It is blasphemy to say this on Earth Day, isn’t it? The one day of the year that we’re supposed to all rally together and resolve to fix all the environmental problems that we cause during the other 364 days. In reality, though, it plays out almost like a New Year’s resolution or a kid fresh out of a week at a Christian camp — get fired up about it for awhile, and then taper off after a few weeks until everything is back to normal.

Let me go back and clarify my statement: I do believe the statistics that say the world is getting slightly warmer. I do not think it is caused by anything we have done, nor can it be prevented by anything we will do.

A couple of months ago I was talking to an environmentally-conscious coworker about renewable energy. The topic of ethanol came up in our conversation. I told him that last summer I quit buying E10 because my car gets terrible gas mileage with it. I, like most Midwesterners, started getting “Super Unleaded” (E10) a few years back because it usually ran five cents cheaper per gallon than regular unleaded, and besides, Super means better, right? Well, last summer I discovered on accident that I can pull 350 miles out of a tank of unleaded gas, but only around 290 with E10.

His reply to my little vignette was that he always heard ethanol was supposed to get better gas mileage. Welcome to the wonderful world of mass media.

Last semester Amanda took a speech class, and one of the things they had to do before giving a speech was poll the rest of the class about certain things pertinent to the topic of the speech. Amanda’s topic was global warming, and her first question was “Do you believe global warming is a real threat?” All but one person (her brother Andrew, who was also in the class) responded that they did. Her next question was, “Are you able to support your position with facts?” Only two or three people (Andrew included) said they could.

If people are exposed to an idea for long enough, they will begin to believe it without even thinking.

Have you ever watched the local weather on an especially hot day? The weatherman says something about how we are one degree away from that day’s heat record, which was set in 1905, or something like that. A good amount of the records are a hundred years old or more. Long before the days of gasoline-powered vehicles and industrial waste and ozone depletion, we were setting heat records that have yet to be broken. What’s more, the Middle Ages were some of the hottest in history. The world’s climate just goes in cycles. (Don’t forget that we also had an ice age a few thousand years ago.)

We must have an awfully inflated sense of importance to think that we’re solely responsible for the environmental changes and that we are the only hope for its reversal. We cannot even begin to understand the intricacies of our planet, and yet the “inconvenient truth” is accepted as a fact. There really is a lot of legitimate research showing that today’s global warming is completely natural, but it gets ignored by the media. You can hardly blame them. Whether it is real or contrived, a disaster is always profitable. And no matter what the position is, there is always an “expert” scientist who will back them up.

I don’t believe in global warming. How do I reconcile this with my faith? My Christian “worldview” demands that I care for the earth for no other reason than because it is God’s artistic masterpiece. I will not start caring about the environment just because we are in the middle of a fake emergency, nor will I stop caring about the environment once the rest of America moves onto a new fad in a few years. I should always care about the environment regardless of whether it’s the current trend. My faith should make me greener than anyone.

So global warming isn’t an issue for me. If I am wrong and it really is happening, then such a revelation should not change my actions if I am truly living out my faith. And if I am right about it just being overhyped by the media, I should still be indiscernible from any environmentalist.

If only more Christians would realize this.