the environment and environmentalism. And if I forget, in many of the Marxist documents from the 20th century, it was Cultural Marxism, as I covered in a previous thing, had its grip on different cultural institutions, but they still had an eye to undermining the economy, as we'll see, what is called the crisis strategy. Well, the environmental movement is actually the main movement that they have. Well, not the main movement, but on the global, once it gets to the global level, it becomes the main instrument of Marxism in terms of its economic weight. And we'll see why that is when you move from the local to the national to the global level. So remember that, that there is an express, even though environmentalists would like to very much think of themselves as in control of their own worldview, they aren't just parallel to Marxism, but in fact are the useful stooges. Lenin would call the, basically the majority of people he needed to explain to them why they needed socialism, they were the useful stooges, or the useful idiots, I'm sorry. So the masses are the useful idiots. Well, the environmentalist movement to the Marxists are very much their useful stooges. And the people that will implement what they think is an individual, independent worldview, but in fact is something that operates exactly the way that the crisis strategy of the 1960s had it. So, and the point is to break the economy, to break the back of the economy. So, the issue of environmentalism still seems remote to a lot of people. Twenty years ago, if you spoke of the environmentalist, you'd be speaking in the same breath as something like a New Ager or a vegan. But it wasn't just a fringe movement. It was viewed as harmless or silly, maybe. It maybe was an individual's choice that seemed to be acted out in areas of individual consumption habits, and so you just sort of laughed it off. And so most Americans have remained naive toward the larger assumptions and goals of the environmentalist movement. Al Gore's book, Earth and the Balance, in the early 90s, and there was a movie, and I don't know if it was directly inspired by Gore's book, but what was it called, The Inconvenient Truth? Yeah. Things like that have brought environmentalism, the larger scheme of it, to the forefront. Yet as the general population is being dumbed down at an alarming rate, The clear implications are at last too complex and remain hidden in plain sight." In other words, their agenda is becoming more and more clear, more and more out there, more and more brazen, and yet, more and more people aren't able to put pieces together. And so it doesn't really matter. It's a bit like that 2009 edition of Newsweek magazine that says, we are all socialists now. You know, you read it and you're like, look! You're looking for people to point to and say, look! And then you realize, Nobody cares. Nobody understands the significance of that. People are not smart enough to even understand that ten years ago they would have denied that such a thing was happening. Now there doesn't need to be a denial. People are not smart enough to even understand what they're hearing. Of this, we're going to look at three things. Number one, we're going to compare the visions. We're going to compare the foundational assumptions to visions of natural resources, a biblical view of natural resources and an environmentalist view of natural resources. Secondly, we're going to look at the environmentalist agenda, and then we're going to look at the empirical record and say, okay, what is actually true about the world's resources as they stand right now? Here's the big idea. The big idea, again, two-part, that God made the world and everything in it for our responsible cultivation. Responsible cultivation meaning we are to improve upon it, we are to cultivate it for the good of others, and again, that includes the profit motive. We looked at, in other words, everything in the economic week is the cultivation aspect. But it's responsible, and we're going to look at four things that the Bible says, okay, you can't do these four things. Otherwise it's not responsible. So we're qualifying that. Responsible cultivation. And, here's the second half of that, the environmentalist worldview opposes this in its push toward global government. So they're making a push toward global government, making a push to break the back of the American economy with these measures in a way that opposes the biblical view of natural resources. So let's look at that biblical view first in two visions of natural resources. Again, let's revisit Genesis 1 through 3 one more time, and you'll see that everything we've talked about comes right out of Genesis 1 through 3. And we'll see if we look there that God called the physical sphere of nature very good in chapter 1 verse 31. He placed the man there to work it and keep it in chapter 2 verse 15. In spite of the curse, which would yield thorns and thistles, chapter 3, verse 18. So it is to yield thorns and thistles, but God does not say, therefore, don't worry about it. Or therefore, it works in a fundamentally different way. It's a corruption, not of nothing. The curse is not a parallel track. It's not a separate story. The curse is a curse of the ground that he made good, meaning you have a distortion of the design, meaning the design is still there. The fundamental way the design works still works. It will yield for us thorns and thistles because the curse is a curse on us. God's not cursing Himself and saying of His creation, eh, this didn't work. It's not a curse on Him. It's a curse on us. He's not going to take back His design in the distortion. So, drawing again upon our distinction between the design and the distortion, we can see from this early biblical data that the design of the good earth still functions through the distortion. God did not repeal the mandate to cultivate when he cursed the ground. So what is the basic nature of natural resources and what should be our basic expectation in relationship to them? Well, according to the Bible, Nature is neither good in an unqualified sense, nor bad in an unqualified sense. In other words, to say it another way, the Bible is not a Gnostic book, and it is not a Pelagian book. We don't believe that nature is either utterly good in a way that it's not bad in any sense, or utterly bad in a way that it's not good in any sense. So the Bible is not a Gnostic book casting suspicions upon the ground, Nor is it a Pelagian book, bowing down to the ground. Rather, nature is essentially good and corruptively bad. Essentially good and corruptively bad. The abundance of the land is both occasional and ordained throughout the Bible. In Deuteronomy 28, 1-14, we see God moving Israel into the land, ordaining for them abundance. You say, well, abundance is not there in the Sahara as opposed to here. That's true. It's an occasional abundance, but it's ordained by God. So, by occasional, I'm just picking a modest word to say that God's gift to us is in abundance, yet, given the Fall, sometimes there will be more and sometimes less. There is scarcity, and yes, there are physical manifestations of judgment. Acts of God, as they are called, and certain depletion of resources is part of that curse, no question about it. And yet the design in our expectation of relationship to it is fundamentally the same. Let me read a couple of New Testament and Old Testament verses. First Timothy chapter four, verse four and five have to flip here because I never pasted these ones. First Timothy four, four and five. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer." So there's a sense in which the stuff of it is good, and the relationship between the Christian and it is therefore sanctified. You see both of those there. 1 Timothy 6.17. As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy." Notice the rich provision and use of it is not the guilt of the rich. The rich have a guilt, but the richness of the riches is not the nature of that guilt. The haughtiness of those rich people is. There is a profound difference. Romans 8.21, this is a crucial passage here, because you'll see a connection between the old and the new creation. Romans 8.21, that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Watch over that phrase, bondage to decay, because the word bondage is going to come back up in another context. bondage to decay Isaiah 11 and then Isaiah 35 just really quickly a couple Old Testament passages Isaiah 11 6 through 9 About the new heavens and new earth the wolf shall dwell with the lamb the leopard shall lie down with the young goat and the calf and the lion and the fatted calf together and a little child shall lead them The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together. That must have not been, I think it was another verse that was near that. Let me fast forward quickly to 35.1. The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus. So there there's a continuity between the old and the new creation. The new creation is better. And there is a debate among some scholars about what do we even mean by new creation as opposed to old. Blowing up the old world in 2 Peter 3 certainly indicates that he is, but is that a curse on him? Is that a statement against his creation? And I think if you say it like that, the answer will be no. But anyway, I have a couple more Old Testament verses, but I'm going to skip past them. I think what you'll see in the Old Testament and New Testament is the principle that man must not starve. So this is the sphere of man's responsibility. There's a curse on the ground. God meant it. And it has effects, some of those effects imply or include starvation or the hard work to not starve. Nevertheless, man is commissioned not to starve. And the reason for this is a valuation that God himself has, namely that God values man over animals and plants. And so in Genesis 9, 3, and we're going to see this reaffirmed in the New Testament, In Genesis 9, 3, on the other side of the boat, so it's a reaffirmation of the creation covenant, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, and as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. So as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. He's reaffirming what he originally gave to man after the flood. Jesus reaffirms this hierarchy of man over animals and plants. In the New Testament, three passages in Matthew's gospel, Matthew 6, 26, Jesus is speaking in all cases here. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feed them. Are you not of more value than they? It's a rhetorical question. The answer is yes. Matthew 10, 31. Fear not, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows. Matthew 12, 12 of how much more value is a man than a sheep. So you see Jesus reaffirming God's hierarchy of man over animal and plant, which if you say to that, so did abuse them. Okay. You said that God didn't, I didn't. Okay. Just saying, God got to start with that. God values them higher in some sense. As both Grudem and, really, the evangelical dean on the issue of environmentalism, Calvin Beisner, he's written a couple books on the subject, they suggest that there's a kind of, quote, incremental restoration implied by the scriptural view. Now, it doesn't mean, it shouldn't mean, and I don't think they mean it, it doesn't mean that we're bringing in the kingdom. See, the kingdom is defined a different way. But if we do what we do because of what it says about God, we're not making the new creation, namely the new heavens and new earth, nor are we making the kingdom, depend on how we cultivate the garden. Nevertheless, the mandate to cultivate, the mandate to have dominion, still exists as a God-glorifying sphere and says something about God. So it flows, think counter-clockwise here, in the biblical view, and this is really small, it's really jumbled up, but what I have here is God on top, and then counter-clockwise, from down to 9 o'clock, creation, down around to 6 o'clock, the curse, up around to 3 o'clock, the new creation, flowing back to God, to His glory. And at the bottom, at the foundation, is the curse-bearer. So the Gospel is a foundation for this, why we can do this. That doesn't mean that this is the gospel. It just means the gospel is now a foundation for Christians to do that. So standing in between man, who's still on center stage, he's still the image bearer, he's still bound to whether he eats or drinks or whatever he does, to do all to the glory of God, but standing in between man and the curse that he has earned is Christ, the God-man, the curse-bearer. And so the gospel stands at the bottom or the foundation of that new creation. nothing we do incrementally is causing the essentially spiritual nature of God's kingdom to build the new heavens and new earth. Christian stewardship of earth's resources is not the gospel, but the gospel provides a foundation for free, ethical, God-glorifying stewardship. Psalm 8, 6, for example, is no less wonderful because Christ bore the curse of our failure to live up to it. So, God giving us dominion over the work of his hand. That's no less of a charge because Christ bore the curse of our failure to live up to it. If anything, it's now more wonderful that God has given us dominion over the work of His hands. The Hebrew for have dominion, kibosh, can also be rendered to bring under bondage or subduce. Remember I said, remember that bondage to decay. So we measure that we are to bring under bondage. We measure that against Paul's statement in Romans 8 about the fallen world being under bondage. What we have here is a kind of battle of bondages. The second law of thermodynamics, in a sense, against our dominion, our cultivating, improving resources against the fall. So even cultivation in Genesis 2 anticipates the fall, anticipates weed, that's why we What is restricted in a biblical stewardship of Earth's resources? Let me give you a clear answer and then I'll give you four examples. What is restricted is anything that lies about God. bringing under bondage is saying something about God, well then obviously anything that's restricted is going to be anything that lies about God. So I have four things here. There's only one I don't have a verse for, but that's waste. I think I can back that up scripturally. I just didn't find a verse for it. Waste, cruelty, arbitrariness, and partiality and justice. Any using of the earth's resources for one of those four things would obviously lie about God. Cruelty. Proverbs 12 10 I'll just turn to him I guess Just to give you flavor whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel Okay, so it would lie about God if we were cruel to animals just to be cruel Now obviously in the rest of the Bible if he's giving us dominion precisely by giving us animals to eat Then God at least doesn't think that eating meat is by definition cruel there's a way to handle animals that's cruel, but apparently eating them is not necessarily one of those ways. Arbitrariness, and I'm not going to look at all these, but Deuteronomy 20, 19-20, doing things just because or having no design being careless with, or fourthly, partiality and justice. I'm not sure what I have there. Matthew 22, 39, now I'm curious. I know I look these up at the moment. Yeah, probably. Yeah, and the second is like, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So if you're using a resource for your own benefit in a particular way, Your relationship to others with resources ought to be motivated by them benefiting in that same way, or you're not loving them, and immediately that applies right back to the welfare state. If you're not treating a person with a resource with the same rational calculation that you would do for yourself, well then you're violating the greatest commandment. So the welfare system right away, the whole setup of it, is a violation of the greatest commandment. It violates the whole of the Christian faith. If you don't care enough about somebody to treat an expenditure of a resource in relation to them with the same kind of care. Now, obviously, you're not going to be able to do that in terms of time and amount and stuff like that. Nevertheless, if that's not your motive, to get in their hands the thing that will actually help them, as you would for your own benefit, then you don't love them. So those are four things you can't do with resources because they'll lie about God. That's the biblical view. What's the environmentalist view? Is it really a distinct worldview? Why am I calling environmentalism a worldview? Well, in one sense, we can say that it's an extension of the pantheistic worldview, and we're going to see that in a second. But in an operational conscience sense, it really does take on a total life and thought world of its own, sucking everything else up into its ultimate values. Let's start at some of those ultimate values, namely their hierarchy of beings. I have up here Earth, in parentheses plants and animals, down to man. That's their hierarchy of being. So, from Earth As a life form, somebody even goes as far as to say, to plant an animal life down to humans. Why humans? If nature is all there is, why is man as a part of nature viewed as somehow unnatural? That's a sticking point that I would ask, first of all. But there's a moral dimension to it. Animals and plants, though animals must live off of other animals, nevertheless are not as morally culpable in terms of the scope of their destruction as man. I think that's part of the thinking that goes into that. Otherwise, it's completely arbitrary. There's no such thing as unnatural nature. If nature is all there is, then by definition there's no such thing as unnatural nature. You can't have that hierarchy. There's no logical basis on which to make it. Nevertheless, notice that because of that, Notice how vegetarianism is actually a logical consequence of these assumptions. It's not just because they grew up in Northern California, and it's like, you know, one goes with the other because of proximity, guilt by association, that's just kind of a weird thing. No, it's not. It's a logical consequence of that assumption. Now, what are some immediate implications of these leading assumptions? Well, first, any advance of man, any infringement upon the natural habitat of the non-human is unthinkable. It's a violation of the greater rights of the simpler life forms and Earth as a whole. In fact, once you start to work it out, a natural habitat is just any habitat, not human. And since nature is all there is, it follows that everything is a natural habitat. But if that's true, and since the human is excluded from the natural, the human is actually a trespasser on all things. A human is an enemy of all things. Building development, pesticides, dams, power plants, factories, and the use of animals for medical research are naturally all excluded as the highest crimes imaginable. The bottom line assumption behind the operational worldview of environmentalism is that the natural, namely the earth, is the ideal, and therefore there is no such thing as an improvement, only an infringement, a trespass. Whereas the biblical Christian treats nature as a good gift in order to be cultivated, the environmentalist sees nature as the good, capital G in itself, and therefore pristine in its goodness. No human advance is a good thing. All human advances, by definition, are the most evil kind of crime. Now what is the environmental agenda that proceeds from this? Well, whether the environmentalist wants to admit it or not, his worldview is not ultimate. Not only is their worldview an extension of others, but in fact, the whole environmentalist logic is a useful tool for the Marxist revolution. They will never be treated as profound by the Marxist, but they will be profoundly useful. This way of operation This has occurred in a way that is a major wing of the aforementioned crisis strategy that seeks to break the back of the American economy by a critical mass of government dependence or regulation upon the productive sector until it's no longer sustainable. There's three basic rules in this strategy. Rule number one, be afraid. Be afraid of everything. Rule number two in this strategy, turn press releases into statistics. And then rule number three in this strategy, never waste a good disaster. This agenda operates in unison at every level, from the local to the national and then the global level. At the local level, the EPA hammers business, small and large. For example, in this past decade, a California law was passed to protect the three-inch fish called the Delta Smelt. I know you're very stressed about the plight of the Delta Smelt, but I want to tell you about them. They're three-inch fish. And so what happened? Think it was Schwarzenegger. He was very concerned about them apparently and so water was diverted from farmers to their habitat and the area experienced drought and an unemployment rate of over 40% and By the way a significant part of the world's food population was down the tubes, but the Delta smelt Felt better about it There's a tongue twister there by the way I can Do that later at the federal level the lobbyist money the celebrities absurd blessing and there's nothing more There's nothing more enlightening I'm not gonna particular I'm not gonna pick on any particular actor But there's nothing better than some actor sitting across at a Senate panel discussion informing everybody about the Delta smelt It's just very enlightening and highly highly informative. The lobbyists' money, the celebrities' absurd blessing, and the credentials of second-rate hack organizations, propped up by the lobbyist and the celebrity, they man the PR war to perfection. The usual targets, with their things in the habitat that they're set against, pesticides pit against cancer-free humans, dams pit against fish, windmills pit against birds, oil and natural gas pit against wildlife, the burning of those resources for fuel, pit against the climate, and nuclear energy, well, that could cause an accident. And again, all those things could happen. Birds will frequently run into windmills, just like they'll go into a stadium and get hit by a stray baseball. Again, these are people that are afraid of the law of gravity. And in so doing, they're right about some things. Objects are hard. Don't walk into them. We'll try to tell the birds that, but if they don't listen, the reality is that you can't, I don't even know what to say. At the global level, radical repopulation and even depopulation proposals silently, but surely make their way through the United Nations legislative tentacles. One particular proposal that was made to the United Nations, it might've been back in the seventies and it was discussed again in the nineties, or it may have been made in the nineties. It declares certain areas, ecosphere. And the problem with an ecosphere, say for example if it's in the whole southeast of the country, is then that population is trespassing. And under that particular act of the UN would be transported to a more sustainable location. That was proposed legislation through the United Nations to transfer the entire population of the southeast elsewhere by gently coaxing them to do so. No, by force. Public statements by global leaders toward this end are striking. Here's just a couple of modest ones. A British professor and activist said that, quote, the greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child. Now, Europeans are certainly heeding that call, but apparently they've been slower to share this urgent information with their Muslim neighbors. An official statement of that professor's particular think tank published a paper called, quote, having large families is an eco-crime. So, Idaho, hide your 12 kids, because you are endangering the spotted owl, and you will be served papers for that. Well, let's revisit our spectrum of discontent here. Here we have a philosophy shaping policy that's really nothing more than a utopian vision of all things. A dissatisfaction with a world of trade-offs. So you're saying that the end justifies the mean when that bird gets split up by that windmill? Yeah, I guess I am. I wasn't giddy about it, and I'm not now, but see, you're assuming... Don't let these people put you on the defensive. They're assuming that the real world shouldn't be as real as it is. It's a world of trade-offs. Grudem writes this about their policy and the thinking that goes into their policy and what they wind up communicating. He says, quote, they're always emphasizing the dangers, whether real or imagined, and never realistically evaluating an insignificant risk of danger in comparison to a certain promise of great benefit. So if you hear what Grudem's saying, he's not denying that birds often get hit by windmills. He's saying that's the way kids think. You've got to grow up if you want to stay free. Instead of focusing on what can happen, real or imagined, break up that pie trap however you want, what you're failing to do is to do the thing that adults have to do in the real world and measure the relative improbability of that and extent of the danger against the certain predictability and extent of the much greater danger over here. That's the way adults have to think. And when adults used to run the world, less people would get killed. When children who strap on red armbands with spiders on it run the world, lots of people get killed because the people in the back of the car says, why can't we have candy at 6 o'clock? Isn't candy a good thing? Those people stop being told by their parents, stop it or I'll bury you alive in a box. And those people, unfortunately, grew up and started to run the world. Matt, that's an oversimplification of it, but I see that you're right. Moving on. The empirical record. And that's everything else on this board here. What about the population problem? What about clean air in industrial states? And what about global warming? Well, in fact, it's all false. In fact, just the opposite is true. First of all, With respect to the availability and the health of the land, there's more than enough and its resources are actually not being depleted. We've been told that the quote rainforest is going away and things like that and in fact, global forest coverage as a percentage of global land has increased from 30.04% in 1950 to 30.89% in 1994. As far as water and food shortages, again, these may be attributed to a developing legend. combined with the exploitation of people groups who really are starving because they're Marxist governments enslaving them and the food supplies. Remember, we are the world in 1984 or whenever that was, conveniently placed in 1984. Well, where is that stuff taken to by all these celebrities? Because celebrities, by the way, if the planners aren't working for 60 years, I say get the celebrities on it and they will fix this problem in two seconds. Well, where did that food wind up? It wound up in a warehouse in Ethiopia and it stayed there. And it didn't get eaten. Well, it's because you capitalist pigs didn't build roads for a profit motive. Because when roads get built for a profit motive, roads get built and food gets eaten. No, the warehouses were manned by their government, which government was Marxist. The people starved because they hoarded the resources. A popular college textbook entitled Living in the Environment reports that over 40% of the world's population lives without sufficient water. Well, it turned out to be 4% to begin with, but it was a very shabby press release that was co-opted by the movement and then by the authors who then reported it as a fact. What about population growth? Between 1750 And 2011, the world's population has exploded from about 750 million people to 6.8 billion people as a result of the Industrial Revolution. No secret there. And yet the most expansive estimates for the year 2200 top out at 11 billion and then stabilize. And the question you might want to ask is, why would it stabilize? Well, the answer is for the very same reason as the massive growth to begin with. Underdeveloped cultures Not space is what tends to run out. When cultural development came, industrial development came with it. And with industrialization came urbanization. In other words, people moving to the cities with their larger families now. As urbanization increased, affluence increased. And as affluence increased, birth rates went back down. It stabilizes itself in those industrialized nations. In other words, very ironically, We actually need more development in order to stabilize population, not less. Note the implication. Now, by the way, part of this is kind of obvious if you think about it. You remember the birth rate comparison to Europe? By the way, I'm not saying that their birth rates radically going down is a good thing. It's not for a lot of other reasons, but there's reasons why they naturally go in that direction that have to do with affluence. So if you just compare where the low birth rates are to the high birth rates and then notice that in places where they're moving from third world, which by the way is in the last hundred years alone, some of those places like India that have been colonized and now it's capitalistic and blah, blah, blah, well their birth rates are going down too. So whatever you think morally about those birth rates and what that's going to do to culture, at least admit that that's the trend and ask yourself, well, why would it be that the more capitalistic, eventually after the first, second, third generation, the birth rates go back down? Well, forget about why for a second and just acknowledge that it's happening. So the answer there, again, is an industrialization. So notice the implication for land usage as well. With population growth comes the process of urbanization. So a concentrated use of resources on small bits of land, not at all a basic change to land usage. And you see that with satellite technology and statistics, and Grudem chronicles this on, I have it in my notes, which page it is, but here I don't. But if you look at the period, it's in the 300s, chapter 10 on environmentalism. But if you look at the period in which most industrialization took place globally, namely and where, where it happened, namely in the United States between 1945 and 1992, you'll quickly see that croplands remained at 24% of land usage during that same time, grasslands went from 34 to 31% of land usage, and forests went from 32 to 30% of land usage. All the while, same period, the U.S. population doubled, and yet no basic change in the landscape. So what's happening there in urbanization is not a change in the landscape, if you're defining landscape as the actual physical usage of the land, and an actual change and a shift into the kind of economy it is. And by the way, that's going to have implications for the yield of crops and things like that as well. We're going to get to that now. In that same period, the food harvested per acre doubled. In North America, Central America, Europe, between 1970 and 2010, the percentage of the world's population that is starving was reduced dramatically from 35% to 12%. In other words, in all these things you're going to see, as these things are economized through capitalism, every single one of what we call the world's problems gets dramatically better. And only where capitalism is functioning. And you see reversals where capitalism goes in decline and where socialism takes over. So the percentage of the world's population starving between those two and a half decades from 35% to 12%. Now that is not an eradication of hunger by any means, but it is more proof that only the free market produces and employs the land in order to feed. Government was not designed to do that and therefore starvation, like its root in poverty, is entirely a function of the failed and murderous system of the command economy. Show me somebody that's starving and I'll show you a government that did not allow employment to happen. Likewise, the percentage of the population in developing nations with access to clean water rose from 30% to 80% between 1970 and 2000. When you look at these numbers, you get the sense more and more, you're reminded more and more that these are the bad guys. They need to be stopped. The people that are chirping about all the world's problems, their friends created it. And they need to be called the murderous thugs that they are and held to justice. These people are causing starvation, poverty, enslavement, and all of the world's crimes. The expanse of government, not God's design for government, So hear that the right way. The expansive government and that worldview of statism are the murderers and are the people that are creating everything that we mean by it. This is all of one cloth. As a matter of fact, the market system for profit motive is feeding people and raising standards of living at a faster rate and more successfully than any other force in human history. The free market does to the nth degree what command economies have never done, and in fact, in so doing, is actually undoing all the damage and human carnage caused by socialism. Grudem points out that, quote, out of the remaining water that is accessible for human use, we still use less than 17% of the annually renewable water on the earth. Now, exceptions to this, when you show them, again, are local and always politically induced. In other words, they're always caused by command economy. And then there's the main indicator of living standard, namely life expectancy. In Great Britain, from 1600 to 2000, the life expectancy has moved from age 35 to age 78. And that trend is typical of Western nations, and especially the further west you go in Western nations, in Europe and America, who apply the Reformation principles all the way into their theories of government and economics. And lest anyone is getting lost in the political science of all this and forgets how theology flows directly to these very one-sided realities, Grudem explains, quote, Therefore, it makes no sense for people to think that there is some virtue in always seeking to reduce our energy use. Energy is what replaces human physical work, and energy is what makes economic development possible. When we increase our use of these energy sources that God has provided, we decrease the time we have to spend on travel or menial labor. We increase the amount of work we can get done and thus increase human prosperity. We increase human freedom because we have more time left to devote to more creative and valuable tasks of our own choosing. And we make life more pleasant." So to summarize that formula, As energy use is increased, human output increases with a relative decrease in human input. In other words, more bang for your buck, as we saw over there. And then, in turn, more freedom is carved out to do it all over again. Now, and I would say again, so in all these areas here, empirical state-of-the-earth resources, 11 billion population stabilization at 2200 and you can see why and where the shift is to urbanization, not to a radical change in land usage. Where there is land usage change as a result of capitalism, think of this, current farm use, there's a third of Earth's arable land being used. We're using it better all the time, namely the free market is, not government. Current estimates, what that means is that if there's a third of that being used and always better and restricted by government the way it is, it could be better, there's three times the current demand, almost 100% than the highest population projections for 2200. We can feed three times the people in the world by the current usage, sorry, three times more than the highest projection for the year 2200. We have, not just we, the world, the capitalist economies have the ability and the resource to feed everybody in the world three times over and we're not allowed to do it by government. Government won't let us feed the poor. Capitalism is bursting forth toward the poor and government is stopping that from happening and blaming the free market. These people should be thrown in prison, they are guilty of all the world's worst crimes. Stop, don't live up to the caricature and defend property just on the grounds, well, it's wrong to steal. Implication, but you're right that the poor, and yeah, I've got to do something about that, and I care, but not really. No, they're the murderers. They're the murderers. They're the ones that are starving people. They're the ones that have locked the warehouses in Ethiopia and prevented people from getting that food because they're obsessed with the profit motive and sticking it to the rich. Clean water and air. We just said 17% renewable water is being used, only 17%. Again, capitalism is gushing forth with clean water and we're not allowed to get it to them. As wealth goes up, air pollution goes down. And, like it or not, as pesticides go up, the price of produce goes down. In other words, energy use feeds into the economy as a whole, the economy as a whole then makes better energy usage. And you say, but there's alternatives. Yes, and who's stopping us from mining those? The government. Again, I watch those videos and, you know, they're always blaming the abuse Tyson companies doing. Tyson has an agreement to do that with the government. The government insulates Tyson Chicken. doesn't crack down on them for the illegal immigrants that they use, pays and brings in the immigrants, cracks down on the immigrants, just like the war on drugs, they do the same thing. Stop blaming the free market. Don't you realize that these people are blaming the free market in how they're presenting those? So be more discerning in what you're hearing there. And then finally, climate. What about that? What about global warming? Well, let's do a little earth science first. is really the sphere of the controversy. So I have up here, this circle represents the Earth, this dotted line represents the atmosphere with its basic makeup. So two basic gases, nitrogen, 78% of the atmosphere, 21% oxygen, with the remaining 1% comprised of 14 different elements. Now 0.45% of those are what we call greenhouse gases, and that's already a little bit misleading because in a greenhouse, the design of the material works entirely one way. It's designed to trap the warmth inward toward the plants. So the absorption in this case, inward, and the radiation outward of heat energy in the greenhouse gases actually has two opposite effects, namely heating and cooling. And the way the cooling effects works, kind of the offsetting, is apparently something God designed to offset things, and scientists call those effects feedbacks. Now, these feedbacks are really the X-factor in all the computer models and the sole cause of the myth of global warming. So, understand that all these projections are just that, they're computer models that assume many things going in, and so those assumptions are what need to be challenged first. The main culprit out of all those greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide. Now, carbon dioxide is just an essential part of nature. Plants need it for photosynthesis. You're always breathing it out. In other words, God did that, first of all, before we talk about different forms of it and how we use it and stuff like that. And by the way, it's not carbon dioxide only. There's methane and ozone. And of course, you remember methane came on the scene at least around here a couple of years ago because we're going to start Are we measuring? Are we asking the cows for their opinion? But cow gas, cow farts, that's right, cow farts are now part of the reason for global warming. I think cows have been farting for quite some time. I'm just throwing that out there. I think cows have been farting for a long time and I don't think industrialization has radically changed the way that cows have been farting. I'm just going to throw that out there. The cows were not available for comment. What we actually observe in the actual record is a naturally occurring and repeating cycle. And in the most recent and most extensive sample of industrialization, we see a steady trend. So you see, over here, what you see between, so if you look at 1900 and 2000, you see these three blips that kind of go that way, okay? Now, it's instructive here because this one happens before there's the main industrialization between 1910 and 1940. That is the biggest jump that came in the era prior to the biggest expanse of industrialization. And lastly, the use of fuel and our dependence on foreign. So let me just before I get to that. What we have here again is computer generated models that are ignoring things like the effect of clouds, ignoring these natural cycles, ignoring the fact that these are assumptions that are going into computer models and they typically have nothing to do with the cooling effect. So they're only looking at the heating effect. They've shown no connection between this and that. And they're ignoring the fact that the cycles are constantly happening. So what are they ignoring? They're pretty much ignoring everything we know about earth science. And then plugging that, those lack of right assumptions into the computer models, generating numbers that are real numbers, and then handing us those real numbers and saying, look at all these things. And every time you wake up on July 4th and it's in the 40s and 50s, you always smirk to yourself and say, must be the global warming. And yes, it must be. So I won't say anything more about that, but it's pretty obvious that once you get to the global level, the agenda is, this is pretty scary. That's a formidable thing when you're talking about the whole planet just blowing up. That can scare a lot of people. And what's the necessity when there's pollution in the air? Well, again, let that expert class take over everything. Let them shake you down. Because clearly it's your fault. They can't shake down the cows for farting. So, what's the solution? Well, the expert class, take more of your stuff. And that is exactly the solution. So, lastly, let's talk about the fuel. Ever since the 1970s, there's been this cry for becoming less dependent on foreign oil, which they can do in a second. And they don't. And they do. And maybe they have some connections with those Saudis and OPEC. Because if they could do this in a second, then they don't. You have to ask yourself. This statistic blew my stinking mind. Do you know that between 1950 and the year 2000, the increase of known oil reserves, as measured by billions of barrels going from 200 billion up to 1000 billion barrels, that the rate of newly discovered oil reserves has outstripped the usage of them by 10 to 1. Did you know that? What the heck? That doesn't even resemble what we've been told. Look, that favors my thesis, but I almost don't want to believe it because that's too weird, man. So anyway, two steps here naturally. Number one, developing alternative sources. Number two, increasing domestic sources, which are being newly discovered every day. This is a breakdown of the world's energy distribution. Of course, you hear on the very smallest end, pretty much 2.2 or whatever percent, geothermal, wind and solar and stuff like that. Now, there's other alternatives that are always going to be talked about, but why are we not even... See, you can laugh all you want to at somebody that wants to take peanut oil from McDonald's or Chick-fil-A or... You don't know about that, it's coming, Chick-fil-A. You can use this peanut oil for these alternative engines. You can laugh at them all you want. Why aren't they allowed to do it? If it's so funny and silly, why not let them do it and you can laugh at them later? What's the harm? Okay, so again, governments is inflating. If this is true, 10 to 1 in the supply of oil being found, then being used, then what the heck? That doesn't add up. The free market supplying 10 to 1 more oil reserves and the price going up This is not hard to see that this is being done on purpose. And then saying, look at the price of gas! Those greedy oil people! No. Government is putting the lid on oil, stopping alternative usage and the discovery of new sources. So, I'm going to end there, before I get mad at these people. I don't know. What is it? Whatever you're going to call it. You don't call it evil.