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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 22 January 2024

Have you noticed that climate change activists are beginning to sound desperate, hyping their rhetoric with attacks on fuel, food, democracy, and life itself?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #129 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.

Back in 1995, Pope John Paul II attracted worldwide attention for calling growing support for abortion and euthanasia a “culture of death.”

“Modern debates on abortion and euthanasia are a symptom and leading edge of something more profound and insidious – an entire view of the world that will lead us to forsake our ideals of human dignity and equality and ‘revert to a state of barbarism.’” 

“Many balked at St. Pope John Paul’s metaphor. Too harsh, they said. Too negative. Too closed-minded. Even worse, too religious. The world, they assure us, will be fine left to the immanent-value frameworks of secular humanism. We don’t need a theological perspective to know how to take care of ourselves: We have science. We have experts. We can predict the problems coming and beat them when they arrive. Technology saves. We have the data. Trust us.”

The conservative Pope John Paul II was sounding the alarm that a distinctly Satanic worldview was advancing, promoting not life but death.

Now we’re told by the President of the United States that climate change “is the challenge of our collective lifetimes. The existential threat to human existence as we know it.”

“The problem here is unmitigated scaremongering. A new survey shows that 60% of all people in rich countries now believe it's likely or very likely that unmitigated climate change will lead to the end of mankind."

Some people now say they will not have children because they're convinced that climate change will destroy the world. But Bjorn Lomborg, Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, points out how counterproductive that would be: "We need your kids to make sure the future is better."

“For saying this, Lomborg has been called ‘the devil.’ The Danish government even targeted him for his views on climate change.” 

America’s “climate czar” John Kerry recently tipped his hand, saying, “The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." Kerry is giving us a peak at the anti-family, anti-human culture of death now motivating climate elites.

“Key Club of Rome member, Dennis Meadows, hopes the ‘necessary’ depopulation of the planet, down to one billion—an 87.5% reduction from today’s population—can (get this) ‘occur in a civil way’.” How, one wonders, do we eliminate 7 billion people “in a civil way”? 

Meadows channels the old Malthusian idea – “the theory that population growth is potentially exponential…while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population decline.” Never mind that Malthusianism has long been discredited, climate change activists are now calling for the depopulation of the earth.

Meadows said, "If you want more liberty, and more consumption, you have to have fewer people. And conversely, you can have more people. I mean, we could even have eight or nine billion, probably if we have a very strong dictatorship." Another peak at what climate change proponents really want – power through big government control.

Where once we talked about climate change hyperbole as “climate fear porn,” an ever-ratcheting-up hysteria, now we’re hearing it’s not just the weather we need fear, it is human beings who must be reeducated, reduced, probably eradicated. Sounds like a culture of death to me.

Climate change activists include not only pompous John Kerry and screeching Greta Thunberg, but the likes of Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, King Charles III, the UN General Secretary, Al Gore, and many other mostly Western, globalist wealthy class.

These people are not just elite; they are elitist, philosopher-kings in their own minds. Meeting annually at the Word Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, they articulate an hysterical anti-humanity message.

“Key member of the (World Economic Forum’s) Board of Trustees' and deputy PM of Canada, Chrystia Freeland, openly declares war on the concept of democracy, in the name of tackling ‘climate change’.

"Our shrinking glaciers and our warming oceans,” she said, “are asking us wordlessly but emphatically, if democratic societies can rise to the existential challenge of climate change."

Climate con man extraordinaire, John Kerry, argues the farming industry must be destroyed in order to achieve Net Zero (eliminating all human produced carbon emissions). “Agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world,” Kerry says, “And we can't get to Net Zero—we don't get this job done—unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution.” Now it’s not just people and democracy that are the problem, but farms and farmers, the food supply itself.

Croatian MEP, Mislav Kolakušić, warned the EU parliament, “The EU is using the ‘man-made global warming’ hoax as a pretext to seize agricultural land from farmers, with the ultimate goal of creating deliberate food shortages. Remember, starving and desperate people are a lot more likely to comply with tyranny, in exchange for enough calories to avoid death, than people with easy access to an abundance of food, even if the source of those calories is insects—or fake, lab-grown ‘meat’.”

Meanwhile, climate change is a hoax. “The ‘climate crisis’ is based on computer models that predict hurricane, tornado, flood, drought, sea level rise and other disasters vastly greater than the world is actually experiencing. The models also ignore five great ice ages and interglacial periods, the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, the Anasazi and Mayan droughts, and other inconvenient climate truths.”

“Topping it off, China, Russia and India are burning cheap coal to industrialize, lift their people out of poverty, and leave climate-obsessed Western nations in the economic and military dust. Even if the West went totally Net Zero, it wouldn’t reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases even one part per million.”

“The climate catastrophe Cassandras have been wrong for decades. In the 1960s, professor Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb,” predicted widespread starvation for most of humanity. Didn’t happen. In the 1970s, the “experts” were predicting a new “ice age.” Didn’t happen. ‘Global cooling’ became ‘global warming’ and Al Gore, one of its most famous prophets, relied on computer models to predict that arctic ice would be melted by 2013. Didn’t happen.

Rampant hypocrisy gives a glimpse into the dystopic future these megalomaniacs are planning. The seas are supposedly rising, but they own beachfront properties. 

You shouldn’t be driving a car, but they fly everywhere -- including into Davos -- on private jets. Your modest family home is a problem, but they own multiple mansions that sit empty most of the time. Politicized science coupled with propaganda is a recipe for disaster. In the hands of those who seek global power in the name of ‘climate change,’ it is a prescription for an actual catastrophe of unprecedented proportions.”

“Our school kids are being terrorized with misinformation. This, in turn, is leading to all sorts of maladies, including a rise in teen depression, suicide, lower productivity and drug addiction. Worst of all, we are seeing the opposite of a population bomb. We are experiencing one of the most severe birth deaths in American history. The birth rate is plummeting and no surprise. Who wants to bring kids into a world that will be uninhabitable in 50 years? Psychologists are attributing these dysfunctions to a new syndrome called ‘eco-anxiety.’ It's a fear that Mother Earth is going to punish us in a brutal way -- and very soon.         

The irony of all this is that today's children and teens are inheriting a living standard, a cleaner planet, and a level of goods and services and technologies and medical care that is far superior to anything anyone in history -- even the richest kings and queens -- had access to even 100 years ago.”

“’Human-induced climate change’ is a monumental scam, fabricated as a pretext for unelected globalist bodies (including the United Nations and World Economic Forum) to wield absolute control over every aspect of our lives, under the guise of ‘saving the planet’?” There is no ‘climate emergency’, and never has been.” (@wideawake_media on X, 1/15/24).

So, in sum, climate change activists believe they, not God, can control the weather and the future, they prefer big government and dictatorship over democracy, and they wish to reduce the human population while controlling fuel, farms, and food. 

This is all about politics, more government control of our lives, and the loss of individual freedom. It’s not about Global Warming. It’s about Global Government. It’s not about life but a culture of death.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. 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. For more Christian commentary, 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.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024   

*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 or https://twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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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 either to a Christian worldview or to traditional American values, among them, 

1. Anti-humanity.
2. God is irrelevant, unless the earth is the deity. 
3. Anti-truth or genuine science.
4. Anti-free enterprise or anti-capitalism.
5. 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.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022   

*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.  

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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.

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.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022    

*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.    

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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.

Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2018   

*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.    

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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:

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2014  

*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.