Evangelicals are Changing Their Views on Climate Change


When the climate change first was attributed to human activity polls showed evangelicals denied human activity had any roll. Now large percentage have switched to believing humans have a roll in climate change. 

Climate scientists have always said there have been and always will be large swings in climate. More than anywhere I know of the Red River Valley of the North illustrates this. Only ten thousand years ago it was a pile of ice, a glacier. Moisture came from other areas of earth, it was dryer there, and dropped in an area where the temperature had dropped. Humans, who had been on earth at least 200,000 years at that time, moved out. Later, as we know, it warmed up and people moved back. 

But, scientists said they can tell the rate of change going on right now is faster than anything they can detect going back far into prehistoric times. There is only one atmospheric variable that has changed, carbon. The melting in artic areas is increasing in speed.

If one has no interest in the longevity of the earth because "the end is near" he/she would have no interest in its health. On the other hand, if one feels a responsibility for future generations the time is now to start doing something on their behalf. 

Conceptually, what needs to be done is rather simple. It is to pay for all those costs we cause but which we have been pushing off onto our neighbors or pushing down the road to future generations. Inevitably this means a lower standard of living for ourselves but a higher standard of living for future humans. These future humans may not be Christians, there may not be any, and we don't know what races will dominate. Yet a concept of being a good human being pushes this responsibility on us whether we like it or not. 

So far, there has not been any money to be made in religion by preaching good citizenship concerning climate change. The big bucks are in anti abortion and anti gay preachin'. As the percentage of religious people become concerned about climate change grows we can expect those who depend on donations to follow the public to a new attitude.

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