Astronauts typically express awe and even love for the beautiful Earth below while they’re in orbit. I wonder how they feel when seeing such raging, massive blazes as the firestorm viciously consuming a large swath of Los Angeles, and knowing that the air is being choked with health-damaging particulates? Or worse, the huge fires frequently ravaging the Amazon rainforest?
As Brazil’s (previous) president, Jair Bolsonaro had recklessly allowed the rainforest to be razed by both meat farmers and wildfires. Incredibly, in the midst of yet another unprecedented wildfire during the summer of 2019, the evangelical-Christian president declared that his presidency — and, I presume, all of the formidable environmental damage he inflicts while in power — is somehow divine: “It is difficult to be president of Brazil because it is a president that has less authority. I am fulfilling a mission from God.”
(Strangely enough though not surprising, early on Nov.6 Donald Trump stated: “Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”)
There also is a belief held by much of conservative ‘Christianity’ that to defend the natural environment from the planet’s greatest polluters, notably the fossil fuel industry, is to go against God’s will and is therefore inherently evil. Many even credit the bone-dry-vegetation areas uncontrollably burning in California seemingly every year to some divine wrath upon that state’s collective liberal sinfulness.
Perhaps there’s a serious hazard in such theologically inclined people getting into high office?
Frank Sterle Jr.
White Rock, B.C.
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