In a piece for The American Spectator earlier this week, Mark Tooley of IRD evaluates the global warming dust-up at the NAE.

In “Prepare for Biblical Floods and Droughts,” Tooley especially criticizes the reaction of emergent church leader Brian McLaren, who used the examples of Noah and Joseph to argue for the legitimacy of a prophetic voice on climate change.

Tooley writes that we can expect

Global Warming to remain the main obsession of the evangelical left and of NAE leadership. It is, after all the perfect issue for left-leaning evangelicals to show their concern, while also relying upon the habits of their own sub-culture. Global Warming, as a metaphysical movement, warns of a cataclysmic judgment for “bad” behavior. Evangelicals are accustomed to that kind of preaching. Meanwhile, the liberal evangelicals want more government, higher taxes, and increased regulation of the private economy. They feel guilty about capitalism, and want other evangelicals to share in their guilt. Liberal evangelicals prefer not to talk about sexual sins. Carbon sins are a e substitute.

Tooley also criticizes an NAE statement on torture, saying that “it could just as easily e from the National Council of Churches, and was crafted by a mittee dominated by activists and academics from the evangelical left.”

I’m no expert on the subject, having only seen a Fred Friendly seminar that addressed the topic and watching the dramatization of Sayid Jarrah’s character on “Lost”. Neither have I read the torture statement, but it’s not clear to me whether Tooley’s problem with the statement is the subject matter itself or the way in which it was treated. That is, could there have been an appropriately conservative statement on torture, or does any statement addressing that question necessarily mean it is a liberal political tool?

In any case, Tooley’s remarks about the alarmism of many on the evangelical left are well-taken, and should be tempered by a serious biblical perspective. I have it on pretty good authority that rising sea-levels won’t be the end of life on earth. Now an extreme sort of fire-based “global warming” (if that’s what you want to call it), that’s another story.