This week, my family and I watched in awe as hail the size of golf balls exploded in our backyard while peals of thunder rolled overhead. Thankfully, our cars and home came away relatively unscathed. Others were not so lucky. The insurance companies call such events an “act of God.” And they are right! Yet few people really believe it is the work of God. And if they do, can they explain God’s purpose in such events?

The government falls into the category of not believing, which you see in the solutions it offers when such events occur. Australia continues to combat its varied natural disasters with policies that flatly reject any possible spiritual angle.

As such, the primary way Australia’s government plans to save my herb garden and decimated mulberry bush is with carbon neutrality, or “net zero.”

Australia plans to be carbon neutral by 2050. That is, it aims to strike an exact balance between greenhouse gas emissions and emissions removed from the atmosphere. This, it claims, will help turn the tide against the “great threat” of climate change.

As a first step, Anthony Albanese’s government has pledged to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 62 percent to 70 percent by 2035 compared to 2005 levels. To achieve this ambitious goal, the nation would have to more than double its renewable energy generation in the next five years.

Many critics highlight the impossibility of such a task and the great cost. They also highlight the futility.

Australia’s carbon footprint is minuscule. While Australia’s carbon emissions per capita have decreased by 24.3 percent since 2004, China’s have increased by 109 percent.

For every ton of emissions Australia has cut, China has increased its output by almost 40,000 tons.

The carbon emissions Australia produces in a year, China produces in 12 days. A year of net zero would be undone in less than two weeks!

One researcher at the Institute of Public Affairs called net zero “an act of devastating economic self-harm.” But mankind would rather buy into such destructive, impotent delusion than face the truth. Rather than consider the possibility that God is punishing us—that we are to blame—we create our own ambiguous foe.

Fires destroy our homes, floods wipe out communities, cyclones tear up our beaches, and drought withers our crops. All this chaos is tucked neatly into the basket of “climate change.” To this simple-sounding problem, we have a simple-sounding solution: net zero.

And everyone can do their part. Stop using plastic straws. Pack your groceries in flimsy paper bags. The finger doesn’t get pointed at any one person. If there is a scapegoat, it is usually dirty coal and those evil farmers with their flatulent cattle.

No other possibility is entertained.

But it should be. Australia’s disasters stem from predominantly spiritual problems. By blaming a generic, oversimplified scapegoat, we as a nation avoid the more painful self-analysis of our increasingly lawless and immoral society.

Consider the words of Job: “He loads the thick cloud with moisture; the clouds scatter his lightning. They turn round and round by his guidance, to accomplish all that he commands them on the face of the habitable world. Whether for correction, or for his land, or for love, he causes it to happen” (Job 37:11-13; Revised Standard Version).

If you believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then you must admit that God makes clear that He controls the weather. And He uses it to correct people!

God punishes for disobedience—to correct a wayward son. This isn’t correction for driving a diesel car; it is correction for forgetting and rejecting the Creator God!

This great Creator promises, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

The solution is to turn from our wicked ways individually and collectively. As long as carbon emissions are promoted as the scapegoat for our sins, we will never see the true cause. It is high time you, the reader, consider that maybe the God of the Bible is not some distant Being who cannot be touched by our infirmities. Instead, He is a loving God desperately trying to turn His wayward children back to Him and to a life that brings peace, prosperity and rain in due season.

If you’d like to learn more about the true causes behind the latest bushfires, the latest storm or the latest drought, consider ordering our free booklet Why ‘Natural’ Disasters?

There is a solution to our natural disasters. The priority must not be net zero. The priority must be repentance.