed is a systemic problem, with ample evidence of it available in the Hansard if people care to look. Is Greta and other climate protesters wrong in their motivations to ask government for better policies? A quick internet search on phytoplankton, bee populations, coal dust, micro plastics in the human gut and mercury in seafood produce amongst a plethora of other issues will tell you that surely our government, like other governments could be creating far stronger policies regarding the environment than what is currently available. If we still mow our useless lawns with a petroleum powered mower, or cannot keep chickens in suburban backyards, or cannot implement the most efficient and cost-effective solution to energy currently available to mankind, then we have not done enough. If we cannot implement more sustainable activities than unsustainable activities on a daily basis, then according to common sense, we cannot improve a situation. In other words, we are facing an acceleration of the Tragedy of the Commons scenario because of our laziness, greed and complacency. Is the Extinction Rebellion title altogether laughable after acknowledging the amount of work required to improve an unsustainable system? Of course not. It’s a title that is hyperbolised to grab the viewer’s attention and wake them up to the very real possibility of a very uncomfortable life in the future should the government and the citizens fail to act. Does extinction rebellion truly believe they are going to die if policies are not implemented? Of course not. They believe there is more work to be done to prevent an acceleration of the tragedy of the commons, because if they didn’t think that they could help prevent it, they wouldn’t be activated. Of course they believe there is work to be done, and actually there is work to be done, and they are telling others there is work to be done. Seems like a common sense movement rather than one that fundamentally harbours the antichrist.
Secondly, some may argue that Greta’s message is fundamentally marxist in nature, due to her rhetoric riddled with exclamations of ‘unforgiveness’ harbouring themes of oppression. Marxism is fundamentally a social ideology that promotes a communistic model possible only through the relinquishment of goods to the government who can then control the commons and eradicate the class system. If we think Extinction Rebellion is too dramatic a title, arguably what’s dramatic is equating marxism with the climate movement. The climate movement does the opposite. The people are asking for the likes of Monsanto or the banks or other corporate bodies to stop taking control of the commons and ruining Australian soil. The people are asking for independence from government and wishing that it is able to provide sustainable technology to allow them to exercise that independence. The last thing any protestor wants is for the government to have even greater control of the commons than it already does. The humble protestor wants to know that their tax money is being used to foster sustainability instead of have it used in the trading of weapons with Saudi Arabia when warfare is both highly unsustainable, funded by the evil Babylonian-like banks and likely to cause injury to innocent civilians. The protester just wants to see more trees in the world rather than telecommunications poles which radiate harmful EMR that according to PubMed, literally fosters cancer and other health issues. This is not a movement of darkness, but rather, one of light when understood by an observer who has not been told the simplified and edited version of what this movement is supposedly about from an anti-christian media outlet. A much better source of information would be the very people involved in the movement.
It is good to note that if one does not attend climate movements, they are likely to be exposed to the nature of it from our current media, which is known to twist messages and promote leftist propoganda. Secondly, Greta Thunberg is but one spokesperson of the movement and her speeches are clipped and edited to suit the message the marxist media want circulated. Thirdly, a singular spokesperson, although televised, cannot democratically speak on behalf of the whole movement - especially not when it has been occurring far before the day she got famous. The climate movement in general is a nebulous movement like many grassroots movements, that feature an eclectic array of diverse activists who fail to agree on the specifics of their own movement. This just means the people involved in the movement are normal human beings. To expect every member of this highly general movement to believe exactly the same principles is illogical. This movement comprises of roughly 6 million individuals, according to The Guardian, of whom are of various cultures. To assume not one of them is conservative or bringing light to the movement is disastrous logic. Many of them - thousands of them, may be christian protesters, because it makes a lot of sense for christians to get involved in movements centred around the protection and dominion of Creation which is a prelapsarian command. Not only does taking care of nature please God, but it allows humankind to proliferate, be fruitful and evangelise effectively. If most christians agree on this fundamental principle then why do some continue to condemn the climate change movement? Because arguably, the climate change movement appears to be all about human autonomy rather than God’s autonomy. Although it is true that God is always omnipotent, this does not mean we throw caution to the wind and assume we little humans cannot change the nature of the world around us. We can, to some extent, and we are. If we did not fundamentally believe we have some degree of control, we would not be evangelising at all. Sometimes God works through people - in fact he often does. This does not mean we conflate our autonomy with ‘God power’ rather we begin exercising our duties as they are given to us and driven by the holy spirit. We follow commands. We avoid gluttony and overexploitation, and if we find that we are exploiting the planet (most of us will find that we do), it seems warranted to tone down our abuse of nature on a daily basis or advocate for sustainability through rallying, which is not itself condemned in the bible. In fact in Romans 14:20, the bible clearly explicates that we are not to recklessly abuse creation for the sake of transient, earthly, ‘flesh’ matters. Because our technological advancements over recent years, humans fall into the trap of using the world’s resources in a way that does not provide our needs, but more so, our wants. Because it is so easy to access resources these days, we often ignore or fail to appreciate how the resources end up on our table. Because of governments subsiding certain produce over others, we have a highly marred perspective of which products are resource-intensive and inefficient, and this will skew our consumer behaviours. We need to see past the prices, do the research, and choose ethical options that are sustainable for the planet, but due to corporate advertising it is difficult for people to see the reality of how our products come into our homes. The climate movement is not a movement wholly about global heating or cooling; in fact it is a movement about social change that strives to wake up humanity to our highly entitled and dangerous behaviours regarding our present treatment of ecology. Almost everyone would agree on this matter, yet because the media makes the movement out to be one solely about friction between those who believe in heating and those who don’t, the movement often garners criticism even though the foundational attitudes between those in the movement and those outside of it, are largely similar; everyone can agree on the fact that we need stronger sustainable action.
Further, one does not have to be a scientist to know that the climate is changing - it has always changed and will do so regardless of what humans do because it is a much larger entity than us and we are still trying to grasp science. Having said that, our universe still operates using the law of cause and effect. If change occurs, a reaction of some kind takes place, and even a small reaction is a reaction nonetheless. So really speaking, the climate movement can be an appropriate title to label a fundamentally sustainable movement because our unsustainable methods will affect the climate, even if this effect is very minimal. If we pull out trees for example, the climate gets drier because trees pull up moisture from the ground and release it into the air. This is why rainforests stay moist. If you begin pulling out trees, less moisture is released into the atmosphere and it becomes much more susceptible to wildfires. This is why some scientists claim the Amazon rainforest has been in flames of late - because of deforestation occurring for animal agriculture. Scientists are only now waking up to the fact that plant based lifestyles are not only the optimal one for a species who genetically resemble primate herbivores, but are far more environmentally friendly than the current first world diet, based on greed not need. Even the bible speaks amply of gluttony, and to avoid this practice. Anything in excess is damaging to the spirit, the body and the planet. Thus promoting a culture founded on principles of need before greed is both biblical and warranted in today’s society, and the largest entity promoting that to this day is actually the christian message. The largest civilly disobedient movement in Australia today, is the climate movement that harbours people who fundamentally rally against the banks and the big businesses exploiting humanity. The people in the climate movement are asking to be set free from the shackles of corporate entities whom we work for, pay tax to (they get our tax money through subsidies). We are also forced to buy products from these unsustainable sources because we have no alternatives that are subsidised effectively and these are the same entities exploiting the poor, the needy and the desperate. As much as this seems counterintuitive to admit, a fundamentally biblical message thus overlaps with the climate movement. Remember the climate movement title was coined by the media who used one girl’s sign - in reality it is more like a ‘rally against big business and negligent politicians so we can take better care of creation and have more kids in the future.’ This seems like a decent movement to be involved with and far more accurate, than the media’s label of it being purely about global warming, which it is not. The movement is essentially asking for better environmental policies and do we need them? Actually yes we do. If coal dust and glyphosate still kills people, then yes we do.
Others may argue that this is a dark movement to attach oneself too, despite it’s biblical overlap in terms of the message it represents. This is a weak argument, as it is riding on the idea that the movement is mostly dark and not of christ- a superficial analysis, but also unappreciative of the fact that a lot of light is also part of this movement. Do we render the light void because of a speck of darkness? Do we run from darkness? Or is there time to orient the movement towards the light? It is good to acknowledge that it is impossible to run from the darkness in this society - as our marxist system is unfortunately built on it. Why then run from the very movement bent on actually rallying against the system itself? In other words, calling the movement marxist ignores the fact that many of these protestors are showing anti-marxist inclinations by rallying against the system itself and the marxist companies and institutions that are failing the people. They are failing the people because the system is not built on truth, but exploitation and greed. Many institutions and movements and activities are not purely christian in ideology - but does this mean the christian avoids them completely? Hardly. In fact it is better to piggyback on these things to try and orient them to Christ, especially when more goodness is being achieved from the movement than badness. If it was the other way round it may be prudent to exit, but if not, it is illogical to want to opt out of something that is achieving and riding on more biblical principles than anti-christian principles. Jesus needed followers who were likely to evangelise, but were they perfect? They were far from perfect, and some even betrayed him. This did not stop him from rallying alongside them and appreciating them when he had the opportunity to. So long as a christian remains faithful, it is unlikely they will be swept up into an anti-christian spiral where they deny God’s autonomy in favour of their own regarding Creation matters. It is far more likely in the aforesaid circumstances, that others will be drawn to their light, and if not, at the end of the day, a seed is planted.
Running from these movements is not the answer. Christians are not called to segregate themselves from the rest of humanity. They are called to be signposts. If they can be both signposts and rally for good things like better environmental policies in the face of mass pollution and ecological decay, then that is completely in line with God’s word. It is good to not compartmentalise things or label them in ways that can actually oversimplify what the reality actually looks like. The ideologies, reality and practically of extinction rebellion or the climate movement is not as simple as their titles presume, and nor are the people involved in them. Just because they are asking the conservative PM for better policies does not make the movement anti-conservative. Accountability is necessary for a functioning society. Issues are always complex, and it will require a complex analysis of the matter to resolve them properly, and in a biblical way.
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