Thursday, June 15, 2006

People Are Catching On...

Things are getting interesting out there. The Al Gore documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth" is playing to ever more audiences and selling out theaters nation-wide in the USA. The film is a powerfully impacting visual presentation of irrefutable evidence of global warming. No one who sees it can deny the evidence it presents - it hits you square in the gut even if you are making a fortune in ways that escalate the problem.

The funny thing is, those same people profiting off polluting processes stand to reap greater and more enduring fortune if they embrace the cure for the problem. They would better serve themselves, God, and all the world if they would make their duty central to their actions.

Additionally, Popular Science just published a major article on the technologies needed for the USA to move to renewable energy independence and not only stop increasing its output of warming gases, but even greatly reduce them - all while strengthening its domestic economy and creating millions of well-paying jobs that are impossible to export.

Meanwhile, Popular Mechanics is running an article on four cars that get gas mileage in the mid thirties, when averaged between city and highway as observed by Popular Mechanics' own test driving, rather than EPA estimates no one believes. This comes from a magazine that generally promotes all kinds of gas-guzzling toys.

Of course, the best advertisement for cleaner and more efficient energy technologies hangs in front of every gas station in America; the signs proclaiming to all the world the rising cost of gasoline. In the news if one looks a little, are the massive oil company profits that go with these high prices, outlining the need to change the very structures of economics and policy that currently fuel transportation and energy supply of every kind in the USA.

Should America finally wake up and aggressively pursue better energy technologies, the results for all the world would be tremendous, spurring incredible economic growth. This is primarily true domestically within the USA in the short term, however such a development would eventually spread to the rest of the world as renewable energy technology improvements were gradually spread to work in hand with current domestic and foreign technologies.

The greatest factor inhibiting the USA from jumping into this market with a vengeance is fear - the fear that these technologies will require personal sacrifice, economic upheaval, and the fear of business and political leaders that they will lose funding or sales to these technologies. The sad part is that these fears will much more likely be realized if clean energy is not pursued. The things we fear from clean energy look like cotton candy compared to what will happen if it is not pursued.

You know that the Bible talks about the world being consumed by fire at the end - but does it really say that God will light those fires by His own hand? Or will he simply stand idly by and watch us exercise our free will to light those fires ourselves? We are warned of the consequences of failing in our duty to care for the Earth God gave us. Like sheepish children, will we appear before him on judgement day saying "I don't know why I didn't do what you asked us to, God." Somehow I doubt that is a position any of us would wish to find ourselves in.

Thankfully God is allowing us the opportuniity to learn and understand our duties and the problems ignoring them causes. More people are learning what they need to every day. Perhaps there is still hope.

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