Hill Country Institute Live: Exploring Christ and Culture

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Dr. Daniel Cohan, an atmospheric scientist and environmental engineer, is an Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering at Rice University, as well as a Rice Faculty Scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy. Clean air, water, and energy are important to the life and health of Texans and people around the world. Larry and Dr. Cohan discuss the health impacts of pollution, how Texas should address the issues we face with increasing numbers of ozone alert days in our major metropolitan areas as well as how we should develop and efficiently utilize clean energy to stop further pollution of our air and to build reliability for our electric grid. Dr. Cohan is the author or co-author of more than fifty peer-reviewed publications, a book on unlocking a clean energy future, and over seventy articles in popular publications such as The Hill, Houston Chronicle, and The Conversation.

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Senator Perry represents District 28, which is the largest Senate District, geographically, in the State of Texas. We’ll be discussing water issues Texas is facing such as boil water notices, drought, flooding, and population growth. We'll also talk about  Senate Bill 28, which Senator Perry authored and has bipartisan support as it advances through the Texas Legislature. Due to the severity of the water crisis facing Texas, we encourage our listeners to learn about water policy in Texas and contact your elected officials to actively support a multi-billion allocation to state water resources during this session. The state has a hefty surplus this session, and it is important that lawmakers use a substantial portion of it to ensure safe and ample water supply throughout Texas.

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Schuyler Wight is a fourth-generation rancher who has raised cattle near Fort Stockton for decades. Now he's fighting a battle he did not create. Scattered across his sprawling 20,000-acre ranch are more than 100 abandoned oil and gas wells left behind by oil and gas companies. Water is now bubbling up from these abandoned oil wells and is polluting Wight's pasture and killing his cows. Abandoned “dry hole” oil wells are polluting Texas farms, ranches and groundwater. The state and the oil and gas industry won’t fix them. Wildcatters drilled in random locations for decades looking for oil. Many were unsuccessful, but the drilling opened up layers of porous rock, which led to water and pollutants such as benzene and xylene, both carcinogens, flowing to the surface. Rather than cap the holes, the wildcatters and their oil companies — now long gone — often abandoned the wells or transferred ownership of unproductive wells to the previous owners of Wight’s ranch to be used as water wells. The pollution from the wells is killing cattle and ruining pastures, as well as harming the groundwater of West Texas. Texas faces many water issues including groundwater pollution, aging infrastructure, drought, flooding, and population growth. Larry discusses these and many other topics related to Texas water with Schuyler Wight.

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Join us as we consider the wisdom and experiences of a Godly man of faith, science, and scholarship. Walter Bradley has been a longtime friend to the Hill Country Institute and is a Fellow of the Institute. He partnered with us to bring Christian leaders together with differing views on faith and science in our Vibrant Dance of Faith and Science Initiative. His statesmanship made it comfortable for people to come together as fellow believers who want to study science, theology, and philosophy, but who disagree on many nuances. Listen as he shares treasured nuggets of wisdom about life in Christ and what it means to live fully for Him.

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Seen in its proper light, the market order is as awe-inspiring as a sunset or a perfect eclipse. It might not be enough to convince a skeptic that God exists, but surely the believer should see in it God’s glory. At the very least, it should settle the question: Can a Christian support free enterprise? The answer is surely yes. —
Jay Wesley Richards, Money, Greed, and God: The Christian Case for Free Enterprise

In this interview, Larry and Jay consider whether free markets or socialism provide the optimum conditions for a moral society, human flourishing, and caring for the poor.

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Pastor Dukes is a friend and classmate of Larry's from junior high school and high school. In this interview, Larry and Pastor Dukes discuss their experiences growing up in a small town in Texas and going through integration together. Pastor Phillip M Dukes is African American and Larry is European American, so their lives as young people were quite different. Black people were not allowed to eat in the dining rooms of restaurants, were not allowed to swim in the public pools, were not allowed to use “White Only” restrooms and water fountains, and had segregated, “separate but equal” schools. Pastor Dukes is now Senior Pastor at the church Larry attended, which was an all-white church at that time. 

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Ed Brown is Director and CEO of Care of Creation, an organization which partners with the Lausanne Movement and the World Evangelical Alliance to encourage Christian stewardship of God’s good creation. Ed has recently completed a series of twelve consultations around the world with pastors and leaders in various geophysical areas to address how the Body of Christ might come to better understand the theology of creation care (God’s Word), the issues we face (God’s World), and how we should proceed (God’s Work).
 
Larry and Ed discuss the history of the Lausanne Movement (founded in 1974 by Billy Graham and John Stott), the Cape Town Commitment of 2010 and how the work of creation care is considered a part of the gospel message. how a meeting of leaders from many countries in Jamaica in 2012 led to the series of consultations over the last ten years in locations around the world. Well also talk about how we can be involved in creation care personally, as the Body of Christ, and in our societies.

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Living a Holy Life is an aspect of our calling as Christians. Have you ever considered how we treat our garbage as a part of being Holy? We’re called to take care of God’s good creation, but trash and waste encroach on the beauty of the earth and its capacity to support life. Caleb Haynes is the author of Garbage Theology: The Unseen World of Waste and What It Means to Every Person, Every Place, and Every Thing.  In this podcast, he shares his insights and experiences both theologically and as a trash hauler. We talk about how to consider goods from the time of purchase to recycle, repurpose, and reuse. How our culture of disposability is filling millions of acres of landfills, putting plastic in our water, in our land, and in us, as well as contributing to a warming planet. Is the idol of consumerism one we worship? Can we find ways to live simpler lives and take better care of God’s good creation?