Southern Evangelical Seminary President Dr. Richard Land: Climate Cops’ Agenda Is Not Stopping Pollution, But Turning Back the Clock on Industrial Progress
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—With Earth Day on the calendar for tomorrow, there seems to be a frantic plea to “save the earth!” And while there are steps everyone can take to protect the environment and the resources that God has entrusted to us for the betterment of humankind, the agendas of environmental activists may be hindering progress.
Named one of the nation’s top Evangelical leaders, Dr. Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES, www.staging.ses.edu), recently addressed timely environmental issues in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” heard on nearly 400 stations nationwide.
“The Department of Energy just published data that reports that the U.S. has reduced its carbon emissions by 2 percent last year over the previous year,” Land said. “For the past decade and a half, carbon emissions have fallen more than 10 percent in the U.S. The U.S. has reduced our carbon emissions more than virtually all the nations on earth. How can this be? Surely the ‘Chicken Little, sky is falling!’ climate cops can’t be all that wrong. Are they? How did this happen? Did strict new government controls drive down consumption? No. The answer is fracking.”
Fracking, Land continued, is simply a new way to extract American’s tremendous reserves of shale oil and natural gas that are under Americans’ feet from sea to shining sea. As Stephen Moore puts it in his article in the Washington Times, “Natural gas is a wonder fuel. It is cheap. It is abundant. America has more of it than anyone else. We have several hundred years’ worth of natural gas, and it is clean burning.”
“As a result of fracking, the price of natural gas has gone down by 75 percent over the past 10 years, so people are using more and more of it—clean fuel replacing coal and other fossil fuel,” Land continued. “So the climate cops have embraced it, right? No. Even though it is a clean fossil fuel, they continue to attack fracking and try to demonize it as a bad idea. Instead, they are pressing wind power and solar power alternatives that do not work and only provide about 3 percent of our energy production. Could it be that these climate cops’ real agenda is not stopping pollution, but actually turning back the clock on the industrial revolution and industrial progress?”
Those same “climate cops,” Land says, also have a dedicated agenda about climate change—one that has reached even the White House. But, he adds, as reported by Stephen Moore, evidence and scientific studies continue to accumulate that show that there is honest and real doubt.
“The scientific challenges to the theory that human-generated Co2 emissions are irreparably damaging Earth’s climate continue to appear with ever greater frequency,” Land said. “In the first quarter of this year, researchers had published a 133 ‘consensus skeptical’ papers, and 660 articles have appeared since January 2014. For example, an article published this month in Nature Geoscience linked the melting of the Greenland ice sheets to hot spot activity within the Earth’s core, a finding that ‘must be included in studies of the future response to climate change.’
“Also,” Land continued, “an exhaustive study published earlier this month in Nature by University of Stockholm researchers, who examined hydrological patterns going back 1,200 years, found that climate models cannot accurately predict extreme rainfall and drought. And yet our U.S. Justice Department is considering charging the scientists and their supporters with ‘a climate denial conspiracy.’ Now, I ask you—which group is closed-minded and which group uses the oxymoron of stating there is such a thing as settled science?”
Earth Day was first observed on April 22, 1970, to mark the birth of the modern environmental movement, according to the Earth Day Network. That day, 20 million Americans demonstrated for a healthy, sustainable environment in coast-to-coast rallies. Earth Day was founded by Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, Calif. Inspired by the student anti-war movement, he realized that if he could infuse that energy with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution, it would force environmental protection onto the national political agenda.
SES is a leader in apologetics education—teaching students to defend their faith and talk intelligently, passionately and rationally about what they believe and why they believe it. Many courses focus on societal issues from a Christian worldview, delve into scientific apologetics or contemplate creation research.
SES explores ethical issues through its “Ethics in Emerging Technology” program; for more information, visit www.ethics.staging.ses.edu. Southern Evangelical Seminary also recently unveiled a new apologetics blog at www.WhyDoYouBelieve.org, where Land and other SES voices address the most pressing issues of the day.
Land is featured in his nationally syndicated daily radio commentary, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” which airs on almost 400 stations nationwide, including nearly 200 on the American Family Radio Network and 100 on the Bott Radio Network. “Bringing Every Thought Captive” is also podcast daily on the free SES mobile app and airs locally in the Charlotte, N.C., area every weekday. The “Bringing Every Thought Captive” television program, hosted by Land, airs on the NRB Network Wednesdays at 8 p.m. and midnight EST. “Bringing Every Thought Captive” also reaches nearly 2 million households in the Chicago area on the Total Living Network. For details about stations, times, downloads and more, click here.
Land has taught as a visiting or adjunct professor for several seminaries and has authored or edited more than 15 books. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford University in England and his bachelor’s degree (magna cum laude) from Princeton University. Land also earned a Master of Theology (Honors Program) degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he received the Broadman Seminarian Award as the Outstanding Graduating Student. Dr. Land was the 2013 Watchman Award recipient from the Family Research Council for his leadership on moral and cultural issues. He also received the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth from Biola University in 2010. Land served previously (1988-2013) as president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention’s official entity assigned to address social, moral and ethical concerns, with particular attention to their impact on American families. In 2014, he was appointed as a Senior Research Fellow of the ERLC’s Research Institute, and in 2015, he was named in the top 15 of Newsmax’s “Top 100 Christian Leaders in America.”
Southern Evangelical Seminary invites visitors to its web site to join the more than 20,000 people who have already downloaded the SES Apologetics App for Windows mobile devices and Android and Apple phones and tablets. Those with the app can get the very best news and information in Christian apologetics, including articles, audio, video, blogs and more from today’s most able defenders of the Christian faith—William Lane Craig, Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, William Dembski, Frank Turek, Hugh Ross, Gary Habermas and other well-known speakers, authors and teachers.
Southern Evangelical Seminary has been ranked as one of the top graduate programs for General Christian Apologetics by TheBestSchools.org’s “Top 10 Graduate Programs in Christian Apologetics.”
For more information on SES, visit its web site at www.staging.ses.edu or its Facebook page, follow the SES Twitter feed, @sesapologetics, or call (800) 77-TRUTH. For more information about SES’ “Ethics in Emerging Technology” program, visit www.ethics.staging.ses.edu.
For information on SES or to set up an interview, contact Deborah Hamilton at 215-815-7716 or 610-584-1096, ext. 102, or Beth Harrison, 610-584-1096, ext. 104, Media@HamiltonStrategies.com.
Southern Evangelical Seminary is a leader in apologetics education—teaching students to defend their faith and talk intelligently, passionately and rationally about what they believe and why they believe it. The accredited Christian college and seminary offers a wide variety of bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees. Programs can be completed through residence in the Charlotte area or online. The award-winning education at SES is distinctively Christian and focused on evangelism and world-engaging defense of the Christian faith—Christian Apologetics.
