- ‘Earth Day’ — a Christian perspective
by Stacia Byers
21 April, 2001
April 22 marks the 31st celebration of ‘Earth Day’—an effort initiated to increase awareness about environmental issues. The founder of Earth Day, Gaylord Nelson, believes, ‘The fate of the living planet is the most important issue facing mankind.’ In addition, the Earth Day Network (the coordinating body of Earth Day activities) seeks to promote ‘a healthy environment and a peaceful, just, sustainable world by spreading environmental awareness … .’
While it is laudable to see humans exercising their God-ordained responsibility to care for the creation (Genesis 1:26–28), the above quotes show the prevailing view on environmental issues is skewed, as a proper Biblical foundation is lacking.
First, the fate of the planet is, ultimately, not in the hands of mankind. While humans are responsible for caring for the Earth (as per the ‘Dominion mandate’ in Genesis 1:26–28), we are not in control of the Earth. Rather it belongs to the Creator Himself (Psalm 24:1), who has made us His earthly stewards.
Second, the fate of the living planet is not the most important issue facing mankind. Ultimately, this decaying system will be replaced with a New Heavens and Earth anyway (Romans 8:20–22, 2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:1, Hebrews 1:10–12). Rather, the most important issue facing mankind is: will the individual choose to acknowledge his Creator and be reconciled to Him? Romans 1:20 makes it clear that knowledge of God is, at least at some level, evident to all, so those who refuse to acknowledge their Maker are without excuse.
For Christians, the most important concern is that of sharing with others the good news about the Creator who came to Earth to redeem His creation from the Curse of sin.
Finally, a proper and balanced perspective on caring for the Earth and its inhabitants comes not from merely promoting ‘environmental awareness’ but is only found within the Biblical framework, i.e. recognizing humans were created by a loving God and given the responsibility to rule over, subdue, and care for the rest of the Creation, once ‘very good,’ but now suffering from the curse of sin.
We need to beware of the tendency to worship and serve created things, as can happen with some ‘Earth Day’ activities. Instead we should give glory and honor to the Creator and return to the authority of His Word.
The Naked Communism of Earth DayAlan Caruba Wednesday, April 21, 2010
It is no accident that April 22, Earth Day, is also the birth date of Vladimir Lenin, an acolyte of Karl Marx, the lunatic who invented communism as an alternative to capitalism.
Earth Day is naked communism.
To begin, it substitutes a worship of the Earth, Gaia, for the worship of God, creator of the universe and the instructor of moral behavior for mankind.
The Earth does not demand a moral code of personal behavior. Indeed, the lesson it teaches is “the survival of the fittest “and an indifference to suffering. The “natural events” mankind fears most all involve the potential for significant loss of life and for injury.
The Earth is a beautiful place, but it is utterly merciless. Man has learned to adapt to it and, by adapt, I mean to use its resources to build shelter and protection from it, to plant and harvest crops from it, and to domesticate some of its species while hunting and fishing for others for food.
Earth Day postulates that man is the cause of harm to Earth by virtue of his cities, his highways, his use of its sources of energy, and even the garbage that results from the normal course of maintaining life. For centuries mankind routinely burned and buried garbage. Now we are told we must separate and recycle it. We are told that everything plastic is bad even though it is one of the great inventions of modern times.
Communism is a litany of murder and oppression
Communism reached its zenith in the last century. Its imposition in the former Soviet Union, in China, and elsewhere is a litany of murder and oppression. In the 20th century, a minimum 110 million people died as a result. It enslaves mankind wherever it can.
Environmentalism has been built on the foundation laid by communism because both exist to control everyone’s life. They are opposite sides of the same coin, both are opposed to the ownership of private property and both regard man as state property to be drained of his earnings through taxation.
Environmentalism’s preferred method is coercion and the mechanism for this is government.
While America was established to ensure “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, environmentalism exists to exert more and more control over our lives by limiting our choices, our liberty. Environmentalism redefines happiness as doing without the advances of science and commerce that protects and prolongs our lives.
There is nothing voluntary about environmentalism.
There is nothing voluntary about having to recycle. There is nothing voluntary about having to fill your tank with a mixture of gasoline and ethanol. There is nothing voluntary about the imposition of mileage standards for cars. There is nothing voluntary about losing access to beneficial chemicals that control countless insect and rodent pests that spread disease and destroy property.
While the vast majority of Americans clamor for the government to permit access to our nation’s vast natural resources of coal, oil, and natural gas it stands in the way, claiming always that drilling and mining pose a threat to the environment. At the same time it acquires more and more of the nation’s landmass to deter access and economic growth.
Greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming.”
In the name of the environment, the U.S. government is set to impose a Cap-and-Trade law on Americans that has no basis whatever in science and is, in fact, based on the greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming.”
Cap-and-Trade will tax energy use and directly control how much energy individual Americans can use to heat or cool their homes through “smart grid” technology controlled by the utilities, not the consumer.
Environmentalism is the reason the U.S. has not had a single new refinery or nuclear plant built since the 1970s. Think about that every time you drive your car or turn on the lights.
The spread of endless environmental propaganda has been taken up by the nation’s mainstream media and has infiltrated the nation’s schools through its textbooks and other means of instruction. Earth Day will be the occasion for an orgy of media coverage.
Just as communism failed the former Soviet Union and just as Red China abandoned communism as the model for its economy, environmentalism continues its relentless quest to deter economic growth and security in America. It is the infrastructure of a New World Order.
Do not celebrate Earth Day. Denounce it.
- Happy Earth Day, Vladimir Ilyich
By Bill Croke
When I lived in Waterbury, Vermont, in the late 1980s I attended a bluegrass concert in the park one summer evening. The band (its name escapes me) had recently returned from a Vermont Arts Council/ State Department-type cultural exchange trip to the then Soviet Union. During a break in the music, a couple of the musicians told the assembled crowd of Boomer hippies about the trip; the bass player showing off a souvenir, which was a lapel pin fastened to his shirt pocket. It was small, gold-colored, and bore the likeness of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known to history by the notorious nom de guerre of "Lenin." The bass player told the crowd, "Lenin was their original leader. He was the Russian George Washington."
I'm always reminded of this when yet another Earth Day approaches (always on April 22). Most people, especially school kids, participating in the annual green fetish don't know that it only dates to 1970, the first one held on the centenary of Lenin's birth (April 22, 1870). The Earth Day back-story is that the Lenin anniversary was purely coincidental, at least according to the occasion's two founders, the late Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisc.) and environmental activist Denis Hayes. Fine, it's a coincidence.
But if indeed there is even a subtle connection, I wonder how many of the millions worldwide participating in Earth Day festivities actually know who Lenin was? Do the ones who do have an inkling know that he was one of history's great monsters, a cold-blooded nihilist whose minions and successors were responsible for the deaths of scores of millions, and the sufferings of many more? But Earth Day as a holy-day-of-obligation of the Left (like May Day) has its ironies even if you put aside lethal political expediencies.
The Soviet Union under the green thumb of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and '30s collectivized agriculture, thus starving millions of Russian and Ukrainian peasants who up until then had solid reputations as, well, organic farmers. With his infamous "Five Year Plans" Stalin also forced the rapid industrialization of Russia that left it with a legacy of belching smokestacks, dirty skies, fouled rivers, and -- in a Soviet version of "smart growth" -- thousands of those dreary gray apartment buildings known for poor plumbing and lousy electrical service.
Following Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev gave his tyrant-numbed people the infamous "Virgin Lands Campaign" (1954-1962), when he "relocated" 300,000 Russians and Ukrainians to Soviet Central Asia (mostly present Kazakhstan) to plow the vast steppe and grow wheat. After one good harvest, drought and Soviet agricultural policy combined to produce windblown erosion on a grand scale, turning the region into a Dust Bowl. By the early 1960s the Soviets were importing grain, mostly from Canada.
In China, Chairman Mao's "Great Leap Forward" (his own second "Five Year Plan": 1958-1963) aped the Stalinist model and starved tens of millions of those pesky peasants, as industrialization accelerated. Maybe "A Hundred Flowers" bloomed, but not much else. Mao remedied these excesses with the discipline of the subsequent Cultural Revolution, when he sent academics, intellectuals, and Communist Party higher-ups into the countryside as farm laborers. I've always liked this aspect of the Cultural Revolution. Imagine Ivy League professors spending their summers in Iowa shucking corn at gunpoint. Mao was on to something. But sadly, part of the Great Helmsman's monstrous legacy is that much of China today suffers hideous pollution problems, so much so that it famously shut down factories weeks before last year's Olympic Games to clear the skies, and athletes wearing surgical masks commonly appeared in the media. Lately -- and to the chagrin of international greenies -- the Chinese have completed the infamous Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, where they removed 1.25 million people elsewhere, and flooded archaeological sites and 13,000 farms to do it.
In Cambodia in 1975, those admirers of Maoist agricultural methods, the Khmer Rouge, sent much of the population of Phnom Penh and elsewhere hoe-in-hand to the boonies, and in the end 1.5 million didn't come back, notably university-educated French-speakers who wore glasses.
All of the above should tell us that you don't have to be the late Milton Friedman to know that free market capitalist economies have cleaner environments. Private property rights encourage it. If you own a backyard, there is a built-in incentive to keep it clean because it's yours.
So, Happy Earth Day, Vladimir Ilyich. Maybe President Obama and the Democrat Congress will get around to proclaiming your Earth Day Birthday a national holiday sometime. It's an ersatz one anyway.
