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	serviced by the: Christian Environmental Studies Center @ Montreat College http://cesc.montreat.edu

If Everyone Lived as We Do

Calvin B. DeWitt

Last summer I spent a month in India, where I saw people working to keep lives and families together in a country that will soon have a population of one billion. I found myself wanting to help. Environmental degradation was everywhere: goat herders lopped branches from roadside trees, and others poached fuelwood from forest preserves.

While I wished that these people could have the provisions that North Americans have, I also wondered if that is possible. As an environmental scientist, I have been trying to balance the ledger sheets of resource and demand in this world of expanding human need. And I have hit against some hard realities and boundaries God has set for creation.

I also wondered whether I wanted these people to have what many of us have: seven-day work weeks, long commutes on busy expressways, crime in the streets, and urban decay.

Since my return home, I have been searching for a way to describe the problem of growing human demand and creation's limited supply. We hear exaggerations, questionable estimates, and inadequate descriptions, but amid them all, the signs and signals of creation's degradation remain. An area of tropical rain forest the size of Indiana is destroyed every year, about two bushels of soil are lost for every bushel of corn produced, and cancer rates are increasing in water birds and fish in industrial regions.

Particularly moving to me, after leading field trips through the vanishing forests of south India, is knowing that one quarter of the world's 250,000 species of higher plants will no longer have a place in our Lord's creation by the year 2050, at present rates of extinction.

The Carbon Crisis. In assessing human health, we sometimes run a metabolism test that measures oxygen consumption to sum up bodily processes. We can do something similar for all life on Earth by measuring the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Nearly all living things consume oxygen and produce carbon dioxide in a process called respiration; plants do the reverse in photosynthesis. The two processes complement each other, one consuming the gas the other produces, and vice versa.

The atmosphere is thus a kind of checkbook, with green plants making carbon-dioxide withdrawals and all other living things making carbon-dioxide deposits. Each year, plants withdraw enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce about 60 gigatons of carbon in roots, stems, leaves, and fruit (a gigaton is one billion metric tons; a metric ton is 2,200 pounds).

When we check the balance in the atmospheric checkbook, we find the level of carbon dioxide going down in summer and back up in winter-- up and down, year after year. Why? Because during our summer the northern hemisphere is green-- forests are fully leafed out, and crops are flourishing. Photosynthesis is using up more carbon than the rest of creation is producing.

Because there is much less vegetation south of the equator, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere increases during the northern hemisphere's winter, when worldwide carbon production exceeds consumption. Up and down, up and down-- so goes the carbon balance of our atmospheric checkbook. The cycle points to God's provisions of gases needed by people, industries, animals, and plants.

But the word industries in the last sentence raises the question of how much carbon people add to the atmospheric checkbook by burning gasoline, oil, coal, natural gas, wood, and other fuels. Scientists discovered that this amounts to about 6.1 gigatons of carbon per year worldwide. The United States and Canada, with 5 percent of the world's population, produce about a quarter of that amount.

Can Anyone Live Like This? Such figures bring sudden relevance to the question in the title of this article: What if the rest of the world lived as North Americans do? If they did, the 6.1- gigaton figure would rise to 28 gigatons per year. If world population increased from its present 5.4 billion to predicted 8.5 billion in 2025 and all those people consumed as much as North Americans do now, the figure would rise to 45 gigatons of carbon each year. Can Earth's plant life, which is already absorbing 60 gigatons of carbon each year, take up this added amount?

These are provocative questions, but they are overwhelmed by something even more sobering-- a long-term change in our check book balance. The carbon dioxide balance is increasing year by year (see box).

This means that we and the rest of creation are already putting more carbon into the atmosphere than plants are taking out. And every year, the amount of difference is greater than the previous year. There is no doubt about it: we have already exceeded creation's capacity to take out the carbon we are putting in. Our answer to the question, Can the rest of the world live as we do? not only is that they cannot-- we cannot, either.

Of course there is much more to the story. The atmospheric checking account is connected to a carbon savings account of petroleum, coal, and peat, as well as to a solar income account. And the seas are richly involved as well. Moreover, some argue that we should not be concerned with the rising carbon-dioxide balance but hope for the best and deal with whatever consequences arise as we must-- the same way we handle flood plains and earthquakes in fault zones.

Yet a rising atmospheric carbon balance could lead to tremendous dislocations of cities, farms, and creatures as well as drastic changes in weather patterns and climates. Many people are thus advocating that we keep creation as we know it, that we take a conservative approach and not change our weather systems and climates. If we choose to act, what can we do?

Cut Back Two-thirds. In my view, we can and must immediately reduce our energy consumption by two-thirds. We don't need to do so because of guilt or a romantic understanding of nature. Rather, we need to reduce our energy use because it makes good sense ecologically and economically. Cutting back will result in better care for creation and for other people.

If Canadians, Americans, and others in the developed West used energy more efficiently, the atmospheric carbon account would come closer to balancing. That would give greater opportunities to the rest of the world's inhabitants to improve their lot. It would lessen the adverse human effects on creation, save scarce resources, and save money.

And cutting back is fairly easy. I suggest making two telephone calls: one to the power company and one to an electrical-supply house. Ask both to send information about how to increase energy efficiency. Usually such companies will provide all the information needed for anyone to start saving energy at home, the office, the farm, the business, the church, the school. Most power companies already promote increased energy efficiency as an alternative to new power plants, and electrical-supply companies stack the supplies necessary for achieving that efficiency.

With reduced energy use come increased savings. And the start-up and changeover costs of purchasing new and better light bulbs, water heaters, furnaces, and appliances can be covered by a loan, with payments from savings gained. That approach is both good ecology and good business.

For Christians, there is more to this task than saving and practicality. As we transform ourselves from consumers of creation to keepers of creation, we need to remind ourselves of God's will about serving and keeping creation. (Gen. 2:15), about giving the land and the creatures their sabbath rests (Ex. 20:10, 23:10-12; Lev. 25-26), about respecting and protecting creation's fruitfulness (Gen. 1:22; Ezek. 34:18), and about living contentedly before God (1 Tim. 6:6-23).

As we convert from creation-consumers to creation-keepers, we must also resist clinging to idols of destructiveness (cf. Matt. 6:24). What's more, we must consider God's weighty judgment upon those who destroy the earth (Rev. 11:18).

For our own sake and others', we must not be consumers of creation but keepers of it. Our task is to reduce our wastefulness so that others, with us, may live to the glory of God.

Saving Energy at Church -Turn off lights (both incandescent and fluorescent) when a room is not in use. -Turn lights down (use low-wattage lights and energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights). -Gather at least one year's worth of energy bills and summarize them. -Hold meetings in rooms that take the least amount of energy to light while still being comfortable. -Visit the building when it is unoccupied to see which lights remain on that do not need to be. Check again later to see if there has been any improvement. -Purchase only energy-efficient lamps, light bulbs, tubes, and ballasts. -Replace standard light bulbs and tubes in long-burning fixtures with energy-efficient ones. -Supplement photocell controls with time clocks to reduce the number of operating hours for outside lighting. -The Department of Environmental Stewardship and Hunger Education, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Please mail any comments to Dr. Mark Lassiter.