Cornwall Alliance

The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation is a conservative Christian public policy group that promotes a free-market approach to care for the environment that is critical of much of the current environmental movement. In particular, the Cornwall Alliance rejects claims of detrimental global warming. Originally called the "Interfaith Stewardship Alliance" it was founded in 2005 in reaction to the efforts of evangelical leaders (such as Rick Warren) to fight global warming. The name Cornwall come from the 2000 Cornwall Declaration. The organization's views on the environment have been strongly influenced by the wise use movement of the 1980s and 1990s.

In 2000, a statement called the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship was put forward and has been signed by over 1500 clergy, theologians and others according to Cornwall Alliance. Signatories include prominent religious individuals from the Roman Catholic, Jewish and Evangelical worlds such as Charles Colson, James Dobson, Rabbi Jacob Neusner, R. C. Sproul, Richard John Neuhaus, and D. James Kennedy.

The declaration states that human beings should be regarded as "producers and stewards" rather than "consumers and polluters". It states:

The Cornwall Declaration further sets forth an articulate and Biblically-grounded set of beliefs and aspirations in which God can be glorified through a world in which "human beings care wisely and humbly for all creatures" and "widespread economic freedom…makes sound ecological stewardship available to ever greater numbers."

The declaration expresses concern over the "unfounded or undue concerns" of environmentalists such as "fears of destructive manmade global warming, overpopulation, and rampant species loss".

In July 2006, the Cornwall Alliance published an open letter in response to Christian leaders of the Evangelical Climate Initiative who had, in February of the same year, expressed concern over man-made global warming, urging legislators to consider a cap-and-trade system, promoting new technology and reducing carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Advisory board member Wayne Grudem was quoted in reply saying, "It does not seem likely to me that God would set up the world to work in such a way that human beings would eventually destroy the earth by doing such ordinary and morally good and necessary things as breathing, building a fire to cook or keep warm, burning fuel to travel, or using energy for a refrigerator to preserve food." The missive was accompanied by "Call to Truth, Prudence and the Protection of the Poor", a technical paper examining the theology, science and economics of climate change, doubting if anthropogenic global warming was taking place at all, and describing mandatory emission reduction as a "draconian measure" that would deprive people of cheap energy and hurt the poor. The letter was endorsed by over 170 individuals, including atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen, palaeontologist Robert M. Carter and former Energy & Environment journal editor Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen.

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