Everyone Take a Deep Breathe of Clear Air |
It’s
not unreasonable to imagine that some or a great deal of global warming
is caused by human activity. But I’m no scientist, so what do I know?
Yet for me, global warming is more or less a so-what? Even if the planet
wasn’t warming, we are responsible for the health of the planet God put
us on. We’re still required to steward well the air we breathe, the
ground we till, and the flora and fauna we find everywhere.
“Environmentalist” is part of our job title from Genesis 1 on.
Still,
I find it annoying that hardly a week goes by that I don’t read about
the coming climate calamity. After a while, and after hearing this for a
quarter of a century and more, one tends to get jaded. Not about
troubling environmental trends, but the apocalyptic predictions. Thus I
found this piece, “Climate Change—Assessing the Worst Case Scenario,” a level-headed response to some of the hysteria, whose conclusion is:
There is also this: a blast from the past, a 1959 article in CT: “Global Survey: Thanksgiving in a Needy World.”
After noting the immigration crisis of the day (1 million refugees in
Hong Kong fleeing Communism) and quoting at length President
Eisenhower’s Thanksgiving proclamation, it lists the “pointed areas of
need” in the world 60 years ago. Thirteen of the twenty items was the
result of weather: a typhoon, a flood, a famine, or a drought. It
appears that climate change has been with us always, and perhaps less a
sign of a coming apocalypse (accompanied by yet another dire warning)
but a call to do something hard today. Like offering succor to those
devastated by really bad weather, no matter its ultimate cause. That
previous sentence certainly indicts the lazy likes of me.
The Intimacy of Silence
This brings me to a figure you may not know but should: Robert Cardinal Sarah of Guinea, and especially his book, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, which I read to great effect last year. This piece in The Week is a good introduction. One taste:
The Future of Learning Styles
Apparently
it’s bleak, because this concept keeps getting debunked in study after
study. And yet it still hangs on in much of modern education. Why?
More insights into this phenomenon can be had "The Myth of 'Learning Styles'" by Olga Khazan in The Atlantic.
Free Can Be Costly
One great modern mystery that I was unaware of until recently: That free parking is really expensive. Watch this video to understand why.
Grace and peace,
|
Mark Galli
Editor-in-Chief, Christianity Today |
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