Setting the Record Straight
Critical New Yorker Magazine Article Fails to Tell the Whole Story
In a recent New Yorker magazine story, writer Margaret Talbot quoted a Capitol Ministries Bible study and failed to cite the Scriptural authority that the study was based upon.
Omitting this information gave the false impression that author Ralph Drollinger had proffered a personal and uninformed opinion rather than basing his Bible study solidly on Scriptural teachings that address God’s promises for a habitable environment in our time.
In the June 8, 2018 story published online, Talbot criticizes Scott Pruitt, Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Drollinger for not believing that human beings could create global warming.
In citing (without naming) Drollinger’s Bible study, titled Member’s Bible Study: Coming to Grips With the Religion of Environmentalism, Talbot writes:
“In an essay” (sic) “published on the Capitol Ministries Web site in April, Drollinger explains that accepting a human role in climate change and trying to do something about it poses a terrible moral danger: “To think that Man can alter the earth’s ecosystem-when God remains omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent in the current affairs of mankind-is to more than subtly espouse an ultra-hubristic, secular worldview relative to the supremacy and importance of man.”
Talbot failed to mention that Drollinger, an historic, traditional, Evangelical pastor who believes the Bible is the authoritative, inspired, and infallible Word of God, cited Matthew 5:45 and Genesis 9:11, among other biblical passages in making his point:
…He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
“I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
These two verses serve to indicate that God promises He will always provide enough water for mankind regardless if he acts wickedly — but at the same time, not too much! God promises herein no everlasting worldwide famines or floods!
Either one believes what the Bible promises or one doesn’t.
Drollinger, like millions of other Evangelicals, does.
The Bible study that Talbot sparingly quoted from also included other passages that make Drollinger’s point:
“Other related passages of Scripture serve to contradict the idea that man by himself can destroy his earthly habitat, for example, Psalm 104:30 states:
You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; And You renew the face of the ground.”
Genesis 8:21-22 also provides validity that God, promises to maintain a habitable environment:
The Lord smelled the soothing aroma; and the Lord said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.
While the earth remains
Seedtime and harvest,
And cold and heat,
And summer and winter,
And day and night,
Shall not cease.”
In the Bible study Coming to Grips With the Religion of Environmentalism, Drollinger offers a theological treatment to the subject of climate change which few pastors have discussed from Scripture.
Talbot was also critical of Drollinger and Secretary Pruitt for their refusal to side with “overwhelming scientific consensus” of man-caused global warming but gave no ink to the overwhelming number of scientists who do not agree with that theory.
Among them is Dr. Richard Lindzen, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) climate scientist who ridiculed a United Nations report on global warming, calling it “hilarious incoherence.”
The story about Dr. Linzen’s scorn of the UN report also noted that it came amid evidence that warming hasn’t occurred over the past 17 years, and that polar ice caps are not shrinking but expanding.
Learn more about Dr. Linzen’s positions here.
In failing to mention that there are other legitimate scientific points of view on this issue, the opinions of Drollinger, Secretary Pruitt and others who do not believe what Talbot believes are held up as foolish, unreasonable, and bizarre.
By using her words “scientific consensus,” Talbot avoids this thorny path that would make her points less definitive.
Many argue that the explanation for the “scientific consensus” is more connected to the hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money that wealthy environmental organizations give to scientists whose research can be made to suggest that global warming is man-made.
In her bias, Talbot also failed to mention that Drollinger has an earned bachelor’s degree in ecosystems from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
To withhold such significant information is to slant the story, deceive readers through misleading and incomplete data, unfairly portray Drollinger and Secretary Pruitt, and mischaracterize the positions of both men.
For this story, Drollinger offered additional insight:
“Scripture tells believers that we are to be good stewards of the earth’s resources. While that is not the point of the story, it need be said lest people conclude that I and others who do not accept man-made climate change have a cavalier attitude toward managing earth’s resources. This is simply not true.”
To further clarify the biblical point of view, Drollinger said Scripture talks about climate disruption in the Great Tribulation Period, but he adds that we are not in that period.
Matthew 24:7 says: “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.”
In Coming to Grips With the Religion of Environmentalism, Drollinger warns that it would be disastrous for society to abandon Christianity for Environmental Religion.
Drollinger, whose primary residence is in California, said the Bible study was written a few years ago, but the point it makes was starkly realized just last week when California’s Governor Jerry Brown signed into law radical water conservation laws.
Whether drought conditions exist in California or not, in 2022 new laws will severely restrict water consumption inside and outside every California home.
No Californian will be able to consume more than 55 gallons of water per person per day, which means a person cannot take a shower and do laundry in the same day.
In 2027, financial penalties will be enforced for those exceeding consumption limits.
“This serves to illustrate the shift in ideology and the presage to disaster I am speaking about,” Drollinger said. “Perhaps more than any additional state taxation, water consumption regulation will drive many resourceful individuals — job providers — out of our state.”
“Think about it: will not resourceful people opt to live in homes surrounded by something other than rock gardens? Do not people work hard in order to create a beautiful home? No more will that be allowed by California’s governing authorities!
“Environmentalists lobbyists have now succeeded in making into law the use of water to support supposedly endangered fish species in the delta rather than supporting the lifestyle of job creators.
“Again, this serves to illustrate the dire implications, more specifically the economic realities that await Californians due to a wholesale change in underlying religious beliefs.”
The sad truth is, water rationing is not necessary.
Enough rain falls in California every year to meet the needs of everyone – farmers, businesses and industries, and private homes.
Talbot also neglected to cite this information which is also found in the Bible study she quoted selectively from, Coming to Grips With the Religion of Environmentalism. The study reads:
“In an average year, God blesses the state [California] with 200 million acre-feet of fresh water. On average, that is enough water to supply the annual needs of 400 million households — or about 1.2 billion people, enough water to supply all the needs of India or China. Of that huge supply, only 20 million-acre feet are presently utilized, the remainder is lost — if not absorbed in the soil, allowed to flow back into the Pacific Ocean because environmentalists refuse to allow additional storage lakes to be built.
“And of the 20 million-acre feet that is captured, 15 million goes for agriculture and only 5 million for residential use! In other words, only 2.5% of California’s fresh water supply is directly used by households — and yet there is an outcry to limit household usage! In fact, in order to secure tunneling under the Delta (as a substitute for the long overdue peripheral canal project) so as to deliver more northern California water to the Bay Area and Southern California (75% of the population lives in the south and 75% of the water is in the north), the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California had to agree not to expand its water usage — as if California water was somehow in short supply!
“Here we have an illustration of Radical Environmentalism attempting to limit the growth of mankind in the state by curtailing the supply of water — even though there is more than enough to go around. At the core of the decades-old, heated water battle in California are dueling worldviews: one says that people are most important, (historic, Biblical Christianity) the other (Radical Environmentalism) that says the environment is.”
In the interview for this story, Drollinger summed up the issue with Scripture:
“Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” (Romans 1:22-23)