Tag: evangelical

The New South, With a Tinge of Green

  • Some are calling Alabama the future 'green hub of the South.' (Photo source: Wikimedia Commons)

When Forbes Magazine ranked states
by their “greenness” the usual
suspects topped the list – Vermont,
Oregon, and Washington – all progressive
states known for their environmental
movements. Maybe not surprisingly,
seven out of the ten “least green”
states were in the South – the land
of coal mines and timber plots.
But as Tanya Ott reports,
there’s a growing environmental
movement down south and some of
its members might surprise you:

Transcript

When Forbes Magazine ranked states
by their “greenness” the usual
suspects topped the list – Vermont,
Oregon, and Washington – all progressive
states known for their environmental
movements. Maybe not surprisingly,
seven out of the ten “least green”
states were in the South – the land
of coal mines and timber plots.
But as Tanya Ott reports,
there’s a growing environmental
movement down south and some of
its members might surprise you:

(sound of cars driving past)

I’m standing in a vacant lot in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. I see overgrown weeds and closed businesses, but James Smith sees something entirely different. He’s President of an international company called Green Building Focus. When he looks at this lot, he sees an uptapped market. He wants to build an eco-industrial park here.

“There are many companies out there in other parts of the country who want to have access to the southeastern market, they realize it’s one of the fastest growing markets in the country. And if you draw a 500 mile radius around Birmingham you hit every major developing area in the southeast. It’s really the ideal location geographically to become a regional manufacturing hub for sustainable products.”

Alabama, a green hub of the south? This is the land of mega-churches and Republicans, not environmentalists.

“The federal trend over the last 10 years, longer than that, no doubt has been if you’re a Republican you can’t be an environmentalist.”


That’s Gil Rogers. He’s an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. He says nationally Republicans get a bad rap for denying climate change and trying to roll back the endangered species list. But at the state and local level, things are often different in the south.

“We have a lot of republican champions, as an example, in the Georgia legislature that are Republicans in terms of wanting lower taxes and less government intrusion into a lot of aspects of life. But then will go and realize that there needs to be more done in the way of environmental protection of water resources or of air quality. That those have real public health impacts.”

Rogers says these leaders often have strong ties their own piece of nature – maybe a stretch of land or a river.

“I’m a tree hugging, liberal – I mean a tree hugging conservative, Republican! (laughs) which I know some people may say is an oxymoron. But (laughs)”


But Charlie Houser loves Magnolia River.


(sound of boat motor)

He fires up his pontoon boat to give me a tour. Houser grew up here in Magnolia Springs, Alabama. When he moved back to retire, he worried about what he saw.


“I didn’t see the sea grass. We lost blue crabs, we lost pike.”

He blames agricultural runoff full of chemicals. So, Mayor Houser and the mostly republican town council passed really tough land use rules. All new buildings have to set back 75 feet from the river. New subdivisions have to keep their run-off on site. And it’s working. The brown pelicans are back and the river is less cloudy. The state has named Magnolia River an Alabama Outstanding Waterway.

Gil Rogers, with the Southern Environmental Law Center, says there are still big environmental threats in the south. Coal mining, timber, and other industries. But he’s optimistic.

“People have started to recognize that there’re some real threats from population growth, poor development patterns. So I think there is a movement here going on and it’s unique to the south, I think, in a lot of ways.”

Certainly, it’s creating some interesting alliances – like environmentalists teaming up with hunters. Rogers says, at least in the south, he’s seeing more cooperation than ever.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

Related Links

Greening of Religion

  • The Dalai Lama giving a lecture at the University of Michigan on April 20, 2008. (Photo by Mark Brush)

There’s a change going on in the religions
of the world. More people are hearing a green
message when they go to their place of worship.
Mark Brush reports major religious leaders are
spreading a message of caring for the earth:

Transcript

There’s a change going on in the religions
of the world. More people are hearing a green
message when they go to their place of worship.
Mark Brush reports major religious leaders are
spreading a message of caring for the earth:

The Dalai Lama is talking about the environment. And tens of thousands of people are
packed into this basketball arena to hear his message. This kind of a talk is a natural
fit. In the Buddhist tradition all sentient life forms are sacred. So you might not be
surprised to hear that the Dalai Lama thinks we need to cut our cravings for more and
more material stuff.

“We always want more and more and more – like that. So I think some lifestyle, I think have to, have to change. But this is not my business.”

(applause)

This kind of message is now coming from other religions too. The Vatican recently
declared pollution a sin. And, when he went to the United Nations, the Pope told
international leaders to work together on climate change and environmental protection.

And many Protestants are now spreading the green gospel. And it’s not just the more
liberal members of the church. Leaders on the left and the right are going beyond the
pulpit to preach about the environment. You can even catch them on primetime TV.
Here’s a clip from a commercial by ‘We Can Solve It dot org’. Preachers Al Sharpton and
Pat Robertson sit side by side on a couch by the ocean.

“Al lets face it. We’re polar opposites.”

“We couldn’t be further apart. I’m on the left.”

“And I’m usually right. And we strongly disagree.”

“Except on one issue. Tell ’em what it is reverend Pat.”

“That would be our planet. Taking care of it is extremely important.”

While this is a new topic for some religious leaders – other groups have been working for
a long time to green the church. The Evangelical Environmental Network promotes
something called “Creation Care.” And they faced a lot of push-back when they first started.

Jim Ball is the president of the Network. He says the environment was largely ignored
by evangelicals – but now that’s changed. As proof he says 120 senior evangelical
leaders signed onto to an initiative that promises to do something about climate change.
And he says many of them are quite conservative. Ball says these leaders started to change when
they got an earful from their own kids and grandkids.

“So it was the younger generation saying to some of these senior leaders, “you know, you
really need to stop just looking at this and saying ‘you know, that’s for other people.’
You’ve got to look at this and understand this is a serious problem.”

But not everyone is accepting this green sermon. Some in the Christian Church point to
the book of Genesis and believe man should have dominion over nature. They think
environmentalism goes beyond tree hugging and actually promotes worship of nature
instead of God.

Andy Hoffman is a professor at the University of Michigan who speaks on religion and
the environment. He says these kinds of interpretations of the Bible prevent
many people from taking environmental issues seriously.

“Many religious people are skeptical or cautious about environmentalism. They look at
people who care about the environment as deifying the environment. And therefore they
see a challenge there. And that’s really not the case. It’s completely consistent to be
a devout Christian, or a devout Jew, or a devout Muslim and care about the environment
and have those two mesh quite nicely. So to have religious leaders come forward and
articulate this viewpoint dispells that myth and takes away that problem.”

Hoffman says these religious leaders connect people to their moral values. And if
caring for the environment is a part of that – it can go a long way in changing the way
people live.

For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Commentary – Preach Truth About Global Warming

Some Christians take issue with their conservative brothers in faith when it comes to global warming. Commentator Gary Schlueter says he’s a Christian, but he doesn’t see anything wrong with believing in the science that indicates global warming is partly caused by human activity:

Transcript

Some Christians take issue with their conservative brothers in faith when it
comes to global warming. Commentator Gary Schlueter says he’s a Christian,
but he doesn’t see anything wrong with believing in the science that
indicates global warming is partly caused by human activity:


In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, we are warned to beware of the two
children under Father Christmas’ long red robe, this boy ignorance and this
girl want, but especially beware of this boy. Race forward a century or so and
we have Reverend Jerry Falwell concluding, “I believe that global warming is a myth.”
I repeat, beware this boy, ignorance!


Reverend Falwell, an influential evangelical Christian leader, is not alone among
his contemporaries in preaching that global warming is a myth, or worse: some clerical
leaders say to believe otherwise could jeopardize one’s salvation.


The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, the ISA, is a mixed bag of religious leaders,
scientists and policy experts who, through a dark glass, shine a Biblical light on the
issues of environment and development. According to the ISA, “most U.S. evangelicals do not
back the call for regulating greenhouse emissions.” I repeat, beware this boy!


Recently, a group of more moderate Christian evangelical leaders joined together to
form the Evangelical Climate Initiative. They say global warming is real, that humans are
causing it, and that we need to do something about it. The ISA stands firmly against them.
The question is, why?


Why, in the face of hard warnings on the cover of the conservative Time Magazine with headlines
that read to “be worried. Be very worried” about global warming? Why, when the NASA scientist who
warned us 25 years ago that human activity was changing the Earth’s climate now warns
us we have a decade before we pass the point of no return? Got that? Point of no return.
Ten years! Why, against the growing tide of public and clerical opinion that mankind’s
contribution to global warming must be stopped, do they tell their flock to be like
Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Newman and not to worry?


Are these Mad Magazine evangelicals antagonistic toward science because science brought
us the concept of evolution? Can they be so petty? Or do they see global warming as a way
to fulfill their direst prophecies of gloom and doom? Can they be so proud? Or is it their
sheer greed to gobble up Earth’s resources that brings them smiling sanguinely to the brink of
a disaster so profound the habititability of our entire planet is at risk? Can they be so selfish?
Selfish, proud, petty? Beware this boy!


This Earth is our only real sanctuary, it is a gift of God, how can it be of so
little concern to these anti-Earth evangelicals that they can continue to preach against it,
preach against God’s gift? I conclude, beware this boy, ignorance!


Host tag: Gary Schlueter is a former president of the Virgin Island Conservation
Society.

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