On the Facebook page for the group Young Evangelicals for Climate Change, there’s a classic satirical “LOLchart,” except in this case the numbers are real.
A map of the United States is supposed to be colored blue wherever temperatures have been cooler than normal, and orange wherever they’ve been warmer than usual.
It’s a useless distinction, because the entire map is orange — June capped the country’s warmest 12 months on record.
This, of course, doesn’t itself prove that humans have provoked profound global climate change, and in the political football that often erupts over the subject, the skeptics tend to discount such maps, while believers note them with alarm.
Some younger conservatives, however, have grown increasingly uneasy with the presumption that they hew to the skeptical line of the Republican Party, and some evangelicals in particular are looking for ways to embrace the science and steward the planet.
As far as political representation goes, they’re mostly on their own.
What happens, in Paul Greene’s observation, is that many of the loudest voices drawing a bead on climate change come off as world-is-crumbling alarmists, which is a turn-off to many conservatives.
What’s missing is the calmer, conservative voice of reason. Some Republicans have tried it, but without much success: Voters hear a leftist/screaming/Al Gore point of view, he says.
For Greene, an attorney, former intern for a Republican congressman and board member for TreesGreenville, the party’s sprint to the right is exasperating.
“That hasn’t made me vote Democratic yet, but that certainly isn’t pushing the electoral options into my worldview,” Greene said.
What bothers him about climate change skepticism is that, for Greene, it doesn’t seem to be very compatible with Christianity.
He’s not the only one thinking this, and a slice of the young conservative generation is looking for answers.
As a group, young evangelicals define pro-life views to include poverty, torture and the environment, and they’re substantially more willing to talk about climate change solutions, said Richard Cizik, a lobbyist, speaker and president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, pointing to Pew polling.
Extreme weather, for all the differing interpretations, keeps pushing the conversation along.
“Even old-guard evangelicals and others are having to provide explanations,” Cizik said.
“They’re having to answer questions. And the problem for them is that the old answers don’t work any more.”
Science in question
As wildfires were eating away at Colorado and New Mexico last month, Katharine Hayhoe, a Christian geoscience professor at Texas Tech University, said in a column for Sojourners that “the answer is clear: God has given us the freedom and the ability to make choices. These choices have consequences.”
Hayhoe, who described friends praying fervently that their homes would be saved, recently co-authored a study published in Ecosphere that connected energy choices, such as coal-burning electricity, to climate change and ultimately an increased risk of wildfire in the western U.S.
“Is it not the very definition of conservative to advocate conserving the limited resources we have?” Hayhoe said in an email to GreenvilleOnline.com.
“And is it not the definition of a Christian to be one who loves God and loves their neighbor, not hogging and wasting the resources God has given us, but rather ensuring that all have ample food, water, and a safe environment in which to live?”
Still, Hayhoe and Cizik describe evangelicals as among the last holdouts on climate science.
More than half of Americans think global warming is primarily caused by human activity, a Gallup poll reported recently, though another poll by Public Religion Research Institute reported that just 31 percent of white evangelicals hold that view.
The reasoning goes like this, Cizik said: Scientists believe in evolution. Scientists say climate change is real. I don’t trust scientists. So I don’t buy climate change.
Still, the skepticism hasn’t been uniform.
In 2006, the Evangelical Climate Initiative, including pastors such as Rick Warren, issued a report that said man-made climate change is real, and that “Christian moral convictions demand our response.”
In 2008, Southern Baptist leaders including Frank Page, then pastor of Taylors First Baptist Church, called for a greater sense of urgency on the issue — a distinct shift in tone from a 2006 statement that denounced “some in our culture” who have “made environmentalism into a neo-pagan religion.”
Other groups, however, such as the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, have questioned climate science and said human efforts to stop it are “largely futile.” Adherents included figures such as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.
The reasons for this split range from theology — does Genesis emphasize “dominion” over nature or “stewardship” of it? — to a political strategy that would prefer to focus on other issues, said John Copeland Nagle in the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.
For Greene, interest in the environment started in college, when his life included a lot of hiking, climbing and biking. Today, he and his kids spend lots of time outdoors. This leads him into what he describes as a “pragmatic, realistic view of the world around me.”
Jason Greer, a 36-year-old IT consultant who used to work for the Republican Party, said the older generation is skeptical of environmental causes because their earliest exposure involved Earth Day and the radical establishment fighting of the 1960s and 1970s.
Greer wants to see more respect for the earth and, to illustrate the point, he refers to his high school years. He went to a Christian school on Woodruff Road and when he started, it was surrounded by farmland. By the time he graduated, it was all strip malls. He doesn’t know of anyone who appreciates this.
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