Pride and Prejudice

Pope Gregory warned the world of seven deadly sins. The gravest of these is pride. Although created in His image, we are not to dishonor God by pretending that we are His equal, nor that anything we have or do can be accomplished without his consent.

Pride, it seems, was the original sin of Eve and Adam, when they took of the forbidden fruit, seeking the knowledge that was God's alone to possess.

Pride is an eternal problem for the human race. A great deal of it is on display today, particularly among governments. The government of the United States is not unique in its foolish overreaching. Just the past week, a government agency proclaimed that carbon dioxide was a dangerous toxin and a threat to the well being of the planet. This ranks right up there with the nonsense argument: "I'll eat a teaspoon of plutonium if you'll eat a teaspoon of nicotine. You first."

Of course, excess carbon dioxide in human lungs leads to death. But it appears that the earth hasn't had a toxic atmosphere for millions of years. So what could the risk of atmospheric carbon dioxide be? It seems that some people believe that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can force the temperature of the atmosphere higher or lower. Actually, the evidence is just the opposite. It seems that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide relate closely to the earth's vegetation, and that vegetation increases after the atmosphere warms (not the other way around).

So some folks have decided (a) that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to higher atmospheric temperatures. These same folks say they believe that human combustion of fossil fuels makes a meaningful contribution to the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Best of all, these same folks believe that the consequence of this activity will be rising sea levels, crop failures, and extinction of many species.

Well, folks, that is a picture post card of pride, the sinful kind. A scientist with the sort of modesty that the Creator blesses would both consider the available facts that dispute this nonsense about anthropogenic global warming and pay attention to the tiny role that human beings play in the equations of global energy and chemistry.

We've just had one of those beautiful spring weather events here in the Colorado Rockies that reminds us of the pitifully small place we occupy on our planet. On April 17 and 18, almost four feet of snow fell - more than we had all winter. Depending on which expert you ask, the weather was (a) abnormally cold, (b) normal, or (c) proof of global warming. It wasn't the biggest or the latest Spring snow here. It was just part of the normal variation in weather that happens from year to year over the centuries. Being the wet, heavy kind of snow we get in the Spring, it was picturesque. But it wasn't a harbinger of anything at all.

The government of the United States is bent - inadvertently - on crippling the economy of the world because the policy makers have the pride to believe they can make better decisions than the marketplace, and that they will replace the carbon economy with another one. The decision of the Environmental Protection Agency to claim the right to regulate emission of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act is a harbinger of something truly dreadful.

This is the sort of pride that exiled Adam and Eve from Eden. It will do the same for us all.