Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Global Warming Update - views of Evangelicals


Just to let you know what you might not know!

New Research from Barna on Green Evangelicals

Barna surveys evangelicals about their enviornmental views. Here are some excerpts:

One of the intriguing findings of the research is that millions of evangelicals - often perceived to be on the sidelines of the green movement - have become more environmentally conscious in the last year. Yet, evangelicals do so with some skepticism about the environmental movement, specifically the implications of climate change. Evangelicals are concerned about what they perceive to be media hype surrounding global warming, as well as skepticism about the role humans play in causing it. Moreover, evangelicals express strong concern that proposed environmental solutions would hurt the poor, particularly in developing nations...

What makes Americans skeptical about global warming? The survey explored five common objections and discovered that roughly half of Americans maintain some reluctance about climate change for each of the following reasons:

  • 49% of Americans contend that some solutions proposed to help global warming would have a negative influence on the poor, especially in other countries
  • 48% believe the earth has undergone climate change before and the current warming is not primarily caused by human activity
  • 47% indicate the news media have made global warming a bigger story than it deserves
  • 47% agree that the U.S. economy is not strong enough right now to take on the problem
  • 46% say that if America leads the way tackling the problem other countries will not follow suit and it would hurt American businesses and workers
A majority of the Christian community, regardless of how it is defined, believes that global warming is happening. Still, only a minority of churchgoing Catholics (36%), non-mainline Protestants (36%), and mainline Protestants (45%) are very certain climate change is occurring...

Evangelicals are among the most skeptical population segments when it comes to global warming...

Click here for the full story.

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