“The Problems Are Real, But So Is the Uncertainty”

No rational person could dispute that our predictions about life can sometimes be wildly off the mark.  In case you needed any examples, you can find some, courtesy of the environmental movement, in NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s piece in today’s edition:

… I was once an environmental groupie, and I still share the movement’s broad
aims, but I’m now skeptical of the movement’s "I Have a Nightmare" speeches.

In the 1970’s, the environmental movement was convinced that the Alaska oil
pipeline would devastate the Central Arctic caribou herd. Since then, it has
quintupled.

When I first began to worry about climate change, global cooling and nuclear
winter seemed the main risks. As Newsweek said in 1975: "Meteorologists disagree
about the cause and extent of the cooling trend … but they are almost
unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for
the rest of the century."

This record should teach environmentalists some humility. The problems are
real, but so is the uncertainty. Environmentalists were right about DDT’s threat
to bald eagles, for example, but blocking all spraying in the third world has
led to hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths.

Kristof is rightly concerned that "environmental groups …. have an awful track record,
so they’ve lost credibility with the public.  * * *  The loss of credibility is tragic because reasonable environmentalists – without
alarmism or exaggerations – are urgently needed."

There are lessons here for the church.