June 24, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

Environmentalism is a major force in politics today, and even the evangelicals are jumping on this bandwagon to various degrees. In February 2006, eighty-six evangelical leaders, including Rick Warren, signed the “Evangelical Climate Initiative,” calling on evangelicals to treat “global warming” as a “pressing issue and major priority.” Headlines in newspapers and magazines predict global warming disasters.

“The sky is falling; the sky is falling,” has been the environmentalist’s theme song from the beginning.

When I was stationed in Vietnam in the U.S. Army in 1971 I read Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” which, as the title promises, predicted the death of the world by human abuse. The misguided evolutionist (1907-64) was the founder of the contemporary environmental movement, and her book led the way for the draconian environmental policies that have taken hold in western nations over the past three decades.

She is nearly worshipped by environmentalists. She was featured by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. She is called a “giant” at the NASA Earth Observatory web site and praised at the Environmental Protection Agency’s web site. Time magazine named her one of the “100 People of the Century.” In his history of the environmental movement Philip Shabecoff said: “More than any other [book], it changed the way Americans, and people around the world, looked at the reckless way we live on this planet” (A Fierce Green Fire).

Yet Carson’s influential book is filled with myth and error, and the unnecessary banning of DDT that stemmed from the book has resulted in countless deaths.

Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, an entomologist who belonged to several environmentalist organizations in 1962 when “Silent Spring” was published and was originally sympathetic to Carson’s position, has since documented “The Lies of Rachel Carson” (http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html). He says:

“As I neared the middle of the book, the feeling grew in my mind that Rachel Carson was really playing loose with the facts and was also deliberately wording many sentences in such a way as to make them imply certain things without actually saying them. She was carefully omitting everything that failed to support her thesis that pesticides were bad, that industry was bad, and that any scientists who did not support her views were bad. ... I next looked up some of the references that Carson cited and quickly found that they did not support her contentions about the harm caused by pesticides. When leading scientists began to publish harsh criticisms of her methods and her allegations, it slowly dawned on me that Rachel Carson was not interested in the truth about those topics, and that I really was being duped, along with millions of other Americans” (Edwards, “The Lies of Rachel Carson,” 21st Century Science and Technology, Summer 1992).

(See also “Silent Spring at 40” by Ronald Bailey, Reason magazine, June 2002, http://reason.com/rb/rb061202.shtml.)

Rachel Carson’s environmental position won the day in many governments, not because it is based on scientific truth but because it is a lie and this dark world loves a lie, being under the dominion of the father of lies (John 8:44).

Carson dedicated her book “To Albert Schweitzer who said, ‘Man ... will end by destroying the Earth.’” In fact, man will not destroy the world; God will. The Bible believer understands this and lives his life accordingly, while the unbeliever stumbles in the darkness, knowing neither from whence he came or where he is going.

“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:10-13).