The Common Good
March 2013

Top-Notch Theology (or Not)

by Bill McKibben | March 2013

Who speaks for God? Must be this guy...





Since I'm not a top-notch theologian at all—in fact, I've never risen higher in the ecclesial hierarchy than Sunday school teacher—let me just pose a few questions that I am certain these eminent scholars could quickly answer.

  • If fossil fuel is such an unmitigated boon, why does the most recent study—issued in September by the DARA group (—show that 100 million people will die from its effects by 2030, most of them in developing countries?
  • Why did God bother making all those other animals and plants if climate change, brought on by burning those fossil fuels, seems likely to extinguish more than a third of them before the century is out?
  • Most puzzlingly, what does God make of the fact that we waste most of the sunshine that bathes our planet daily, and the wind that washes across it every hour?

It's estimated that enough solar energy hits the earth each hour to power the entire world for a full year—there were days last year when Germany generated half the power it used from solar panels within its borders. Isn't all this clean, free stuff that you don't even have to dig up just about the best birthday present God could give us? Isn't God, like, somewhat miffed that we can't even be bothered to put up solar panels?

Maybe another way of putting it is, never mind the coal: Mightn't God like us to use the brains he gave us? But what do I know—I'm no theologian.

Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, and founder of, the international grassroots climate change campaign.


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