The Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI) was funded by abortion group 

by Peter C Glover

 

The Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI): Climate Change a Call to Action, signed by a group of 80+ evangelical leaders in the USA and published in early February, was seed-funded by a leading international abortion group. Those behind the ECI were given $475,000 by the William and Flora Hewitt Foundation, one of the top funders of abortion programmes worldwide in an apparent effort to mobilize evangelical Christian support and pressure on global warming. The discovery was made by the Concerned Women for America (CWA) group, which rightly questions the political motives of the those behind it – and, by extension, the moral authority of those behind the ECI itself.

 

?Global warming is a controversial issue in itself, but the real problem comes with the so-called solutions, such as population control and reducing access to technology that will lift people out of poverty,? said Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America. ?The Hewlett Foundation is one of the most prodigious and unabashed funders of abortion causes, with much money going to make abortion acceptable. Its significant grant for this initiative, along with the controversial Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, reveals where this effort could lead. They would not fund something that contradicts their main missions.?

 

CWA found that a sampling of the Hewlitt Foundation?s funding includes:

• Activities of the International Planned Parenthood Foundation, the most dominant pro-abortion organization, and its subsidiaries in Latin America, where it promotes the ?legalization? of abortion, the morning-after pill, and ?sexual and reproductive health and rights issues,? which stands for graphic sex education, abortion, sterilization, and the mainstreaming of homosexuality.
• More than $2 million in the last three years for the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy organization that works through courts to impose abortion on demand.
• A $1 million grant for Planned Parenthood to provide its services, including abortion and the morning-after pill, to those hit by Hurricane Katrina.
• Gifts totaling $739,000 in 2001-2003 to the National Abortion Federation, the ?professional association? for abortionists.
• The Abortion Care Project, to train abortionists in Vietnam.
• The Abortion Access Project, which works through medical students and trains medical professionals in the United States in ?abortion care.?
• The University of California, San Francisco?s Center for Reproductive Health Research and Policy, which attempts to counter the stigma attached to abortion and the lack of medical professionals willing to do abortions through studies, papers, and advocacy.

Wright astutely observes, ?The radical environmental, pro-abortion lobby has learned to adopt language to win over unsuspecting, well-intentioned people. I am sure that most of the evangelical leaders who signed on have no idea of the history and missions of the groups that have made this initiative possible with their financial backing.?

 

The CWA?s revelation comes hard on the heels of another devastating critique of the claims of the ECI document. Iain Murray, a senior fellow at the US Competitive Enterprise Institute, in his Beware False Prophets: On the dangers of ignoring the harmful effects of reducing carbon emissions1 takes up the ECI?s four claims beginning with its foundational one that: ?Human-induced Climate Change is Real?.

 

?This is true as a simple statement, but the evidence the group proposes for it is weak and its meaning far from clear?the group claims that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has ?documented the steady rise in global temperatures over the last fifty years.? This is not the case. The earth actually cooled between 1942 and 1980. The earth has warmed steadily over the last 25 years and the evidence from satellites is not consistent with the idea that global warming is actually global,? says Murray.

 

Murray points out how the ECI ?says that the IPCC projects that the global temperature will continue to rise. This is true, but the wording is important. A projection is not a prediction. The IPCC has found itself unable to predict with any degree of confidence what will happen to global temperatures in the future.?

 

He further reveals how the ECI document claims the IPCC has ?attributed most of the warming to human activities?. In fact what the IPCC actually said was it was ?likely to have been mostly due to greenhouse gases? but added a caveat that they could not be sure. As Murray says, evidence since tends to show this as a less likely scenario.

 

That those behind the ECI document may well have entirely misread the IPCC?s findings becomes increasingly clear. Murray shows how claim 2 – that ?The Consequences of Climate Change will be Significant, and will hit the poor the hardest? is meaningless in the light of the lack of clarity and any degree of certainty over claim 1. While the ECI paper goes on to talk about ?catastrophic? consequences with ?millions of the poor? who ?could die?, Murray says the effects of small rises in temperature – which is by no means certain – may have much less effect than previously thought. According to the latest research ?the likely effects of melting ice on sea level rise halves the previous estimates.?

 

Claims 3 and 4 then move into the purely moral realm. In the light of claims 1 and 2, the ECI asserts (claim 3): ?Christian moral convictions demand our response to the Climate Problem?. Claim 4 then becomes: ?The need to act is urgent?. And the ?action? demanded ultimately by the ECI paper? We are all called to: ?reduce carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.?

 

But, according to Murray, this conclusion has no logic and actually presents more of danger than global warming itself. He points out that warming,  even making the assumption it is global, comes about by ?exacerbations of existing problems?. And he introduces a key analysis from the National Centre for Policy Analysis on exactly this point. The NCPA finds a) ?that by 2085, the contribution of warming to the above listed problems is smaller than other factors unrelated to climate change?.; b) ?the risks could be lowered  much more effectively and economically by reducing current and future vulnerability to climate change rather than through its mitigation?; c) ?adaptation would help develop countries cope with major problems now, whereas generations would pass before anything less than draconian mitigation would have any discernible effect?.

 

As Murray says, ?In other words, we can do more to help the poor by combating these problems now than we would be reducing carbon dioxide emissions. There is a terrible opportunity cost to drastic action to reduce climate change [that which the ECI wants] and that cost would likely weigh heavier on the world?s poor than the effects of global warming itself.?

 

Murray?s conclusion, and one I share as a committed Christian, is biting. ?Evangelical leaders need to give more thought to the unintended consequences of their well-intentioned acts. By devoting spiritual and temporal energy to reducing carbon-dioxide emissions, they will probably hurt the poor more than help them. As Matthew 7:15 says, ?Beware of false prophets, which come in sheep?s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.??  Murray concludes, ?By adopting a green agenda, the evangelicals may have thrown the poor to those wolves.?

 

As much as we might wish it, modern science does not have all the answers. Consequently, science and the media can all too easily translate science-faith into science-fact and motivate the well-intentioned to put their faith into action for all the wrong reasons. As Tom Bethell, author of The Politically-Incorrect Guide to Science observes,  ?We are strongly inclined to substitute faith for uncertainty.? As regards the highly controversial science surrounding alleged Climate Change there are far too many willing to sign up to what may well turn out to be a new religion simply peddling their own science-faith as science-fact.  

 

Odd when you consider that climatologists cannot even tell us with any degree of certainty what they weather will be like next week that so many should be so certain what it will be like in one hundred years time. ?In the beginning Climate Change?? I wonder what the climate ?experts? would say?

 

© Peter C Glover – for more go to www.wiresfromthebunker.com