The sixth report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is alarming—but not surprising.

The panel’s first assessment of scientific research on climate change in 1990 found that burning fossil fuels substantially increases the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases—including carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and nitrous oxide—causing a rise in the global mean temperature and warming up the world’s oceans.

“Consequent changes,” the first report said, “may have a significant impact on society.” //

Policy makers, scientists, and concerned citizens who pick up the final version of the report might be surprised by one thing, though: It is dedicated to an evangelical Christian who said the root problem of climate change is sin.

“Looking after the Earth is a God-given responsibility,” John Houghton once wrote. “Not to look after the Earth is a sin.”

Houghton, who died of complications related to COVID-19 in 2020 at the age of 88, was the chief editor of the first three IPCC reports and an early, influential leader calling for action on climate change.

His concerns about greenhouse gases, rising temperature averages, dying coral reefs, blistering heat waves, and increasingly extreme weather were informed by his training at as atmospheric physicist and his commitment to science. They also come out of his evangelical understanding of God, the biblical accounts of humanity’s relationship to creation, and what it means for a Christian to follow Christ. //

As Houghton saw it, some religions teach that the Earth and the material world are evil. But the Bible teaches that creation is good, and depicts humans as gardeners divinely commissioned to cultivate and care for the world.

“We are more often exploiters and spoilers rather than gardeners,” Houghton wrote. “Some Christians have misinterpreted the ‘dominion’ given to humans in Genesis 1.26 as an excuse for unbridled exploitation. However, the Genesis chapters, as do other parts of scripture, insist that human rule over creation is to be exercised under God, the ultimate ruler of creation, with the sort of care exemplified by this picture of humans as ‘gardeners.’”

Houghton began to reach out to evangelical leaders to talk to them about the coming ecological crisis. He was influential in convincing Richard Cizik, John Stott, and Rick Warren to make climate change a priority and talk about it as a spiritual problem. //

According to Malcolm, who is now preparing for ministry in the Church of England and writing a doctoral dissertation on theology and climate grief, Houghton thought it was it was impossible to convince people to protect something they didn’t love. He wanted Christians to learn to love their environment and let climate change science move them to repentance.

“Our desire to be gods drives a great deal of the destruction around us,” she said. “There is something in the work of climate science that reveals the consequence of our sin, troubles those in power, and calls for us to sit with that, but also be aware that an alternative is possible—an alternative to our sin.”

Houghton didn’t live to see the release of the sixth IPCC report or to promote it to evangelical Christians. But the scientific assessment dedicated to his memory echoes a core theme of Houghton’s life’s work: Now is the time, it says, to turn from the path of destruction.

But he also just kept saying things that made no sense or that were demonstrably untrue.

Biden says he was warning people to get out since March or April. But then he was also saying that he himself couldn’t see the country falling, that “no one” could, so he can’t be blamed for not seeing it. So which is it? In July, of course, he claimed that he hadn’t been told the country might fall. That was a lie, as we found out later, as he was told in June that it was a possibility. We’ve been talking about the possibility since at least May.

He spoke about the Trump May 1 deadline – yelling that the choice was between that and surging far more troops in for more war which no one was talking about. But he himself broke that deadline in April, postponing leaving for four months. So he himself proved that was nonsense. Plus, Trump had a lot of conditions in the deal that the Taliban broke, but Biden didn’t hold them to the deal, which would have kept them in check. //

He says he disagrees with people who say he should have started sooner. Now, leave aside for the moment that his people were telling us in July they were working on getting interpreters out. So they were claiming in July that they were doing what he says now they couldn’t. But he says now – imagine if they brought in thousands of troops to get out people then, in the middle of a civil war? I don’t know Joe, was it better to bring in the thousands after you pulled out all the troops after they took complete control and we were at their mercy because of you?

But the whole point of doing it earlier was so that you didn’t have to do it all at once, so that you could have done it over months, slowly and carefully, fully vetting everyone. So you wouldn’t need “thousands of troops.” Plus, Biden pulled the remaining 2500 troops out, only to have to put 6000 back in. So he himself was “surging” in far more troops than he took out. Everything he claimed he was doing to reduce our involvement, only increased the risk and danger to our people and our Afghan allies. //

It was, to Joe Biden, about proving Joe Biden right about this issue.

There were a lot of sick things in it, but the thing that was sociopathic about it all was using his own dead son’s name/death for emotional blackmail. Some people may not like that I say that, but that’s what it is. He’s done that repeatedly in his rants on Afghanistan. He did it again in Tuesday’s speech, and he did it during his Dover meetings with the families who lost their sons and daughters in Kabul. So, for the record, Joe Biden’s son Beau didn’t die in Afghanistan. He died of cancer. He had previously served in Iraq. The families felt he talked more about his own son than theirs. We see him throw Beau Biden again into this speech. He acts like he was a Gold Star father, and it’s not the same thing. The families know that and they were offended that he made it about himself and not about their loved ones.

But more than that, it’s a cynical use of his son as a defense to being criticized, to make it not about facts, but about his pain, not even about the son. To me, that’s sick and even disrespectful to his own son, to use Beau’s death in that way.

According to NBC News, around 20,000 Afghans who had worked with the US government had applied for SIVs, and that was back in May. No doubt the number skyrocketed as it became clear the Taliban would prevail. When you add in their families, that number jumps to almost 75,000. In the end, we got out around 8,500, a tiny fraction of those we made promises to.

Putting aside whether one agrees with bringing SIVs here or not, the issue here is just how pervasive the misleading claims by Biden and his cohorts have been following the end of operations in Afghanistan. They’ve continually presented a rosy picture that is clearly not true. This airlift not only failed to get all Americans out, it overwhelmingly failed to get Afghan allies out as well. That’s not the reality the administration is admitting to when they trot out Austin to blow smoke up the collective backside of the nation.

What we are seeing right now is an administration that is flailing, desperate to cover up its incompetence. This airlift was not a roaring success. Rather, it was a rushed, ill-planned, chaotic retreat that left tens of thousands of people who deserved to get out to the tender mercies of the Taliban.

That leaves one big question remaining: Who exactly did we evacuate?