Burma and the Need to Get It

on May 16, 2008

The initial reports said that ten thousand deaths were expected in Burma as a result of Cyclone Nargis.  Then the number began to increase.  Estimates as of this writing are one hundred thousand and, according to Anne Applebaum writing in the May 13, 2008 Washington Post, “a further 1.5 million Burmese are at risk of epidemics and starvation, parts of the country are still underwater, hundreds of thousands of people are camped in the open without food or clean water.”

The unprepared people—kept in the dark by their tyrants whose new capitol was far from the coast and the danger—suffered the high winds first.  That was damaging enough.  But it was the twelve-foot storm surge that washed over the lowlands and rice fields of the Irrawady Delta and flooded Rangoon that caused on the real trouble.

The day before the storm, the Indian Meteorological Department warned of the approaching cyclone, but Burma’s leaders are, according a British journalist quoted by Anne Applebaum, “cruel, power-hungry, and dangerously irrational” and they chose to ignore the weather bulletins.  The predictable results are graphically displayed in photos of drowned children who have no one to fish their corpses out of the water for burial—if not out of respect, out of concern for public health.

On the other hand, even if benevolent and kind leaders governed Burma and even if they warned the people as soon as they could have, the results of Cyclone Nargis would still have been disastrous.

You see, the Burmese people are, for the most part, poor.

The CIA World Fact Book notes that Burma, “a resource-rich country, suffers from pervasive government controls, inefficient economic policies, and rural poverty.”  According to 2007 estimates, 32.7 percent of the Burmese people live in poverty that is exacerbated by an inflation rate of nearly 40 percent.  Per capita GDP in Burma is $1,900 compared with $8,000 in neighboring Thailand, $26,400 in South Korea, and $33,800 in Japan.

In an article on Science and Development Net, T.V. Padma cited a spokesman from the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre in Thailand, who noted that Asian cyclones are fewer and less intense than hurricanes in the Atlantic or typhoons in the Pacific, but they cause more death and destruction.

In 2005, Padma wrote, there were 25 hurricanes spawned in the Atlantic. Those hurricanes—including Hurricane Katrina that battered the Gulf Coast—caused ten deaths.   And just one storm in Burma may have killed ten thousand times that number.

The reasons for the difference include accurate forecasting, functional early-warning systems, mass communication capabilities, well constructed buildings, and if need be, a transportation system able to evacuate coastal areas.  Or, to sum it up, the difference is wealth as opposed to poverty.  In Burma, even if a timely warning had gone out, communication to the fishermen and rice farmers of the Irawaddy Delta is limited and once warned, they had no place to go and no way to get there.

Did global warming cause the disaster?  Or at least did global warming cause the parts of it not caused by the malevolence of the military junta?  It really doesn’t matter.  The way to avert this kind of tragedy is the same regardless. 

As IRD Adjunct Fellow Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation argues in the recent IRD Mount Nebo Paper on the environment, the most pressing environmental task for Christians is to work to lift people out of poverty.  Greater wealth means better protection from the elements.

That is why Thursday at the National Press Club, the IRD along with the Cornwall Alliance, Family Research Council, the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Acton Institute, and several other organizations launched the “We Get It!”  campaign for the care of creation and the care of the poor.

Our goal is that one million Christians sign the “We Get It! Pledge”:

God Said It
God created everything.  He made us in His own image, and commanded us to be fruitful and multiply and watch over His creation.  Although separated from God by our sin, we are lovingly restored through Jesus Christ, and take responsibility for being good stewards.

We Get It
Our stewardship of creation must be based on Biblical principles and factual evidence.  We face important environmental challenges, but must be cautious of claims that our planet is in peril from speculative dangers like man-made global warming.

They Need It
With billions suffering in poverty, environmental policies must not further oppress the world’s poor by denying them basic needs.  Instead, we must help people fulfill their God-given potential as producers and stewards.

Let’s Do It
We pledge to follow our Lord Jesus Christ and honor God as we use and share the principles of His Word to care for the poor and tend His creation.

 “We Get It!” is a grassroots voice to counter global environmental policies that, to quote Sen. James Inhofe, “put millions of the world’s poor at risk by promoting policies to fight the alleged problem of global warming that will slow economic development, and condemn the poor to more generations of grinding poverty and high rates of disease and early death.”

This is a call for ethical environmental policies that elevate human beings, lifting them out of poverty and pollution.  Wealthier is healthier for humans and for the environment. 

There has been a concerted attempt by global warming alarmists to foster a split in the evangelical vote over the environment.  We need to counter that effort.  We need to do it for the sake of the poor who are being harmed by ill-advised policies and we need to do it to protect the Church from this error that has the potential to lead to greater and more egregious errors.
For more information on “We Get It!” and how you and your church can be involved, visit the IRD website.  To sign the “We Get It!” Pledge, go to www.WeGetIt.org

Storms like the cyclone that hit Burma cannot be prevented, but the devastation can be mitigated by moving the people out of poverty to a standard of living that will enable them to protect themselves, their families, and their communities. 

If we get it, there’s a world of good we can and should do for God’s earth and its people.

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