Please panic

I am an English teacher and this year my sophomores read the deeply funny science fiction of Douglas Adams. If you’ve read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you’re familiar with the words printed “in large friendly letters” on the cover of the Guide: DON’T PANIC.

But maybe we should.

If trends continue, by 2050, Midwest farmers will need to grow crops other than wheat because America’s breadbasket will be in Canada (BBC News 12/3/06); 15 to 35 percent of the Earth’s 1,103 studied species will be at risk of extinction (National Geographic 7/12/04); and there will be no viable ocean fishing (Science 11/3/06).

This is not science fiction. We must act now to protect and restore God’s creation.

In 1990, the 202^nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) adopted (by a resounding 97% majority) the policy report Restoring Creation for Ecology and Justice. The report declared:

The American people, beginning with members of our churches, must be challenged to form personal habits consistent with the need to cut back on the emissions of the gases that are causing the greenhouse effect and the depletion of the ozone layer.

If you would like to know what you can do to fight global warming, please attend PCIS's Friday Focus on June 29, 2007 at 7:30 pm, hosted by the Go Green Committee. We will meet in the fellowship hall and watch the film An Inconvenient Truth (2006). Dessert will be served.

Together, we can make a difference.