The Bible has stories of environmental catastrophe. It’s usually an expression of God’s judgment. There is a movement among evangelical Christians today connecting the two, suggesting that God intended us to be caretakers of creation. Our shirking of that responsibility—misusing creation for profit and domination—has consequences. It’s all connected, and the Bible reflects that.
Some Christian media promote a disconnect between these. They say that God, being in control of climate, exempts humans from responsibility for the planet’s climate catastrophes. They limit sin to an individual and personal matter, feeding the common assumption that climate change is none of our government’s responsibility, nor of ours.
Many of us don’t like those arguments. We prefer to simply reduce our fossil energy usage. It’s not just because the rest of the planet’s peoples point their fingers at the US for being the biggest fossil hydrocarbon burner per capita. It’s rather because the changes we could make are obvious. We have easy access to technology to retool our energy use to renewables. The benefit to our economy, now bent on fossil hydrocarbon burning, in the long run would easily outstrip the costs of reconfiguring. Our prestige worldwide would gain: we would start living up to environmental principles we espouse. Our current military presence around the globe could be replaced with technical assistance to mitigate climate disasters, saving lives and American tax dollars. But there’s a real downside: Such a change in mentality requires major cerebral energy to reconsider evidence and envision our path to change, regardless of its clarity and ease. That’s our difficulty.
A small evangelical Spanish church in New York City is an inspiration for the mind changing just beginning to happen even in Montana. The United Revival Mennonite Church there is co-owner of the first US apartment complex built to strict international “passive house” environmental standards (http://passiv.de/en/). The $8.5 million building with 24 units is designed to cut energy use by 90%. According to a recent New York Times article, Europe had 25,000 of these certified structures built by 2010. Today, there are only 13 similar energy efficient buildings in the US. Occupants are finding surprising economic benefits living in a building designed to reduce energy consumption by 90% (as compared to conventionally constructed buildings).
We at Greenwood Farm have a potential fourteenth, but need research to back our innovations. Like the “passive house” international standards, what we spend in extra insulation and solar energy design is offset by our miniscule heating/cooling installations. Two of our structures have no backup fossil energy source. The most recent, a 2600 square foot home, has a fossil energy backup: an ordinary cheap 20-amp 30 gal hot water heater plumbed in-line with the pex floor heat loops. These loops are normally heated by a solar hot water panel impervious to frost damage, and on cold cloudy days by a wood stove harnessing combustion expansion to accelerate draft to a forge temperature. This forces vent gases through thirty feet of horizontal steel chimney, down in the floor. It’s all assembled with salvaged steel. Our first structure with this design just completed its fourth winter season without backup heat, and with constant family occupancy. It consumes about 20% of the wood consumed by efficient wood stoves.
Our systems are designed for ease of operation, with occupants highly engaged in monitoring and adjusting for comfort. This eliminates many conventional high-tech controls and sensors. We take maximum advantage of the sun’s heat, the thermal mass of our concrete walls, the earth beneath our floors, and our super insulation. We have automatic insulated shades. These protect against radiant heat loss when closed at night in winter and open for solar gain on sunny winter days. Burning Russian Olive firewood keeps our fuel use in the planet’s carbon life cycle (unlike the megatons of carbon flowing by us on the Burlington Northern conduit, destined to rise into the sky above). Systems like ours can be easily adapted to commercial use.
Anyone is welcome to come review our systems. We learned from many others and little of what we do is our own innovation. We especially appreciate Paul Wheaton and associates at permies.com, based in Missoula. Our interest is in helping good ideas spread. These are natural approaches connected with God’s way of healing our planet. They are one way of balancing the ongoing massive human excavation and burning of hydrocarbons God placed deep under the bedrock of our planet. Does He really want humans to extract and burn in a few centuries most of what he placed there ages ago?
(Following are comments not included in the Big Horn County News edition of the column):
Our rocket mass heater technology incorporates very high temperatures in a small firebox with oxygen loading from the forge-like rocket effect. This effectively burns hydrocarbon particulates and harmful gases (carbon monoxide, H2S, etc) so the effluent from the stack is cooled water vapor and the other gases normally present in healthy air to breathe. See some of these links, or come stand on our roof (next winter, please) to breathe the air from one of our rocket mass heater vents.
http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-build-a-Rocket-Mass-Heater/
Biblically based environmental organizations, Christian:
http://ecostewardsprogram.wordpress.com/
https://www.plantwithpurpose.org/about-us/
Resources for sustainable technology in case planet Earth lasts a while yet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4usXIAoy9us
Just use a few search words and start reading, then visit rural communities nearer the northpole, along seacoasts, near mountains, glaciers, forests, anywhere on the planet, and ask residents.
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
graberdb!@gmail.com
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