Inequality or absolute poverty

I have mixed feelings about the inequality argument. I think the issues are a slightly more complex than often argued, but in general I do not find it a problem. This puts me at odds with many of my fellow Christians, or at least the more vocal ones. Absolute wealth has its temptations, but I don't see inequality per se as a specific problem. We have inequality in many other areas of life: sporting, music, literary, and numeracy capabilities. Not many people argue against this natural inequality and most would just seek to optimise each individual's ability. Money has some differences to this but also some similarities.

Now I don't necessarily have sympathies with the extremely wealthy. I am not sympathetic to the legal protections for bankers or government bailouts. I think money can be made immorally. However I don't object to people having money just because they have a lot of it.

Nevertheless, I am concerned about the poor; especially the oppressed poor. Perhaps I could be more concerned in my actions, but in general I support just laws which I think protect the poor from oppression and, in the long term, rise them out of poverty.

But inequality is not the issue.

The Guardian quotes an Oxfam report.

The share of the world’s wealth owned by the best-off 1% has increased from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014, while the least well-off 80% currently own just 5.5%.

But what does this mean and why is it so?

Here is the comparison of rich and poor.

Now there is some difficulty using this timeframe. It is during the time of the global financial crisis which may skew results based on fluctuations of various currencies. And it is probably too short, a longer timeframe would be preferable. Even so, the benefit of this graph is that it shows absolute values.

According to this data: in 2000 the poorest 50% had $400 billion, in 2002 $700 billion, in 2005 $1300 billion and by 2014 $1800 billion. So if we completely ignore the wealthy we note that the wealth of the poor has grown by billions in the last decade. Even taking into account the rising population, the poorest 50% are significantly increasing their wealth. This is a good outcome. Now this seems more preferable to me than the richest 80 people increasing their wealth, but that they did so does not bother me. And it is not obvious based on this graph (alone) that the increased wealth of the rich was detrimental to the poor. Now perhaps it was detrimental, especially when politicians offered to bale out massive companies at the cost to middle class taxpayers, though that probably hits the richest 50% in developed countries. But what if wealth grows like that?

What if, as productivity increases through the use of capital, the labourers and the owners of the capital both increase their wealth? If you had the opportunity to increase the income of the poor from $2 a day to $5 a day by entrepreneurs who also doubled their income from $10 million a year would you be happy? Or would you rather remove income from the wealthy and give the poor an extra $1 a day knowing that the following year their income would be back down to $2 a day?

Now if men make money from fraud or theft then justice demands that this is taken from them and given to their victims. And those with money should help the poor: both direct giving when necessary, or providing work, opportunity, or capital. But the cry of "inequality" without consideration as to the why can just reflect a politics of envy.

The poverty curve

In Bill Gates' annual newsletter, 2014 edition he addresses 3 myths about global poverty.

1. Poor countries are doomed to stay poor
2. Foreign aid is a big waste
3. Saving lives leads to overpopulation

All 3 sections are interesting; I have mixed thoughts about number 3, though noticed after I had read it that is was authored by Melinda Gates.

In the first section Gates has a graph on the change in individual wealth of the world over the last 50 years. Note that the x-axis is logarithmic.

This comes about through productivity and trade. Wealth is created. Some of the big drivers of productivity include rule of law, private property, and low tax which suggests that had we seen optimum conditions in the last few decades we may have seen even better improvements. Still, this is encouraging. Gates mentions several other drivers such as health and education. Not mentioned (as a cause of productivity) is energy which allows significantly more output per person. The climate change paragraph can be ignored, developing nations need cheap and reliable energy, not low carbon energy.

Massive aquifers discovered in Kenya

Finding fresh water is always good news. Kenya has discovered aquifers containing several trillion litres of water. They used satelite and seismic technology to identify previous unknown water sources.

Following an extensive groundwater mapping project that incorporated satellite observations, seismic information and remote sensing, five vast aquifers have been identified hiding beneath the country's arid northern region. Preliminary estimates put the aquifers' contents at roughly 250-trillion liters of water,

They were identified in a drought area. The largest aquifer is refilled at a rate of 3.4 trillion litres per year.

Turkana hosts a minimum reserve of 250 billion cubic meters of water, which is recharged mainly by the rainfalls of the Kenyan and Ugandan highlands at a rate of 3.4 billion cubic meters per year. This new wealth of water could boost Kenya's share of available water by 17% and alone represents nearly double the amount of water that Kenyans consume today. This groundwater raises the prospect for improving the livelihoods of the Turkana people, most of whom live in poverty and have limited access to basic services and clean water.

Turkana is one of the driest regions in Kenya.

Kenya is planning further exploration.

The Government of Kenya also announced the launch of a national groundwater mapping programme that would be implemented with UNESCO, which would assist county governments in identifying and assessing their groundwater resources.

Of the manifold ways to assist the poverty stricken internationally, providing clean water must be the most useful and cost effective.

Artificial land scarcity

The median multiple house price is the median house price divided by median annual (household) income. This is a reasonable approach to assessing house prices. Problems with it are that it ignores different tax rates, household income may range from 1 to 2 persons, and people's expectations of what they are prepared to live in.

Countries and cites can be rated for median multiple house prices to assess housing affordability, an important contributor to standard of living as it is usually a family's largest asset expense.

Rating	Median Multiple
Affordable	0–3.0
Moderately Unaffordable	3.1–4.0
Seriously Unaffordable	4.1–5.0
Severely Unaffordable	5.1+

A recent international survey states that historically house price

has been remarkably similar in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, with median house prices having generally been from 2.0 to 3.0 times median household incomes (historical data has not been identified for Hong Kong), with 3.0 being the outer bound of affordability.

Yet this is now much higher especially outside North America. Of the 8 large cities surveyed in New Zealand, 3 had a multiple median house price of 4.1–5.0 and 5 were 5.1+.

And what is one of the major contributors to this? Land prices. Specifically the refusal to designate more urban zoning.

Overwhelming economic evidence indicates that urban containment policies, especially urban growth boundaries raise the price of housing relative to income. This inevitably leads to a reduced standard of living and increases poverty rates, because the unnecessarily higher costs of housing leave households with less discretionary income to spend on other goods and services. The higher costs ripple into rental markets, tightening the budgets of lower income households, who already suffer from lower discretionary incomes.

The principal problem is the failure to maintain a "competitive land supply." Brookings Institution economist Anthony Downs describes the process, noting that more urban growth boundaries can convey monopolistic pricing power on sellers of land if sufficient supply is not available, which, all things being equal, is likely to raise the price of land and housing that is built on it.

Urban containment policy has been associated with greater price volatility and greater speculation. Investors and speculators are drawn to metropolitan areas where "quick" money is to be made, because of the inflexibility of the supply market. Econometric research also identifies an association between slower economic growth and urban containment regulation.

In the Introduction, Bill English states as much,

Land has been made artificially scarce by regulation that locks up land for development. This regulation has made land supply unresponsive to demand. When demand shocks occur, as they did in the mid-2000s in New Zealand and around the world, much of that shock translates to higher prices rather than more houses. It simply takes too long to make new land available for development.

This is something I have been saying for years. If houses sell for approximately the cost they are to build then when demand goes up more houses get built. There seems no good reason to me why housing should have significant capital gain over inflation. Most assets decrease in value. New Zealand does not lack land, its population is less than 5 million, its land area is 268,021 km² (larger than the United Kingdom). It is amongst the least densely populated countries in the world and most of the land suitable for human habitation. Yet less than 2% of the land is designated urban/residential.

High house prices impact the poor the most. They are less likely to buy, more likely to rent. Rents are higher when housing is higher. And a higher percentage of their income goes toward house cost. New Zealand needs to drastically expand residential zones and open up land for housing

---

Question
If you add together the floor area of all the houses in New Zealand, the total area would be what compared to Lake Taupo?

A. About a quarter of Lake Taupo.
B. About half.
C. About the same.
D. Twice the size of Lake Taupo.
E. Ten times the size of Lake Taupo.

A prayer and a pledge for real change

Soon after the election of Obama in the United States, Sojourners Chief Executive Officer Jim Wallis instigated a campaign to send letters to the White House requesting action on several issues. This does not apply to me as I am not a US citizen or resident. But the letter seems designed to have broad appeal to Christians. I take issue with what the letter requests and I have been meaning to offers some thoughts on this. The problem I see is that the appeal is not as broad as some may think, and when requests are too broad, the solutions proposed by various people may be vastly different.

Sojourners started in 1971. Their mission is to

articulate the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and building a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world.

The letter covers 4 areas: poverty, war, respect for life, and climate change.

Here are my brief responses to the presentation of these issues.

Overcome poverty, both here in our rich nation and globally. Your efforts to resolve the economic crisis must include those at the bottom, the poorest among us. You pledged during the campaign to mobilize the nation to cut domestic poverty in half in ten years and to implement the Millennium Development Goals to cut extreme global poverty in half.

He has a point. If money is going to be distributed it is probably better to give to those who have true struggles rather than rich men who have made poor decisions. Though perhaps consideration should be given to giving out no money at all. Letting people live with the consequences of their decisions (to an extent) is one of the better ways to prevent further poor decisions whether one is rich or poor.

The bigger issue is how we define poverty. US "poverty" and global "poverty" are hardly synonymous. I tend toward an absolute definition: no food, no clothing, no shelter; whereas political definitions are generally defined relatively which favour socialist theories. The gini index and the poverty line (the percentage of households whose income is below x% (eg. 50%) of the median income) are examples; though these are better called inequality indices, not poverty indices.

Thus a call to end poverty may result in policy determined to decrease income inequality which many people claim is counter-productive because it decreases total wealth of a country.

Find better ways than war to resolve the inevitable conflicts in the world. It is time to end the war in Iraq and emphasize diplomacy over military action in resolving problems in Iran and Afghanistan. We need better and smarter foreign policy that is more consistent with our best national values.

One does not want his leaders to be warmongers. And perhaps inadequate attempts have been made at diplomacy. But the idea that everything can be solved diplomatically is false. And avoiding war at all costs can mean inadequate opposition of despots and lead to abysmal living conditions. I make no claims in this post concerning what best be done about Afghanistan or Iraq currently, nor whether these invasions were wise decisions at the time. But the situation now exists and must be dealt with appropriately. Leaving may well be smart foreign policy. But this call seems to me to imply that war is always wrong and diplomacy always works. I am less than certain.

Promote a consistent ethic of life that addresses all threats to life and dignity. We must end genocide in Darfur, the use of torture, and the death penalty. I urge you to pursue common ground policies which can dramatically reduce abortions in America, and help bring us together on this divisive issue.

There are a multitude of issues with this request.

There is demand to leave Afghanistan and Iraq above, yet here is a demand to involve the US in Sudan. This does not necessarily mean the US places troops in Sudan, but what does the letter imply should be done if diplomacy fails. And if the US are to support United Nations troops in Sudan then why can the US not be involved sans UN. And if there is a moral argument for US forces with or without the UN in Sudan, surely there is possibly a moral argument for Afghanistan or Iraq.

Torture should be ended, though as much for perpetrators as victims. Evil men may well be deserving of pain. Shame and whipping may well be appropriate punishments; though this may possibly be defined as torture by opponents. But even if the recipient is indeed evil, the use of torture destroys the character of those performing it.

The use of "consistent" implies that all life should be preserved. This is not self apparent and may well be inconsistent. Many anti-abortionists also support the death penalty and a biblical argument can be made for capital punishment. And the call to reduce the death of innocents in the same paragraph as ending the death of the guilty seems morally confused. If a Christian is opposed to the death penalty and abortion, and he had the choice of ending one and minimising the other, it surely would be abortion that was ended.

Reverse the effects of climate change on God’s creation. We must learn a new way of living in America to end our dangerous dependence on Middle East oil. We need a spiritual commitment to stewardship and national policies that promote safe, clean, and renewable energy. You spoke of job creation and economic renewal with a new “green economy.”

I have previously indicated that I deny anthropomorphic global warming. I think minimising CO₂ is both pointless in terms of the climate, and harmful in terms of the poor. It may be prudent to end dependency on Middle East oil, though a switch to Alaskan and offshore oil is perfectly acceptable. Private ownership of land will lead to better stewardship of the environment. While the government can introduce policy to maximise job creation and economic renewal, there are huge differences of opinion about what these policies are.

In conclusion I think there are several issues in this letter that are incorrect from a Christian perspective. Where there are issues of agreement (poverty bad, abortion bad, job creation good) the approach of various Christians to these ends differ dramatically. And a letter to a Democratic president, if effectual, is likely to lead to a socialist solution. From my point of view, while government action potentially could lead to improvements in such issues, the policies that will get enacted are likely to be counter-productive.

Primer on global warming

Interesting article on global warming by Geoffrey Duffy, professor at Auckland University. He covers basic climatic factors, atmospheric composition, contributions of various gases to the greenhouse effect, solar effects, and oceanic oscillations. He also covers computer modelling of the climate.

Unfortunately a lot of estimates and predictions are strongly based on theoretical computer models. Many now even trust models and their ‘theoretical results’ more than actual measurements and facts from reality. Computer analysis requires that the earth be ‘cut’ into small, separate areas (actually volumes), each being analysed for heat input/outputs and other gas/vapour fluxes. Even so the computational analysis domain size (basic computer grid elements) is huge, 150km x 150km by 1km high, with the current computer power. It is so large that the effects of even the very large clouds are not individually included; and that includes clouds in our visual horizon. The spatial resolution is therefore very poor. Supercomputers cannot give us the accuracy we need. Modellers therefore use parameters: ‘one factor fits’ all, for each of the domains (a kind of a ‘fudge factor’). This is sad, as water as vapour in clouds is 30 to 60 times more significant than other minute amounts of other greenhouse gases. Clearly climate simulations and thus predictions can be in serious error unless the actual cloud effects are well defined in the models. It is not only the number and spacing of the clouds in that 150 square kilometre area, but also cloud height effects, and cloud structure. These factors are not accounted for at all.

Inadequate modelling parameters; and he doesn't even mention recent solutions to atmospheric equations which disprove runaway positive feedback.

I am in agreement with much of the article in general with some caveats.

1. I disagree with his comment about greenhouses creating heat. While strictly true, it is slightly misleading in the article. While the effect does dampen fluctuations, it also contributes to global temperature and alterations in atmospheric composition may mean a different global temperature.
2. I do not have much time for ice-core data which he also mentions.
3. The comment about water contributing to 95% of the greenhouse effect, is probably correct, but the interaction between water and CO₂ and their relative contributions is likely a little more complex and difficult to elucidate. However if clouds are included with water (ie. water does not just mean water vapour) then the 95% may turn out to be an underestimate.

He also discusses some of the consequences of the policies enacted.

The panic to do something about climate change has led to some unrealistic and unsustainable actions. For example, Bio-fuels from grain will greatly increase food prices and roughly 30 million people are expected to be severely deprived. The USA will use up to 30% of the annual corn crop for alcohol production for vehicles alone.

The problem with acting on errant beliefs is that there are always consequences, specifically negative ones. Worshipping the earth comes at the cost of hating the poor.

Increased demand for grain may lead to increased supply over time which may ameliorate this. And fortunately some sense seems to be coming to European legislators whose enthusiasm for biofuels is dampening. The same cannot be said for New Zealand which passed new laws mandating the inclusion of biofuels.

Health outcomes and inequality

A difficulty I have with socialist interpretation is their ideology is such that good outcomes are made to appear bad if they arise within capitalism. While they may claim their focus is different (equality), I have a hard time believing that socialists would abandon their political philosophy if history showed socialism was more wealth generating than the alternatives. Rather, the better living conditions would be evidenced that socialism is preferable to other systems.

If capitalism cannot be said to decrease wealth, attributing it blame for causing poverty can still be attempted.

An article evaluating the health system in Chile was published in April. It blames government policies for creating inequality in health care, and states that this causes

decreased solidarity between rich and poor.

While I disagree with the article, I will not do full justice to its subtleties here and it is best read to appreciate its point of view. Nevertheless, it apportions blame where there likely is little. It also seems to imply that had Chile not enacted its policies then the (perceived) negatives would have been avoided without having any significant effect on the positive outcomes of reform; a dubious claim.

Chileans have compulsory income contribution to health though they can choose public or private systems. A public system meant that all citizens had access to health care including the poor. The article gives examples of funds transferred from private to public which it views as inappropriate. This may be valid but without more detail I will reserve judgment. Other complaints include:

...access to care is somewhat equitable, but quality of care is not.

[Private] insurance policies for women of childbearing age may cost four times more than men's policies.

...adjusted mortality for the poorest decile is 6.0 out of 1,000, versus 4.8 for the richest.

[Private health care spends] ten times as much on administration per member and about two times as much on health care per member than [the public], even though [private] members are in better health and need less care.

But is this not to be expected?

In fact it is partially surprising that access to care is equitable. It is good that it is, but it is possible that things could be otherwise.

It is not surprising that quality is higher for a private system. It often times has more funds for this. All systems always have limits based on funding; if a private system has more funds it can do more tests, it can do more operations.

Policies for childbearing women will be more expensive. Men of that age have minimal health costs and therefore minimum premiums. Women have higher health costs due to childbirth. A health policy that excluded childbirth and related costs would be cheaper and possibly similar to men's. Do not insurance companies charge higher premiums to younger drivers as they have a higher risk? Anyway, if most women are married then the household costs for health care may be similar across families.

Mortality may be related to income even in countries which have predominantly public health, this may not be related at all to the private/ public differences; I will come back to this.

The paper complains about the money spent on administration and health care, yet notes this about the public system:

Access to specialists appeared deficient in the public service: there were waiting lists of up to four years in some specialties, such as ophthalmology.

Yet elsewhere claims the private system is inefficient. It may just be that prompt access requires a little more cash which the private system has. If the private system had waiting lists of 4 years despite more money then it is inefficient, but it doesn't.

And so enamoured with the state that anything that "sounds" like a private monopoly is bad.

Some [private] companies are in an oligopoly position: the main three firms share close to 80% of the market.

But government monopolies are good and could never be the source of inefficiency.

A logical recommendation for a health system counter-reform in Chile would be to move from a multi-insurer scheme to a single public insurer scheme, as in Costa Rica.

Despite all these claims in the discussion the authors are forced to admit,

Chile's health indicators are good, compared with countries with a similar gross national product, such as Colombia and Argentina. These results are due in part to Chile's high economic growth rate and a spectacular reduction in poverty. Further significant factors are the high proportion of the population with access to drinking water and sanitation, and the high adult literacy rate and education level.

They claim this is as the result of public policy:

But relatively equitable access to health care, mainly through public health insurance and public health services, which cover 80% of the population, played a major role in this achievement, as did maternity and child health protection programmes implemented through the public health network.

Presumably the achievement they are talking about is health indicators; not economic growth, reduction in poverty, water, sanitation, literacy. But of what evidence? Health outcomes on a population basis are better correlated to these latter issues than to individual procedures on sick individuals. As important as hospitals are it is unlikely they make nearly the same impact on life expectancy as more basic provisions and decrease in poverty.

And this is where the issue lies. If economic policy is to minimise government expenditure because that leads to economic growth, then this economic growth may be what has made the difference. Who cares how much people spend on private health care? It is a private expenditure. It is less money for the government to outlay which leaves more money in the hands of the producers. If the producers then create wealth, what does it matter that some of it is spent on health? Even if only 25% of the population contribute to the private system, that is still a large number of people the government no longer needs to pay for.

The bigger issues are:

1. Are the poor worse off than before?
2. Is the number of poor persons less than previously?

If the poor are no worse off (or even better off) and the middle class has grown as the lower class rises out of poverty then what is not to like? These are good outcomes.

To complain there is more inequality because not everyone has yet escaped poverty and some are excessively rich is a politic of envy. Yes the rich man has an individual responsibility to care for his poor neighbour, but income inequality is not a bad in and of itself. Oppressing the poor to become rich causes inequality but it is the injustice of oppression that is wrong.

It seems to me that socialists want equality of outcome so much that it is better that all live in abject squalor than most have a modest income, if that modest income means an associated variable income.

A Christian approach to economics

This is something I have become increasingly interested in. I do not have an extensive economic background but have read many articles over recent years. I have become increasingly capitalistic in my approach, though there are several issues that I have yet to resolve biblically.

I think a good economic policy can be formulated from the Bible but it needs to start from fundamental principles rather than taking a more pragmatic approach and learning from economies around the world. Not that there is anything wrong from learning from the events we see, the 20th century is pretty damning on communism as an economic solution (and any other solution it proposes), we do well to note it. The problem is that the preferred outcome of economic policies may not coincide with that of God. A reasonable goal of economics is maximising material prosperity for all citizens (though not necessarily equality of outcome) and maximising productivity while minimising labour. However God is more concerned with our response to Christ. And righteousness and justice are more important principles than profit. Of course an industry needs to make some profit (or break even) over time else it will fail; and people debate over the meaning of "justice" as it applies to economics.

I have not found a discussion of biblical economics that reviews all the relevant passages of Scripture and attempts a coherent and Christ honouring view. It may exist, I just don't know of any. I recently found this paper by an Australian Andrew Kulikovsky whom I am more familiar with as an author of creationist articles. It is titled "A Biblical View of Economics and
Industrial Relations" and it is very much worth a read (I have a slightly different take on some ideas).

Clearly some people are poor because they are oppressed by others (Isa 10:1-2, Zech 7:10), but the Evangelical Alliance and other Christian socialists tend to view poverty as almost entirely a result of oppression, either directly (in the case of workers being oppressed by their employers), or indirectly (in the case of systemic denial of equality). They rarely acknowledge that many people—especially those who live in wealthy western societies—have brought poverty upon themselves through laziness, foolishness, impulsiveness and the like.

This is insightful in that it shows that so called "poverty" in the West is inappropriately labelled and cannot be equated to poverty of third world countries, not just in terms of wealth comparisons but in the causative factors of the lack of wealth. Now self-induced poverty may be due to bad behaviours that have been learned, or due to lack of appropriate behaviour because it has not been taught, but even so, the solution is different. It is the deficit behaviour that needs to be remedied rather than the deficit income.

Another complaint against capitalism is that it leads to inequalities in wealth outcomes. Though there is a range of incomes in a capitalist society it is still likely that wealth is more evenly distributed compared to other systems. For example, although Bill Gates is exceedingly wealthy, his income as a percentage of global wealth (or even US wealth) is much lower than in times past: compare Rockefellar. Kulikovsky gives further insightful analysis to this complaint,

Yet a common objection to capitalism among socialists is that 10% of the population owns 90% percent [sic] of the wealth. But even if this claim is accurate, there would in fact be nothing wrong with such a situation provided that the 10% acquired their wealth through legal, just and fair means. In essence, the situation is indicative of the fact that some people have contributed more to production than others, because they introduced major improvements and innovations. Therefore, the 90% of the wealth that is not only owned but also created and earned by that 10% (or by their parents or grandparents), ends up serving the rest of the population that did not contribute as much to production. Furthermore, if the rest of the population (or the government) attempt to force a transfer of wealth from that 10% to the most disadvantaged—as the Evangelical Alliance proposes—they will ultimately destroy the creation of the wealth that serves the least disadvantaged and destroy any hope they have of escaping their disadvantaged state. This is because the Christian socialists in the Evangelical Alliance have no concept of the production of wealth and how it is accumulated, but instead begin with the myth of the ‘distribution fairy’: that there is a finite amount of wealth in the world and that it is meant to be evenly distributed among everyone. These views come not from the Bible but from Karl Marx, and would naturally lead to the implementation of coercive policies that legally sanction theft and lead to a world that is physically empty of the production and accumulation of wealth. Instead of evenly distributing wealth, such policies end up evenly distributing poverty! As Reisman put it, the “thieves” end up as “starving wretches.” The truth of the above principles in born out in the actual history of all those societies that have adopted communism and other forms of socialism, and Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of Africa, is a current example of the poverty and economic ruin that comes from such policies.

Viewing wealth and produce as fixed implies that if anyone gains then someone must lose. But if wealth can be created then offense at the wealthy who created their own wealth is just envy. If every man grows 10 bushels of wheat a year and one man devises a method to grow 100 without preventing others from growing theirs, where is the injustice in that? If someone becomes wealthy at the expense of the work of the poor and refuses to pay them what he agreed in order to become rich, that is an offense. If a man creates work for others and in the process creates significant wealth for them as he creates wealth for himself, that is a good thing, even if he becomes richer than all his workers.

All in all an interesting read.

Global warming sceptics get it

Blair D at Avoca Valley Life alerted me to an article in the Christian Post: Christians Launch Campaign against Global Warming Hype.

While it may seem like everyone believes in global warming and the impending catastrophe it will bring, a group of conservative Christians countered that message Thursday by launching a national campaign to gather one million signatures for a statement that says Christians must not believe in all the hype about global warming.

They helpfully note a significant reason to be opposed to global warming political action (other than the fundamental reason: the theory is false):

Opponents of the popular global warming view say that until all scientists can agree that global warming is as severe as some claim and that it is mainly human-induced, they are against any policies that would raise energy costs because they would put the lives of millions in jeopardy based on uncertain or debatable scientific evidence.

The campaign is an American national endeavour called We Get It. They seek to get a million signatures to their declaration. While not open to myself due to location reasons, it is reasonable and there is nothing specifically I would oppose.

The We Get It! Declaration:

God Said It
God created everything. He made us in His own image, and commanded us to be fruitful and multiply and watch over His creation. Although separated from God by our sin, we are lovingly restored through Jesus Christ, and take responsibility for being good stewards.

We Get It
Our stewardship of creation must be based on Biblical principles and factual evidence. We face important environmental challenges, but must be cautious of claims that our planet is in peril from speculative dangers like man-made global warming.

They Need It
With billions suffering in poverty, environmental policies must not further oppress the world’s poor by denying them basic needs. Instead, we must help people fulfill their God-given potential as producers and stewards.

Let’s Do It
We will follow our Lord Jesus Christ and honor God as we use and share the principles of His Word to care for the poor and tend His creation.

While one may not necessarily subscribe to all their suggestions for individual action, the declaration is probably acceptable to most who are Christian and sceptical of the climate change polemic. So if any Christian citizens of the US read here from time to time you may wish to pay a visit, or even consider signing.

(Only do so of your own conviction, I would not sign something popular if I was dubious of it, and even some things I moderately approve of I am cautious to add my name to; but if you do so, could you note it in the comments, even anonymously?)