Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Environmental Stewardship

May 06, 2013

Is Belief in the Second Coming of Christ Bad for Creation?

Do you believe that Jesus will return to Earth someday? Then you probably don’t care about environmental devastation and the catastrophic loss of life of future generations. That’s the absurd conclusion drawn in an academic paper published in the latest issue of Political Research Quarterly. Continue Reading...
April 30, 2013

Are Free Markets and Fracking Producing Cleaner Energy?

A new report by the Environmental Protection Agency finds that one of our cheapest sources of energy may be cleaner than we had previously thought: The Environmental Protection Agency has dramatically lowered its estimate of how much of a potent heat-trapping gas leaks during natural gas production, in a shift with major implications for a debate that has divided environmentalists: Does the recent boom in fracking help or hurt the fight against climate change? Continue Reading...
February 20, 2013

Vice, Virtue, and Shareholder Activism

King Louis XIV censored Moliere’s 1664 play Tartuffe after determining audience members might too easily confuse the titular priest’s hypocritical nature with every priest in real life. According to the king, some priests’ “true devotion leads on the path to heaven,” while others’ “vain ostentation of some good works does not prevent from committing some bad ones.” Continue Reading...
January 31, 2013

Obama’s Most Fowl Double Standard

In the 1880s America’s most flighty fad was fowl-bedecked fashion. “Trendy bonnets were piled high with feathers, birds, fruit, flowers, furs, even mice and small reptiles,” writes Jennifer Price, “Birds were by far the most popular accessory: Women sported egret plumes, owl heads, sparrow wings, and whole hummingbirds; a single hat could feature all that, plus four or five warblers.” Continue Reading...
January 21, 2013

Do Plants and Animals Have Civil Rights?

Earlier this month I attended the First Kuyper Seminar, “Economics, Christianity & The Crisis: Towards a New Architectonic Critique,” in Amsterdam. One of the papers presented was from Jan Jorrit Hasselaar, who discussed the inclusion of non-human entities into democratic deliberation in his talk, “Sustainable Development as a Social Question.” Continue Reading...
January 18, 2013

Film Review: Don’t Believe in ‘Promised Land’

Environmental issues have increasingly become polarized. No sooner has a new technology been announced than some outspoken individual climbs athwart it to cry, “Stop!” in the name of Mother Earth. To some extent, this is desirable – wise stewardship of our shared environment and the resources it provides not only benefits the planet but its inhabitants large and small. Continue Reading...
December 20, 2012

Conservation and Entrepreneurial Environmentalism

I found this profile of Mark Tercek, the former Goldman Sachs managing director who was tapped to head the Nature Conservancy, raises some profound issues concerning the relationship between economics and the environment: Tercek, 55, didn’t come to the Conservancy to fight financial brush fires. Continue Reading...