???
oh really? And what is your definition of good steward? Does it include killing migratory birds, raptors, and bats of local habitats in order to avoid an unproven harm that CO2 does to the atmosphere?
So people who have always recycled, composted (oh wait does that put CO2 into the air and is therefore a big no no right?), saved water, turned off lights and electricity, are not good stewards.
A lot more people, animals, and plants are harmed and killed through coal-powered and petrol-powered electricity – through local and regional pollution, coal mining hazards, global warming (which will be going on killing), coal ash spills, oil spills, etc. I’m thinking it might be easier to find solutions to wind-generator bird/bat harm, than to all these other harms. For one thing I read that some detector system had been invented that would shut down the wind generators when it detected birds flying toward it; not sure if that’s being used, or if it’s working, but it seems they are looking for solution.
Many perhaps even most bird species are expected to go extinct with our other environmental assaults, including global warming – that extinction process is already underway at a rate higher than any known in history.
But people who promote plowing up trees so they can make biofuel, and then using genetically engineered crops and heavy pesticides so they can have high yields, (which get into the water supply and poison it), then use more water in the production of the ethanol than it produces in ethanol, …they are the models of good stewards?
Of course not; they are not environmentalists, either, not in any sense I would have. ALL the environmentalists I know are against all of those things, many are actively fighting against them. We call GMOs “Frankenfoods.” They are also responsible for farmer suicides in India.
I will never understand the concept of the electric car. As long as our electricity is being produced by (coal, oil, nuclear, natural gas) is it really any better to be producing the CO2 emissions (or other pollutants) at the energy plants than with your car?)
Even if an EV is powered with coal-burning electricity, the amount of emissions is about 2/3 of a regular car, and it is easier to control the pollution at the power plant. However, my wish is to eventually purchase one that we can drive on our 100% wind-generated electricity. However, since we only drive about 3,000 - 4,000 miles a year, that is not at all economically practical, and I haven’t been able to convince my husband yet…even though we have the money, since we’ve been saving $1000s from our other GW-mitigation measures over the past 21 years, and we live very frugally and prudently.
BTW, the study was not biased, but done by a survey company on a random selection over over 2000 Americans. It was not the major focus of the study (that Catholics who are skeptical of AGW tend not to be as environmentally active), we chose whether or not they had installed (or planned to install) compact fluorescent bulbs – since this was the least costly and easiest environmental measure queried in the survey.
Now I know you’re going to point out all that mercury that those bulbs leak into the landfills and at home if they break (could be a validity threat, as people avoid their use due to this local & household environmental problems). It should be pointed out, however, that the extra coal burnt to use regular incandescent bulbs spews out much more mercury into the air, causing much more health hazards to people and nature. Also, it could be that people use CF bulbs because they save money (could be a validity threat as non-environmentalists use them for economic reasons).
Despite these validity threats that would tend the association toward zero, we did get a moderate positive association (gamma = .50, p<.001) of Catholic AGW accepters being more likely to have or intend to buy CL bulbs (83.8%) than Catholic AGW skeptics (63.5%).
As for my qualitative information, those Catholics who were AGW skeptics claiming that creation stewardship is important, tended not to give any examples of what that might entail, or just spoke in vague terms about how we (as a society) need to keep the water and air clean, and not dump toxins into the water; they tended to view these problems as point-source industrial pollution; they didn’t mention anything they were actually doing or intending to do to reduce pollution.
As mentioned, this was only a very small part of a larger study, but I’m thinking this would be a good topic to study in more depth. I do know there are AGW skeptics who are good environmentalists; and there are AGW accepters who do not do much to reduce their GHGs or other environmental harms. However, I would expect to find these types to be fewer and the opposite to be more common. But I could be wrong. Further study needs to be done.
And I would actually hope my hunch is wrong and that AGW skeptics are good earth stewards and are reducing their environmental harms – reducing, reusing, recycling, becoming more energy/resource efficient/conservative – most of which also reduce GHGs (think of the GHGs involved in the extraction of resources and manufacture of products, etc).
It’s just good to do these things for many other reasons, even if one does not believe in AGW.
