By Sara Ronnevik

For many years now, environmentalists have been pedaling a climate change narrative that is too often fueled by fear. This has resulted in accelerating policies which sometimes result in unnecessary harm and waste. As we advance in our knowledge of science and technology, we should aim to live efficiently on our planet and preserve the natural wonders of our world. But we must move forward with a wide-angle lens as we test new ideas.

Most people today recognize a warming shift in our climate, with or without the assessment of climate scientists. Pan fish push farther north into Canada than they used to. Lobster fishing has also shifted up the coast of Maine. Some European ski resorts have closed permanently due to warming weather. The warming climate is also to thank for the discovery of Otzi the (perhaps) murdered ice-age man who was discovered in 1991 at the margin of melting glacial ice. These are just some of countless examples. I am not writing this post to question whether or not we are experiencing a warming trend. I am writing with the hope of adding some perspective to the dialogue.

In 2022, California announced that they would ban the sale of gas powered vehicles by 2035 despite the fact that they already have difficulty providing their citizens with the electricity that they need. So far, Minnesota’s DFL lawmakers have followed all of California’s Clean Air Act mandates, without fully committing to this one. When people raised alarm over this possibility, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency stated that Minnesota’s Clean Car Rules “won’t automatically force the state to adopt the ban recently enacted in California.” Not automatically. Well, gosh, that is comforting. I will save my thoughts about astronomically expanding electric vehicles in a state with deep-cold winters. But beyond the question of practicality, there are ethical issues that are being misconstrued.

While the wealthy people of the world split hairs over how to be the most environmentally virtuous, a new kind of slavery has been birthed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Tens of thousands of people, including children and mothers with babies strapped to their backs are working in dangerous conditions to mine the cobalt that is needed for EV batteries. As Sidhartha Kara, author of Cobalt Red explains, “there is no such thing as a ‘clean’ supply of cobalt from the country.”

In light of this, it is necessary to call out one of the bold lies of progressive environmental politics. Minnesota’s Green Car Flyer (which promotes increased production of electric vehicles) states that: Clean Cars Minnesota would “reduce harmful air pollution, which has a particular impact on lower-income and minority communities.” This suggests that poor people with darker skin will experience more negative effects from high carbon emissions than rich people with lighter skin who live on the same planet and breathe the same air. This is an odd claim, but the implication is that increasing EV production will make the lives of poor people with darker skin qualitatively better. And this is a lie.

The reality is that when the wealthy state of Minnesota demands more EV cars, (Minnesota requires car dealers to stock a certain percent regardless of customer demand), an increasing number of poor Congolese men, women, and children will end up working in the toxic cobalt mines. These conditions will have a negative effect that is far more concrete and immediate than the imaginary one that is vaguely alluded to in Minnesota’s Green Car promotion. A University of Florida health page reports the following information about cobalt exposure:

If you or someone you know has been exposed to cobalt, the first step is to leave the area and get fresh air. If cobalt came in contact with the skin, wash the area thoroughly.

Cobalt poisoning can occur when you are exposed to large amounts of it. There are three ways that cobalt can cause poisoning. You can swallow it, breathe it into your lungs, or have it come in prolonged contact with your skin.

Absorbing a large amount of cobalt over longer periods of time can lead to serious health problems, such as:

• Cardiomyopathy (a problem where your heart becomes big and floppy and has problems pumping blood)
• Deafness
• Nerve problems
• Ringing in the ears (tinnitus)
• Thickening of the blood
• Thyroid problems
• Vision problems

Yet, in order to supply the EV demand, people are mining this material with pick axes, transporting it in their bare hands and arms, and breathing in toxic dust for hours on end, day after day. In addition to the unavoidable cobalt poisoning, the natural beauty of the Congolese landscape is being bulldozed and gutted to unearth the high-demand ore. We must be willing to confess that our vain attempts at environmental moralism are held up by a supply-chain that is at complete odds with the movement’s most cherished values.

Human rights activists are aware of the cobalt problem and are trying to raise awareness about the need to develop a safe mining industry. But when demand balloons, it becomes very difficult to develop regulated practices. For this reason, environmental policy changes must be made slowly with intentionality to engage the whole process. There must also be an awareness of the ripple effect that impacts people downstream from the policies. It is important that we remain honest about the fact that an environmental moral high ground might be difficult to secure. In addition, it is important to remain open-minded about whether or not we have the right narrative on climate change.

What if the globe is warming, but carbon emissions have less to do with it than we think? What if carbon emissions are the main cause, but the solutions we are proposing are causing more harm than good? What if there are many factors that influence global climates and we do not even know the half of it? It is important to keep an open mind toward all the possibilities and continue to look at this complex situation from many different perspectives.

Let us look at a few events in climate history to widen our perspective.

The climate is changing today, as it always has been. The problem is that the prophecies of doom which fuel environmental policies are based on a view of earth history that is egregiously myopic. The earth has often been subject to catastrophic climate events. These are recorded in human history, geology, and in our soil. We know from studying these, that past climate events were on a scale far more dramatic than anything we have seen in recent history. The graph below, from an academic geology/archaeology paper, displays this reality. This graph shows temperature changes from the end of the ice age until now. That itty bitty millimeter at the end is supposed to be our current global warming “crisis”. It is the most boring part of this graph.

BEFORE THE ICE AGE:

Minnesota used to sit sideways on the equator.* Tectonic forces twisted the continent and shoved our state into the northern hemisphere. Somewhere along the way, Minnesota was nearly torn in two by a massive tectonic force and then squeezed back together. This incident left a gigantic scar – the mid-continental rift – below the surface of our topography. Between and around these catastrophic events, the northern part of the state experienced massive volcanic activity, a mountain building event, and a mountain eroding event which leveled our local Himalayas down to stumps and exposed deposits of iron and other minerals.

THE ICE AGE

Well. It’s hard to beat all of that excitement. But then there was the mysterious ice age. For some reason, ice began to accumulate in the northern hemisphere and on high mountain ranges until it built up to huge continent-wide sheets of ice. In Minnesota, glaciers covered the entire state, except for a bit in the southeastern corner. What climate crisis caused this? And what climate crisis caused them to melt? Certainly, this was all far more dramatic than our gradual warming trend. Geologists tell us that we are still technically at the end of the ice age. We are standing in a stream of a warming and melting history that started around the same time that people first entered the continent of North America. So, we should expect that we will continue to experience cycles of warm and cool weather, with an overall warming pattern (just like the graph above shows).

At the peak of the ice age, some of the world’s current deserts were lush, fertile lands. The arid Southwest of the United States, the Sahara Desert, and the region of Bactria (now Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) hold traces of some of the earliest signs of human occupation, lush vegetation and agriculture. Climate change happened to them. People moved and adapted. Or they stayed and adapted. We do not know how they dealt with it, but we are all here today and so they must have figured it out.

THE GREENLAND SETTLEMENT WARMING PERIOD

Beginning around 900 AD/CE, people from Denmark, Sweden and Norway found their way to Greenland and established farming settlements that lasted for over 400 years before the people mysteriously disappeared. So, what was going on during that period of Norse settlement? There was a significant warming period that made Greenland hospitable to farming and it lasted for several hundred years before the climate cooled so dramatically that the Scandinavian people abandoned their homes and immigrated back to Europe. All of this warming happened in recent history without any industrial-era carbon emissions. And then it cooled again for unknown reasons.

THE LITTLE ICE AGE

The abandonment of the Greenland settlements was due to the onset of The Little Ice Age, which started around 1300 and lasted until the mid-19th Century. This period of extreme global cooling had far-reaching societal effects that are documented in history around the globe. Mountain glaciers advanced. Ancient Chinese orange farms were abandoned. There were droughts, crop failure and famines. Dynasties collapsed. Merchants had to innovate new ways to transport their goods through the longer winters when rivers and canals froze. The extreme cold was blamed on witchcraft, Jews, women and any minority group that was easy to scapegoat. Climate change fearmongering is nothing new. People panic anytime the earth reveals that it is not tame.

Being that the Little Ice Age ended in the 1800s, we should be expecting a warming trend, with or without carbon emissions. Our ancestors who survived the Little Ice Age would be puzzled as to why we are so terrified of our warming weather. They longed for it.

The politically driven environmental narrative must be countered with the truth when it makes claims that are demonstrably false. We should acquaint ourselves with a better understanding of Earth’s history in order to see our present time in its proper context. We need to stop telling our children that it is up to them to save the earth, because clearly, that is not within human power. God created the world and He will sustain it until the day he chooses to draw this age to an end. We can trust him with that future while we strive to wisely balance the needs of all people who share this beautiful planet.

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
    Tell me, if you understand. Job 38:4

For more on the EV situation, check out this video: Ford’s $100 Billion EV Disaster…What Happened?

*On Minnesota’s geologic past: My cited source says this happened 540 million years ago, but I do not believe this timeline. All of the pre-ice age drama happend during Noah’s Flood. More on that later. Here are 101 reasons to question the old earth paradigm.