inkbluesky

I remember this gentleman from the original story about “What would Jesus Drive” from last year, Living Day to Day by a Gospel of Green

“We like to buy used — we do that intentionally,” Mr. Ball said, surveying a desk, television cabinet, dining room table and end tables that the couple bought at their favorite thrift shop in rural Maryland, run by a Navy veteran named Bill. “Our stuff doesn’t necessarily match, but it goes enough.”

The end tables are made of mahogany. The Balls say they would never buy new mahogany furniture because the wood is often harvested from endangered rain forests, but they do not object to pre-owned mahogany.

“You’re not using up the resources again,” said Mr. Ball, a ruddy 45-year-old in a chamois shirt and Levis, who looks like he would be more at home with the Sierra Club than Pat Robertson’s “700 Club.” “It’s a form of recycling.”

While running a household on eco-friendly Christian principles requires a chain of small interlocking choices, Mr. Ball’s real gift is for large-scale strategizing. Raised in Texas as a Southern Baptist, he knew that conservative evangelicals had long been allergic to anything like environmentalism, associating it with hippies, communism, feminism, anti-corporatism, gun control and nature-worshipping paganism.

Mr. Ball spent the last seven years inviting evangelical pastors to sit down with climate scientists who shared the same born-again faith and corporate executives who were making an effort to reduce pollution. Progress was slow and he did not convince them all, but in the last year he has led an effort that has persuaded more than 100 influential evangelical pastors, theologians and organizational leaders — many of them political conservatives — to sign an “Evangelical Call to Action” on climate change.

I can’t help but have some admiration for the guy. Not only does he try to practice what he preaches his wife took a job with the National Wildlife Federation ( I’m a member). He has put himself in opposition to some people who are difficult to describe – people who’s religion and politics are intertwined to the point of being unable to distinquish one from the other – for now let’s call them conservative chrisianists such as James Inhofe (R-Okla.) who has said that global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Inhofe might want to have a refresher course in research, one of his sources was the Canadian equivalent of drunken frat brothers and flat earth society,

The 60 Canadian scientists
Inhofe is not alone in making much of the fact that 60 Canadian scientists wrote a letter to the Prime Minister urging him to reject the global warming consensus. The letter was a vapid collection of myths; among those 60 scientists were long-time skeptics, known liars, and at least one guy who was tricked into signing. A few weeks later, 90 scientists — who unlike the original 60 were Canadian and active in climate research — wrote a letter of their own, denouncing the first. The moral: in a world with tens of thousands of PhDs, you can find at least 60 to sign anything.

coastal sunset eleven. I decided to start numbering them since I’ve posted so many. As usual click the title for a wallpaper size version.