The Challenge of Understanding & Responding to Climate Change
A conversation with Dr. Calvin Beisner
Thursday, October 24th, 2:00 – 4:00 EST
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Conversation Abstract
In America and around the world, the public, policymakers, scientists, and economists hold a wide variety of views about “climate change”—the quotation marks indicating that the term means different things to different people.
This talk, “The Challenge of Understanding and Responding to Climate Change,” integrates insights from Biblical worldview, theology, and ethics from several compartments of climate science and from several compartments of economics to clarify and assess competing views regarding the reality, causes, rate, magnitude, and consequences of climate change, as well as competing views regarding how mankind, from private individuals to local, regional, and national governments, to international institutions, can best respond to it.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Beisner is the Founder, President, and National Spokesperson of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, a network of Christian theologians, natural scientists, economists, and other scholars who educate for Biblical earth stewardship, economic development for the poor, and the proclamation and defence of the good news of salvation by God’s grace received through faith in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.
His early childhood in Calcutta, India, where he observed both the beauties of God’s creation and the tragedies of poverty, informed his later concerns for caring for both the natural world and the poor. His theological and philosophical studies led to his studying political and economic philosophy and his books Prosperity and Poverty: The Compassionate Use of Resources in a World of Scarcity (1988), an Introduction to economics informed by Biblical theology and ethics; Prospects for Growth: A Biblical View of Population, Resources, and the Future (1990), which applied the lessons of the prior book to questions about alleged overpopulation, resource depletion, and environmental degradation and conservation; and Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate (1997) history and constructive critique of the evangelical environmental movement, among other books.
In 1999, after a colloquium with about 35 other scholars with shared interest in these subjects, he composed The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, which was quickly endorsed by over 1,500 religious leaders from around the world and became the basis on which he founded The Cornwall Alliance in 2005.
He has written over fifteen books, edited over 30, contributed to over 35, and published thousands of articles, popular and scholarly; has lectured at universities, seminaries, conferences, and churches in North America, Europe,
Africa, and Asia; testified as an expert witness on the ethics and economics of climate change and climate and energy policy before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives; briefed the White House Council on Environmental Policy; presented a paper to a scholarly colloquium on climate change of the Pontifical Institute for Justice and Peace at the Vatican in Rome; and has spoken for multiple meetings of the International Conferences on Climate Change. In 2014 the Heritage Foundation honored him with the Outstanding Spokesman for Faith, Science, and Stewardship Award at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change.
For more information, see: https://cornwallalliance.org/about/who-we-are/
Education, Career, and Family
B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in Religion and Philosophy and double minors in Classical Languages and Classical History, University of Southern California (1978)M.A. in Society with Specialization in Economic Ethics, International College (1983)
Ph.D. in Scottish History (History of Political Thought), University of St. Andrews, Scotland (2003)
Dr. Beisner was associate professor of historical theology and social ethics at Knox Theological Seminary from 2000 to 2008 and of interdisciplinary studies (focusing on the application of Biblical worldview, theology, and ethics to economics, government, and public policy) at Covenant College from 1992 to 2000. He has been an elder in the Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, planting a new congregation for the latter and serving on its pastoral staff for three years. He and his wife Debby, an accomplished portrait painter, have seven children and twelve grandchildren.