By Mr. Constantine Kamberidis

September 25, 2019

As you may have heard in the news over the last week, people from around Facebook signed up to “storm” Area 51, a U.S. Air Force Base in search of aliens. They were rather unsuccessful on Friday, September 20th when less than 100 out of the 2 million people who signed up showed up. Aliens, though interesting, are pretty far down the list of Science Fiction discussions. However, what you may not have heard on the news last Friday was a call for students around the world to go on a climate strike. It is estimated that around 4 million people (including many young adults) were out there trying to make a point. The reason for this was to bring attention to the United Nations Climate Action Summit meeting this week in New York City. They will be meeting to discuss and showcase new initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

There is irrefutable evidence that our beautiful blue planet is for some reason getting warmer. Granted, we have very little data as to how long things have been warming up, but one thing is clear: the global temperature is rising. Something major to note: it is scientifically unclear if humanity is solely to blame for this situation, but deforestation sure doesn’t help our argument. We don’t have enough data to draw a conclusion on that.  Yet we can’t just shrug it off to natural occurrences, there is some reason behind the Earth’s change in climates. 

As a scientist, I find it hard to ignore the scientific facts that climates around the world are changing. Greenhouse gases (like a greenhouse used to contain plants and keep them warm) like carbon dioxide are trapped in our atmosphere and are not allowing heat from the surface of the Earth to dissipate into space. As the heat is trapped, it slowly increases the atmospheric temperature. When I say slowly, I mean a rise in degrees of about 1.62 °F in the last 100 or so years.  That may not seem like much, but on a global scale, it is. 

As a Christian, I see God’s creation and see the sin that taints it. That is no excuse however to resign my duty to steward the creation that humanity has been placed in charge of.  Genesis 1:26 (ESV) starts our stewardship mission: “…And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”. God put us in charge until Christ’s return. 

What’s amazing is that here at SSCA, we have the privilege to involve our Creator while discussing His beautiful creation. Now, I am not advocating we all trade in our cars for electric versions, or that we must eliminate our entire carbon footprint (essentially the waste we produce). What I am asking us to consider is that, as Christians, if there is something going on with this world God has given us to take care of, shouldn’t we be the ones at the forefront of advocating for something to be done?