I walked up Santaquin Canyon today and saw the stream lower than I've ever seen it this time of year. We've been told there's nothing we can do. I don't believe that's true.
I walked up Santaquin Canyon this spring, during what should be the peak of runoff season. This is the time of year when snowmelt from the mountains fills the stream to its highest point — when the water surges and the canyon sounds alive with it.
It wasn't surging. It was barely there.
I've lived in this part of Utah for a long time, and I have never seen the stream this low during spring runoff. The snowpack that should have built through the winter simply didn't come. We had the least snow I can remember in my lifetime. The water that farmers need, that reservoirs need, that the land itself needs — it isn't there.
This isn't a chart in a policy paper. It's not a projection for 2050. It's water that is missing now, from a place I can walk to and see with my own eyes.
And standing there, looking at that thin trickle of water where there should be a rushing stream, I found myself thinking about two very different stories that our world tells about why this is happening — and what can be done about it.
Because those two stories lead to completely different places. One of them tells me I'm helpless. The other tells me I never was.
Nobody disputes that the climate is changing. The water is low. The snow didn't come. Something is different. The question that matters — the one that determines everything about what we do next — is why.
And on that question, our world has two fundamentally different answers on the table.
The planet is warming because of human activity — industry, agriculture, consumption, and even reproduction. The more of us there are, and the more we consume, the worse it gets. The solution requires the entire globe to coordinate a reduction in emissions, consumption, and potentially population.
The land suffers when the people on it break their covenant with the God who governs it. Rain and fertility are covenant blessings. Drought and famine are covenant consequences. The solution is repentance, humility, and renewed faithfulness — and it can begin right here, right now.
Both of these deserve to be taken seriously. What follows lays out what each one actually claims, where the evidence leads, and what each one says to the person standing next to that dry stream wondering if there's anything they can do.
The modern explanation centers on a single idea: human activity — especially burning fossil fuels — is changing the atmosphere in ways that destabilize weather patterns worldwide. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that most warming over the past half-century is attributable to human activities, and that population growth is an immediate driver of emissions.
That's the basic claim. But I want to follow the logic further, because most people don't.
Within this framework, researchers have calculated that having one fewer child reduces an individual's annual carbon output by roughly 58.6 metric tons. That dwarfs going car-free (2.4 tons) or giving up air travel (1.6 tons). It is, according to this math, the single most impactful environmental choice a person can make.
Let that sink in for a moment.
The most effective thing you can do for the planet, according to this framework, is to not have a child.
A growing number of people — researchers, activists, and ordinary couples — have reached exactly this conclusion. Environmental antinatalism is not a fringe position anymore. Surveys show that roughly 60% of young adults report being "very" or "extremely concerned" about the carbon footprint of having children. Organizations like the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement argue that the human impact on the planet is wholly negative, and that the responsible choice is to stop reproducing.
Most people who hold this view probably don't realize what they're actually saying. But it deserves to be named plainly.
This is an anti-creation claim.
It says that human beings, by their very existence and increase upon the earth, are the primary threat to the earth's wellbeing. Each additional person is a net negative — a carbon emitter, a resource drain, a contributor to planetary harm.
Compare that with the first thing God ever said to humanity:
In scripture, human multiplication is the first blessing. The earth was made for human habitation — not threatened by it. And in modern revelation, the Lord addressed the scarcity premise directly:
Enough and to spare. The earth is not a lifeboat running out of room. It was prepared by a God who knew how many of His children would inhabit it.
The modern framework inverts this completely. Where God said "multiply," the carbon calculus says "reduce." Where God called creation good and placed humanity at its head, the emissions model treats every human life as a deficit in the planetary ledger.
Even if I accepted every claim the modern framework makes about emissions — even if I granted every data point — the practical message it delivers to anyone standing next to that dry stream in Santaquin Canyon is this:
You are helpless.
Your community can't fix this. Your state can't fix this. Your nation alone can't fix this. The problem is global. The solution is global. And until the entire world coordinates its response — a process that will take decades at best — the water won't come back.
That's the message. Wait. Hope the world changes. In the meantime, the stream runs dry.
The modern climate framework, for all its urgency, functionally strips individuals and communities of any meaningful agency. You are a passive inhabitant of a system too large for you to affect. The only remedy is global coordination that may never come.
Now consider the other story. And to be clear — this isn't a metaphor or a devotional gloss. The scriptural text is explicit and specific about why rain comes and why it stops.
Throughout the Old Testament, the Book of Mormon, and the New Testament, a consistent pattern emerges: the condition of the land is tied directly to the condition of the people's relationship with God.
Rain is not an accident of atmospheric chemistry. It is a covenant blessing.
Drought is not an impersonal system failure. It is a covenant consequence.
The mechanism is direct. Obey the covenant — the rain comes. Break the covenant — heaven shuts. The land is a governed system, governed by the God who made it, responsive to the behavior of the people He placed upon it.
In the Pearl of Great Price, the prophet Enoch is given a vision in which the earth itself speaks — and what she cries out about is not carbon emissions or human population. It is wickedness:
The earth groans. But she groans under the weight of sin — not under the weight of population. Her complaint is moral, not atmospheric. And her plea is for sanctification, not depopulation.
The clearest demonstration of this pattern in the Book of Mormon is in Helaman 11. The prophet Nephi, watching his people descend into violence and secret combinations, makes an extraordinary request:
God grants it. The rain stops. Famine spreads. The violence ceases — not because of enforcement or policy, but because the people are brought low enough to remember their dependence on God.
When they repent, Nephi prays again. The rain returns. The famine ends. The land bears fruit.
That's worth saying again slowly, because it matters: a single prophet's prayer, grounded in the people's genuine repentance, changed the climate of an entire land.
The drought was not caused by emissions. The rain did not return because of policy. The people were not helpless. They never had been. The remedy was available to them the entire time — they simply had to meet the conditions God had set.
Laying these two stories next to each other, what stands out isn't just that they disagree. It's that they disagree about everything — not in degree, but in kind. They describe different universes.
| Modern Framework | Scriptural Framework | |
|---|---|---|
| Root Cause | Carbon emissions, consumption, population | Covenant-breaking, wickedness, pride |
| The Problem | That humans exist and consume | That humans have turned from God |
| Who Controls Rain? | Impersonal atmospheric systems | God, as a covenant condition |
| The Solution | Global emissions reduction over decades | Repentance, humility, prayer |
| Scale Required | All nations, coordinated | Local and immediate — "if my people" |
| Your Agency | Negligible — a drop in the global ocean | Profound — one faithful prayer can change everything |
| View of Children | Each child is a 58.6‑ton carbon cost | "Be fruitful, and multiply" |
| When Can Relief Come? | Decades to centuries | As soon as the repentance is real |
This is the part that matters most. Because the question that keeps coming up, standing beside that low stream, isn't really about climate models or emissions data. It's about whether we have to just accept what's happening — or whether there's something we can actually do.
The modern framework says: not really. Your personal changes are statistically invisible. Even your nation's efforts are insufficient without global compliance. Wait. Hope. Reduce your footprint by fractions of a percent and trust that eventually the system will respond.
Scripture says the opposite.
You are not helpless. You have never been helpless. The God who governs rain has not gone silent. He has not surrendered control of the weather to impersonal forces. He has told you — explicitly, repeatedly, across thousands of years — exactly what He requires.
And it is something you can do. Today. Without a U.N. resolution. Without a global emissions treaty. Without waiting for China or India or anyone else.
The prophet Elijah declared that no rain would fall in Israel except by the word of the Lord. For three and a half years, the heavens were shut. Then Elijah prayed, and the rain came.
James, in the New Testament, looked back at that story and said something remarkable:
James's whole point is that Elijah was a regular person. Subject to the same weaknesses, the same doubts, the same limitations we have. And his prayer changed the weather.
James isn't saying this as a history lesson. He's saying: this power is still available. The mechanism hasn't changed.
When Solomon dedicated the temple, he specifically anticipated a time when heaven would be shut and rain would not come. He prayed about exactly that situation — and God answered:
Read that carefully. God doesn't say "if the international community coordinates a multi-decade emissions reduction strategy." He says "if my people."
The covenant is specific. The remedy is specific. And it is available to those who will take it up.
We do not have to wait for the world to change before our land can heal. We are not passive victims of forces beyond our control. The God who made the earth and governs its seasons has told us what He requires — and it starts with us, not with a global treaty.
It's worth being careful here, because it's easy to build an argument on a single verse pulled out of context. So consider just how deeply this pattern runs. It's not one passage. It's one of the most thoroughly attested patterns in the entire scriptural canon.
Moses lays out the terms: obey, and the Lord gives rain in its season. Turn aside, and He shuts heaven. The land's fertility is a covenant condition — not an accident.
"Thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron." The sky becomes impenetrable. The land becomes barren. This isn't metaphor — it's the promised result of departure.
"I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass: and your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase." Consistent language across multiple texts — this is structural covenant theology.
Three and a half years without rain. The contest on Mount Carmel settles who governs the weather — not Baal, not natural forces, but the Lord God of Israel. The rain returns when the people acknowledge Him.
God's direct answer: the remedy for drought is not technology. It's humility, prayer, and turning from wickedness. He will hear. He will heal.
This one is remarkable. God says He caused it to rain on one city and withheld rain from the next — in the same region, at the same time. Try explaining that with atmospheric models. The Lord says He did it. And still, the people did not return to Him.
The Book of Mormon's clearest case. A prophet asks for famine as a corrective, receives it, watches the people repent, prays for rain, and the land is healed. The whole cycle — prayer to drought to repentance to rain — unfolds in just a few years.
James confirms this isn't just ancient history. Elijah was "a man subject to like passions as we are" — meaning the same mechanism is available to anyone who prays in faith and righteousness. That means it's available now.
This isn't one verse taken out of context. It's a pattern attested by Moses, Solomon, Elijah, Amos, Nephi, and James — spanning the Pentateuch, the Historical books, the Prophets, the Book of Mormon, and the New Testament. I don't know of a more thoroughly witnessed pattern in all of scripture.
Let's be clear about something, because this can be misunderstood. Believing that God governs rain does not mean we abandon responsibility for the land. Scripture itself establishes stewardship as a divine mandate. When God placed Adam in the garden, He told him "to dress it and to keep it" (Genesis 2:15).
Conserve water. Manage land wisely. Don't waste. Don't pollute. Take care of what God has given you, because you'll give an accounting for it. A covenant people should be better stewards of the earth than anyone, precisely because we understand that the land belongs to God and is entrusted to our care.
The pushback here isn't against stewardship. It's against the theological claim hiding inside the modern framework — the one most people never examine.
Stewardship says: take care of what God gave you.
Existential guilt says: your very presence is the problem.
Stewardship says: be wise with resources, because you're a caretaker.
Existential guilt says: your breathing, your eating, your children — all of it makes things worse.
One empowers. The other paralyzes.
Stewardship acknowledges that God made the earth, called it "very good," and told us to fill it. Existential climate guilt says the filling itself is the catastrophe.
Reject the guilt. Embrace the stewardship. The land's condition depends not on our carbon output but on our faithfulness to the God who governs it.
Be wise. Conserve water. Care for the land. But do not accept the claim that you are helpless, and do not accept the premise that your existence — or your children's existence — is the fundamental problem. God doesn't need fewer people. He needs more faithful people.
That stream in Santaquin Canyon keeps coming to mind. The water is low. The snow didn't come. These are facts anyone can see.
One story says: this is the result of global emissions, and we have to wait for the world to change before our land can heal. We're passive victims of forces we can't control.
The other story says: this may be a covenant consequence — and we are not helpless at all. The God who shut heaven can open it. He told us exactly what He requires. And He promised — not suggested, promised — that if His people humble themselves, pray, seek His face, and turn from their wicked ways, He will hear from heaven and heal their land.
That promise doesn't require a global consensus. It doesn't need 195 nations to agree. It doesn't take decades to work.
It requires something much harder and much more immediate: genuine repentance. Real humility. Sincere prayer.
Nephi's people faced this choice, and for a season they chose repentance. The rain came. Elijah's generation faced it on Mount Carmel. The rain came. Solomon anticipated it at the temple dedication, and God Himself confirmed the terms.
The terms haven't changed. The God who made them hasn't changed.
The only variable is us.
The rain is not beyond reach. It never was. The stream in the canyon is low, and what we choose to do about it reveals what we actually believe about who governs the earth.
We are not helpless. And the God of heaven is waiting to hear from us.