Fun Experiment

Of course fossil fuels are a good thing; it's just idiocy to claim otherwise, and I don't think anyone really believes it. Well other than brainwash college graduates. I wonder if Reverend Jim Antal heats his 375 Massachusetts churches in the winter with solar and wind power. Excerpt:

For example, Rev. Jim Antal, responsible for the 375 United Church of Christ congregations in Massachusetts, is quoted on the Green America website: “The reason [fossil fuel companies] are profitable is because they’re destroying the earth. That’s what the church needs to be shouting … It’s real simple. They’re making a profit because we are letting them destroy God’s creation.” Antal goes on to celebrate divestment from fossil fuels as an inherent moral good: “When people call on their pension funds or schools to divest, they are not only pressuring the institution to change, they are forcing the leaders of the institution and the members of the board to grapple with a moral question.”

Where, in Rev. Antal’s reasoning, do we see concern for the real needs of developing countries struggling to lift their people out of dire poverty and furnish them with living standards that, compared to what we enjoy in the West, are barely adequate? No one questions that we all are called – Divinely and otherwise – to conduct ourselves as good stewards of our Earth. It is that same charitable imperative that also calls us to endeavor in the best interests of the least among us.

Insanity. The reason fossil fuel companies are profitable is that they are supplying goods to fill people's demand. People who think the modern-day environmentalist movement has anything to do with Christian teaching are either fooled or playacting.

This would be a good experiment. Start a 501c3 non-profit which specifically targets Muslims to try to get their investment funds to divest funds from fossil fuel companies and invest in alternative energy start-ups. That should go over really well.

(Note: I realize there are green Muslims; I'm talking about the middle-class mainstream. Go to the most Muslim heavy suburbs on Cleveland's west-side; they're all driving SUVs.)