Wholly Bible: A View from the Pew

LOW-CARBON DIET

By RAY WADDLE

There's good news and bad this month about planet earth.

The bad news: the huge international coalition of scientists (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) confirmed what many suspected and feared -- the planet is warming at alarming rates, and humans are most likely at fault.

The good news: People of faith are starting to mobilize. There are more religious coalitions, more church activism to improve the quality of air, water and land conservation than ever before. Check the web sites for the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, the Evangelical Climate Initiative, the Forum on Religion and Ecology.

More bad news: The pace of change in our environmental awareness is glacially slow, too slow so far to counteract the torrent of carbon emissions from our fossil fuels and industries.

More good news: It's not too late. By now, it's easy to find lists of eco-tasks to embrace, little things and big: Drive less, turn down the winter thermostat, ask the minister to preach about global warming, buy energy-efficient appliances, urge public officials to adopt policies of conservation and energy alternatives. And see if your congregation will join Interfaith Power and Light, a national coalition that offers practical ecological steps to take.

But something else has to happen first.

There will be no groundswell, no reform movement of environmental rescue, until religious people feel outrage and embarrassment about pollution, waste and rising seas.

American churdchgoers -- and nearly 80 percent of the nation declares itself Christian -- must see a connection between pollution and sin, whether or not everybody agrees with the scientific details of climate change.

We must believe that despoiling creation is an offense to God.

We must find the straight line that stretches from the Bible to our daily practices as consumers and citizens.

Biblical love of neighbor must include regard for all those who will suffer if global warming triggers violent storms, destruction of islands and coastal cities, intense heat waves and famines, water shortages, political instability, war and refugees.

Love of neighbor must include regard for future generations who will inherit our wreckage.

Change will happen when believers regard the marketplace motto of "more is better" as a human delusion, an impossible creed that exhausts the earth's resources and defies biblical values of stewardship and compassion.

On this subject, there's another form of pollution -- hypocrisy, including my own. I'm writing this on a non-recyclable computer that requires electricity -- my "carbon footprint" is too big. I must make it smaller. But every sunrise grants a new start. Let's pray, let's praise God and the works of God, then let's do something.