Environment

Discerning What Is Best
With Dr Rex Rogers

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Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 03 May 2022

Chicken Little was hit by a falling acorn one day and began yelling, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling,” thus working the entire farmyard into a turmoil. And now the Climate Change movement is telling us the world will soon end, but will it?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #22 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

I’ve loved the outdoors as long as I can remember. It’s one reason my favorite color is green.

As a kid, I reveled in spending time in the woods and in the fields on my Grandpa Rogers’s farm and elsewhere. I read every issue of the monthly “Field and Stream,” “Outdoor Life,” and “Sports Afield” magazines that arrived at our house.

In 8^th Grade, a classmate David Hammond and I won an award for our entry in the Science Fair. Our project illustrated ways to reinforce conservation.

I remember Ohio’s Cuyahoga River catching on fire in 1969, sensationally making national news. When I was a freshman in college in 1970 President Nixon launched the Environmental Protection Agency. Then in 1979, there was a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

These early incidents stimulated the emerging environmental movement, eventually leading to global warming, then more recently, climate change. It’s a strange flipflop because in 1974, “Time” magazine’s cover proclaimed a “Coming Global Ice Age.” Not sure what happened to the Ice Age. Maybe it got melted away by global warming?

Now it seems as if we’re into an arms race to see how frightening climate alarmists can become:

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says we’ve got 12 years to correct our climate sins before the world as we know it becomes unlivable.

Former Vice President Al Gore speaks of an “inconvenient truth” at 10 years. Recently, the director of the film, “Don’t Look Up,” tweeted:

“We’ve got 6-8 years before the climate is so chaotic we [will] live in a permanent state of biblical catastrophe.”

Wow.

Consider this recent study:

“Angry, terrified, and in despair. These three words capture how many people are feeling because of climate change according to a recent… report "Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Inequities, and Responses." A global study…found that nearly 6 in 10 people aged 16 to 25 were very or extremely worried about the fate of the planet, nearly half of them reported climate distress or anxiety affecting their daily lives, three-quarters agreed that "the future is frightening," and over half are convinced that "humanity is doomed."

The author’s remedy for all this is that we should look for ways to “take positive action,” go biking or walking. She said, “The key is to balance hope and worry…we must remain ‘stubbornly optimistic.’

So, the answer to the end of the world due to climate change is to remain stubbornly optimistic? But based upon what? No wonder young adults are experiencing anxiety.

This kind of climate change hyperbole is an example of what some have called “climate fear porn,” an ever-ratcheting-up hysteria.

Problem is, rather than people rallying to combat the epic effects of climate change, people are wearily succumbing to “Apocalypse fatigue.” And the screeching Greta Thunberg—who I think is being used by older adults—embarrassingly makes things worse.

But I don’t think climate change, and certainly not fear, are what God had in mind for us.

As I said, I love the Creation we learn about in Genesis. Scripture says, ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters,’ (Ps. 24:1-2; 1 Cor. 10:26).

I believe God gave humanity a magnificent environment in which to flourish, and in what’s called the “Cultural Mandate” of Gen. 1:26-28, God gave humanity dominion over the earth, meaning we are responsible for exercising wise stewardship, developing and caring for creation and everything in it.

This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends.

I also believe human beings have at times made bad choices that negatively affected God’s beautiful Creation. Because of the Fall (Gen. 3), even Creation is laboring under the weight of sin. God talks about this in several places in the Bible, e.g., “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time,” (Rom. 8:22; Ps. 102:25-27; Heb. 1:11-12).

You don’t have to review the whole of human history to recognize this. Just consider our American experience.

Think, for example, of the tens of millions of American Bison that were brought to near extinction in 1870-1890, or the Passenger Pigeon that numbered in the billions before being hunted without thought of conservation, the last pigeon dying in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

We nearly lost the American Bald Eagle and the Timber Wolf, but these species, along with the buffalo, are an example of what can be done when proper animal husbandry is employed. All three species are thriving again.

Plowed under indigenous grasses, together with over-farming of the Prairie in the late 19^th, early 20^thCentury, were precipitating factors that, together with severe drought, resulted in the 1930s Dust Bowl eroding millions of cubic tons of topsoil.

Clearcut logging in the West denuded mountainsides and contributed to later mudslides.

Earlier, I recorded a podcast on littering. Surely this is a global example of human irresponsibility. Some 9 billion tons of litter ends up in the ocean annually, and 50% of all littered items are cigarette butts.

So, human beings can exercise a damaging impact upon the environment.

But many in the climate change movement claim that human beings are solely responsible for all current degradation to the world, so much so, that if we do not immediately cease using fossil fuels, we’re goners in the near term.

The problem with climate change activists’ claims, however, are several:

Conclusions are based on biased computer modeling, not evidence.
Climate is always changing so their thesis is untestable and unproven.
The fact that humans contribute to global warming is demonstrable, but the effect is minimal, and zero use of fossil fuels immediately does not appreciably change this condition in the next hundred years.
Climate change is far more complex than simplistic bromides calling for shutting down oil, gas, coal and other fossil fuel consumption.
Calls for dramatic transitions from fossil fuels to other forms of energy like wind or solar are enormously expensive – so claims of “climate justice” on behalf of the poor are not deliverable.
Climate activists’ passion for alternative energy oddly does not include the clean, safe source of nuclear energy.
Embedded in the climate change movement are values that run counter to ether to a Christian worldview or to traditional American values, among them,

Anti-humanity.
God is irrelevant, unless the earth is the deity.
Anti-truth or genuine science.
Anti-free enterprise or anti-capitalism.
Look to government as the source salvation and utopia.

Climate change enthusiasts demonstrate that what is going on here is a worldview battle: for many, climate change has become a secular religion.

Politicians, environmentalists, and media create a triad constantly promoting climate catastrophe. They do this because fear sells. It scares people to the point they support the triad with money and power.

Yes, climate change is happening. It’s always happening. Droughts, floods, hurricanes are not getting worse. Fires are decreasing. Even Antarctic Sea ice is not declining.

We know the earth is warming modestly, but climate change is not an existential threat.

We should remember what God told Noah after the Great Flood: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease,” (Gen. 8:22).

Well, we’ll see you again soon. For more Christian commentary, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, Discerning What Is Best, or check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 01 March 2022

Have you ever been driving down the road following a vehicle and watched as the driver pitched a bag of fast food trash out the window onto the roadside?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #10 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

I have many faults. But littering is not one of them.

I do confess, though, that if I have a pet peeve, it’s littering.

I know there are, let’s call them “worse sins,” in the world. But it still fries my grits when I see people toss trash, willfully acting with such disregard for not only nature but the people around them.

From an early age, I loved the outdoors, starting with Grandpa Rogers’s family farm. That built respect for nature and animals right into my DNA. Later, I learned that our Sovereign God created everything “very good” and charged human beings made in his image with responsibility to both develop and care for the environmental richness of the world. Sometimes this is called the “Cultural Mandate” (Gen. 1:26-28).

So with that I have always been constitutionally unable to throw trash on the ground and walk away from it. I simply can’t do it.

I remember exploring the woods as a kid and finding tin cans, bottles, or spent plastic shotgun shells, ones that someone else had left behind. I took them with me to the nearest trash container. If I found trash that was biodegradable, like food products, I usually kicked the garbage under a rock or buried it in a nearby hole. But one way or the other I had to do something with somebody else’s litter—a habit I continue to this day.

I remember a time awhile back on the beach with my wife when I noticed a group of young people, late teens and early twenties, occupying some sand near us. I was reading a book and looked up after the group left. To my surprise and disgust, I noted that the area around where the group’s blankets had been, was—you guessed it—littered with half-emptied plastic bottles, numerous pop cans, paper, and plastic wrappers from recently purchased inflatable floats.

Now I ask you, why are these youth so cavalier about littering? Who failed to teach them that the environment is a delicate balance, both ferocious and fragile, and given to us by God to steward during our time on earth? How did they reach the cusp of adulthood and not learn that littering hurts us all?

Littering is an act utterly without redeeming social value. Littering yields no positive side effects. Littering is pollution, and it is inconsiderate, immature, and irresponsible.

Littering is an affront to the beauty and function of God’s creation. There’s something about trash strewn across God’s handiwork that grates on the eye, the mind, and the soul.

If someone’s cast-off stuff is truly biodegradable, then I don’t get too worked up. Although even these kinds of products, depending upon where they are discarded, can harm the local ecosystem. That’s why it’s illegal, or should be, to jettison untreated effluvium from your boat’s tanks into inland or coastal waters.

This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, look for us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends.

E-cigarettes are a new litter: vaporizers, pods, batteries, are now being discarded everywhere and the environmental damage is, worse, longer lasting than a cigarette’s paper and filters.

Meanwhile, cigarette butts remain #1 litter worldwide. 18 billion butts discarded per day or 4.5 trillion annually. Butts take 18 months to 12 years to decompose. So, they are biodegradable—sort of. Even when they degrade, tobacco product waste contains 7,000 toxic chemicals that leach into soil and water.

The number of cigarette butts littered per year can be laid end-to-end to moon and back 300 times. And 80% of butts littered worldwide end up in the water system.

By some estimates, cigarette butts account for 38% of non-biodegradable litter items worldwide and up to 21% of coastal waste.

Plastic straws are pollution, but they don’t make the top five of any anti-pollution group’s list. So, while I’m all for using paper straws, this corporate-bad-item “du jour” is a drop in the bucket compared to cigarette butts.

By the way, cigarette-related deaths in the US stand at about 480,000 per year. This is why, the first question I’m asked at the Dr’s office, after my birthdate, is “Do you smoke?”

Cigarette butts are a universal and ubiquitous pollution.

I walk with our dog on a country road near our home. Given that it’s a secluded gravel road, finding pitched beer cans and assorted debris in the ditches and even over into cornfields, is a regular occurrence. Teenagers—and I’m sure a certain number of adults—don't want to get caught with evidence and their solution is to discard the contraband out the car window.

After a long winter, last spring on one trek I picked up 44 cans and bottles strung along just .3 mile. I’ve picked up truck tires, trash bags full of torn-off old roofing materials, pallets, and recently, an broken down double love-seat tossed into the ditch, all this on property that does not belong to the eco-polluter.

In my estimation, littering is an act of disrespect, immaturity, irresponsibility, and laziness. It’s the unwillingness to expend enough energy to walk to a trash can, to stuff trash into your pocket until you find a waste receptacle, to place trash or garbage on the floor of your vehicle until you stop where disposal can be cared for properly.

Littering is damaging, destructive, and sometimes dangerous.

No matter how you cut it, littering is wrong.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 21 February 2018

Flying over the Rockies on a clear day is an experience I'd wish for anyone. I did it yesterday.

Reddish pink cliffs, towering to sheer, sharp edges. Flat-topped mesas big enough for airports.

White, deep red, and salmon colored rocky crags surrounded by brown lowlands.

Vast dry lands, then lakes trapped at high elevation.

Massive, jagged peaks chained along miles of high lonesome ranges.

Flatlands suddenly interrupted by rock ridged singular peaks rising hundreds of feet above sandy floored deserts.

Broken country, serrated ridges, canyon upon canyon to infinity. Giant snow-covered summits above the timberline.

Snowy landscape far as the eye can see, lined with thousands of valleys, precipices, oddly shaped pinnacles, and infinite rock formations.

What looks like desolation is actually unlimited resources, terra firma interspersed with flora of fathomless variety, home to fauna fit for a wilderness. Incredible landscape stretching the length of a continent.

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 31 July 2014

Littering is something I’ve never been able to understand. Does it make any sense to pollute the environment, much less your own property? Yet people do this everyday.

In my view littering is little more than laziness. It’s the unwillingness to expend enough energy to walk to a trash can, to stuff trash into your pocket until you find a waste receptacle, to place trash or garbage on the floor of your vehicle until you stop where disposal can be cared for properly. And so it goes.

It always amazes and incenses me to see people pitch bags of food trash or beer/soda cans out their vehicle window or to drive behind someone as he or she blithely tosses cigarette butts onto the road.

Littering is damaging, destructive, and sometimes dangerous. Litterers are irresponsible, immature, and lazy.

No matter how you cut it, littering is wrong:

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Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 15 March 2012

Litter has bugged me for as long as I can remember. There’s something about trash strewn across God’s handiwork that grates on the eye, mind, and soul.

I’m strong on this but I don’t think goofy. If your cast-off stuff is truly biodegradable than I don’t get too worked up. Although even these kinds of products, depending upon where they are discarded, can harm the local ecosystem; that’s why it’s illegal, or should be, to jettison untreated effluvium from your boat’s tanks into inland or coastal waters.

Littering is, in my estimation, an act of disrespect, immaturity, and irresponsibility. To me, this seems like common sense. Here’re some more thoughts on the matter:

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Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 09 March 2012

I’ve always loved the outdoors. I’m reminded of that as I visit southern Oregon this weekend. Driving in I could see snow-covered volcanic cone Mt McLoughlin, or as the old-timers call it, Mt Pitt. In the other direction, there’s Table Rock, a high and long, chiseled mesa that once served as a home and refuge for the Takelma Indians. Beautiful.

My hotel room balcony is just feet from rapids in the Rogue River, full and playing soothing music on its way to the Pacific. Also from the balcony, I see enormous pines and thousands of lichen-laden short oak trees.

This brings back memories from my time as a kid in Ohio. We didn’t have Rocky Mountains. We had the rolling foothills of the Appalachians, equally stirring in their own way. We had fields and woods, hollows and lakes, and we had farmland. I spent hours in all of them and here I developed a love for nature, the outdoors, and wildlife that’s lasted a lifetime.

My favorite color is green because it was, in my kid’s view, the most natural of colors.

The early American frontiersmen like Daniel Boone and their Native American counterparts like Tecumseh were my heroes.

I learned caught, kept, and tended tadpoles and all manner of bugs. Whenever I could in the fields or woods I froze into stillness and watched animals and birds live without human interference. I learned their names, sounds, and habits, as I learned the names of plants and especially trees.

This need to observe flora and fauna remains with me, for I still find it exciting to see something different, maybe a fox, an egret in Florida, or prairie dogs in Nebraska. I still find it exciting to see a bird or animal or tree I’ve never seen before. I remember the first time I saw a roadrunner in Arizona and a magpie in California.

Hearing birds sing in the early morning is my favorite music. Their distinctive and varying harmonies are unmatched.

In the 8^th Grade another student and friend, Dave Hammond, and I built an extensive Conservation display for the school’s science fair. I don’t remember the award we received. I do remember getting our picture in the paper. Though I would not today call myself an environmentalist, a term fraught with problematic politics, I am certainly concerned for the stewardship of all creation. “Extinction” is an awful word, and “despoiled” is almost as bad.

As a kid I never felt freer, more alive and optimistic, than when I was alone in the fields or woods. Not because I had a poor family life, because I was blessed with the opposite. But because I felt connected with a kind of beauty, purity, and simplicity that could not be found even in village life, let alone amongst urban congestion.

The Great Outdoors is great because it’s nothing less than divine art. I loved it all from the moment I could walk in nature’s cathedrals. I am part of it. I am responsible for it. I love it still.

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.