The bossiest, smuggest, preachiest, most didactic people I know are the ones who are Green, and who want everyone else to go Green, too.  They are the new fundamentalists, the new Sermonizing Class.  They are what so many preachy Christians, by and large, used to be in the culture and in the workplace (and some who still are), always quick to point out what someone’s doing wrong: why regular milk has too many chemicals, why driving your Taurus is bad for the environment, why your clothes could have been made of organic cotton.  They think they’re educating you.  But as soon as you make a joke about the milk, they don’t laugh.  That’s because one problem with all passionate, argumentative fundamentalists is that they cannot laugh at themselves.  Global Warmers and Climate Changers don’t know how to laugh. 

The most sustained joke about the environmentally conscious is the South Park episode “SmugAlert!”, where the “smug” from all the hybrid-car owners in South Park begins to merge with the smug from hybrid-car owners in San Francisco. One character tries to point out that hybrids would be a good thing if people were prepared to drive them without being so self-satisfied about it, but everyone accepts that would be too much to ask-and people go back to driving their SUVs.

As a Christian and a young playwright, I struggled with how to write about Christians in a comedy.  What would people say if I made fun of them?  What if I point out the ironies and contradictions of the church, or a Christian character?  Now, of course, I know the answer: it doesn’t matter.  My job, as a comedian, was not to protect a certain class of people (Christians, or Climate Changers, or whoever).  My job was to write things that were true, and because they were true, they were funny.  We just happen not to see too many satires and jokes about Global Warming because too many of the people who write jokes believe in the stuff.

In the United States, buildings account for over forty percent of energy consumption and process over fifty percent of greenhouse gases. Are churches concerned about the environmental impact of their church buildings? Have you ever heard environmental impact discussed in a building committee report? Most churches argue more about carpet color than whether or not their church building is environmentally sustainable.

The US Green Building Council has developed a wonderful system to guide churches in new construction and renovation to provide an example to the world of what environmental stewardship can look like. The system is called LEED. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System “encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria.”

And why should we care? Remember in the Genesis creation narrative that in his sovereign act of creating, God calls all of creation into covenant relationship with himself and calls humans to manage it? “God covenantally binds himself to creation,” says Dr. Michael Williams in the book As Far As The Curse is Found. Additionally, remember that the fall affected all of creation (Gen. 3), and all of creation needs redemption (Rom. 8-9). God has placed mankind into creation to manage it as a spiritual discipline. How a church uses its building is as much about the environment as it is its ministry usefulness.

The Cornwall Declaration reminds us that “a clean environment is a costly good; consequently, growing affluence, technological innovation, and the application of human and material capital are integral to environmental improvement.”

Undergoing a LEED-evaluation is a great voluntary first step to show the world that faithfulness to Christ includes caring for the environment in which redemption takes places. LEED gives “building owners and operators the tools they need to have an immediate and measurable impact on their buildings’ performance.” LEED promotes a “whole-building approach” to sustainability in five key areas of social development: “sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.”

A church can be an additional blessing to its community simply by reducing the environmental impact of its building because all of life is a witness to the story of the Christ-centered cosmic redemption of creation.

Here’s an interesting “green” idea sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund. I don’t quite get the relationship between South America’s rainforests and paper towels–wouldn’t a picture of an ordinary tree have been better? I’m curious though: If you happened upon such a dispenser in a public restroom, would it guilt you into modifying how much paper towel you use?

And here is yet another reason why honoring marriage vows is best: Divorced couples have a greater negative impact on the environment than married couples do.

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Toni Vernelli is a die-hard environmentalist. She was so concerned about reducing her carbon footprint that she did something most would consider extreme: She had an abortion and then a sterilization.

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On his blog today, Tim Challies, who believes we all should be good stewards of God’s creation, offers an interesting analysis of the Green movement:

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While older evangelicals tend to emphasize the problems of gay marriage, many younger evangelicals concentrate more on poverty-fighting and environmental issues – and that’s fine. But what happens when evangelicals understand that helping the poor and aggressively fighting global warming are at loggerheads?

I first became aware of the divide between concern for the poor and radical environmentalism in Austin a decade ago. The city went all out to protect a species of cave spiders but scrimped on police protection in poorer sections – and one result was that a deaf woman died in a gang shooting near my home. Sure, in theory we can protect both cave spiders and humans, but in reality needs and wants compete for a limited pool of money.

That’s the way it is at the intersection of poverty-fighting and environmental concerns. One of the many justifications Al Gore offers for the $150 billion annual price tag of the Kyoto accords is that global warming will increase the number of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. But Danish economist Bjørn Lomborg and others say that global warming will increase the number of people at risk for malaria by only three percent – and that with an annual expenditure of only $3 billion on health and economic measures, malaria infections could be cut by 50% over the next eight years.

Lomborg’s global priority list emphasizes reducing the incidence of disease, malnutrition, poor sanitation and bad water. He argues in Cool It (Knopf, 2007) that the high economic costs of emissions-cutting proposals will deliver meager global benefits compared to what such funds could accomplish elsewhere. Some might argue that money saved by not going to Kyoto extremes would not go to help the poor, but our goal then should be work harder politically and charitably, not to accede to waste.

“Creation care” is important. God calls us to be stewards and gardeners, caring for oxen in the ditch and relishing lilies. But the Bible also teaches that human beings, created in God’s image, are the most valuable resource on earth.

I have my own (slightly) “green” story, which I will tell you later today. But, happily, it doesn’t involve anyone’s funeral. However, when Maine resident Klara Tammany’s mother passed away, her family and friends washed and dressed her body and put it in a homemade wooden casket, which was laid across two sawhorses in the dining room of her condo in Brunswick. Then, for two days, visitors brought cut flowers, wrote messages on the casket’s lid and said goodbye.

The Portland Press Herald reports that such funerals are part of an emerging trend of “green” final rites in which Americans avoid preservative chemicals and steel and concrete tombs that keep a body from decomposing naturally.  Also available: Green cemetaries. Which raises a question: Why do we preserve the bodies of our dead? Now that I’m thinking about it, it seems a little creepy.