First, public service announcement!!
Granite City is THE BEST RESTAURANT EVER! AND, apparently, they have a "mug club" thing....$10 on Mondays to join the club ($20 every other day of the week) - lasts your lifetime - gets you $3 beers (24oz, first one free when you join) and 10% off food (and their food is SUPER good). Who's in?! :o)
In other news....question:
As we age/grow/get older, do we gradually begin to trust the decisions we've made? I second guess myself all the time. I've gotten to the point at work where I force myself to trust the work I've done, the decisions I've made, the results I've found...but in life? Life has a tendency of being more fluid than work does....and as things change....I wonder if maybe my decisions aren't valid/relevant/right anymore. I mean, as we age/grow/get older, we gain a better understanding of ourselves - doesn't this give us new insight that might change the decisions we've made? Might make past decisions essentially wrong? Or does time just give us a different memory of the past and that's why it seems like there needs to be a change? Either way....do we ever get to the point where we trust ourselves? Because so far, I don't.
To finish the random collection of thoughts today, let's focus on the current, new, popular, trend: Sustainability. I subscribe to a fair number of magazines. This month, March, brought several magazines "going green". Note, their magazine wasn't produced on recyclable paper, but all of the products they covered were sustainable/environmentally friendly/green. So what, Al Gore's a trend-setter now? I think it's great to focus on the enviroment/sustainability/how to make our world a better place....I'm just fundamentally against jumping on a bandwagon because it's a bandwagon. Especially when people jump on it just in show....a "green" magazine should be on all post-consumer paper!
And can we just delve for a moment into the question of why so many people are against Gore's movie? I haven't seen it, but does it matter if his information is accurate or not if it's an impetus for change? Shouldn't we support anything that makes people more environmentally focused/conscious? I'm not advocating a methodology of the ends justifying the means, but to some extent....is anything being hurt if some of the fact are inaccurate? Can someone please explain to me the reason the religious right is so against Gore's movie?
Okay, time for volleyball. I'm out folks....let's hope for a win, eh??
5 comments:
I've been paying more attention these days to ways in which scientists and Christians interact, since I straddle both realms. One of them is the environment, and I'm becoming concerned. I think the reason why so many Christians don't care is because their eschatology tells them it doesn't matter, but I'm not so sure. Several Caltech profs have been giving lectures about some of the problems (energy, natural disasters) the world will be facing this century. Watch this lecture to hear about how earth will be running out of energy in the next several decades:
http://today.caltech.edu/theater/8424_cable.ram
:-)
Right on, Amos. The reason right wingers (I'll avoid using 'fundamentalists' per our discussion last night, rebekah :) are hesitant to admit that the scientific community may be on the right track is that it denies their view of Biblical eschatology--namely that the whole planet is 'just gonna burn anyway' upon Christ's return. The other reason Christians react strongly against environmentalism is that they think it denies God's original command to his image-bearers: to have dominion/authority/rule over the earth. In their view, to become environmentalist is to reverse the creational hierarchy--earth OVER man/woman.
Of course, this all depends on very suspect readings of Genesis and Revelation. You could actually say (and I do) that anti-environmentalists are wrong from beginning to end :)
At the end of the day, I'm with you, Rebekah. Whether or not there is scientific evidence to counter Al Gore's claims, our duty remains the same. God has created a beautiful earth for our habitation, and we have a duty to care for it. In the same way I shouldn't smash a new guitar given to me by my parents, I also shouldn't litter/unnecessarily pollute the earth my Father in heaven has given me.
Well, it is pretty clear to me anyway that global "warming" is quite possibly occuring. But the case has yet to be persuasively made that it is because of human activity. The most compelling evidence is that taken from the past centuries and millenia. Talk to geologists, and they will be in near unanimous agreement that at some point in the past, much of North America was covered in glaciers (hence all the lakes in MN, and indeed, the Great Lakes)...yet they melted (Global warming!!!) And back in the 900s AD, the Vikings settled in the Greenery that was then Greenland...only to be pushed out as cooling occurred (Global Cooling!!!). Europe went through a mini-ice age. And then it warmed up again (Global Warming!!!). Back in the 60s, scientists were demanding action for anticipated global cooling. Like everything else in the universe, the earth goes through cycles...change in inevitable. So too is it with global temperatures. Indeed, much of the evidence put out by the human-caused global warming crowd is very myopic in its outlook. The much ballyhooed "hockeystick model" convienently omits previous data that shows the uptick within its proper, and unconcerning context.
I havent seen the movie, so I wont pretend to comment on its veracity, but the danger about such hype is if it is wrong, it will have very real economic consequences. For a threat that never existed, and has been used to make cheap short term political points. Talking about a reduction or self-limitation in GDP isnt glamorous, but the last time our economies became stagnant to the degree that environmentalists are clamoring for we had the Great Depression. Interestingly, as economies grow, so to do environmentally friendly techniques. Statistics about US reforestation over the past decades bear this out. LA and other big cities are much less smoggy than they used to be. New, more expensive techniques are more viable once a society has the luxury of choosing between social and economic benefits. The blessings of a dynamic market economy.
And while it is true that we as Americans produce 25 percent of greenhouse gasses, we also produce the same, if not more, of the worlds goods. It should be noted that the economies that will in the future contribute most to "global warming" --assuming the human cause is true-- namely India and China, have no international requirements put upon them. And rightly so, if natural causes are the true culprit. But if this is truly a global problem, it requires a global solution. Of course, then economic stagnant growth forces millions back into poverty...and the free market (and associated energy consumption) has been the greatest reducer in poverty in world history. Choose your poison. Its all well and good to proclaim righteous indignation from our perch in the wealth that surrounds us in America, but there will be consequences to our societal decisions related to this percieved threat, whether justified or not. Something completely lost in this debate.
And to comment on Amos' posit that we are running out of energy, the same claims have been made every decade for the past fifty years. According to scientists in the 80s, we should be out of fossil fuels right now. The funny part being that more and more reserves are being discovered every year, and we have more known reserves now than we ever have. Granted, they will eventually run out, and when they do, the market will find means to replace them. As fossil fuels become more scarce, its price will rise, spurring innovation and research into what right now are expensive solutions. This is all a non sequitor in the current discussion however, as it would seem from the environmentalists perspective, running out of fossil fuels should be a good thing...less to pollute the earth with.
In short, the global warming debate is incredibly myopic. A broad view of history reveals it to be naturally occurring, and something we should be ready to adapt to, but not drastically so. Imposing draconian government restrictions will be an immense overreaction. unintended consequences always occur with any decision. Its just that in an economy and society such as ours, they are most readily mitigated when the hand of the market and individuals guides them.
thank you, guys, for posting your blog entries on my comment page. YIKES those were long! (thanks for thinking about it though)
First she begs for comments, then she says they're too long.
Women....
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