Catholics among top climate-change skeptics: scientist

Special to The B.C. Catholic

Climate science is nearly 200 years old. For about 168 of those years scientist have known that adding more gases to the earth’s atmosphere leads to a warmer planet. Still, about 30 per cent of Canadians and a similar proportion of Americans do not believe this.

Many Christians – including some Catholics – are at the top of that list of non-believers.

Climate scientist Katherine Heyhoe lives in two worlds: she is an atmospheric scientist, the head of the Climate Science Centre at Texas Tech University. She is also a committed Christian and a pastor’s wife.  She has a few ideas why Christians might be reluctant to get on board with climate change.

“The most dangerous myth is that you must be a certain type of person to care about climate change,” Heyhoe said addressing members of the Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation gathered at the Chandos Pattison Auditorium May 12.

According to Heyhoe there is a popular image that a person who believes in climate change is a “tree hugger.” She also thinks many Christians believe if they buy into climate change they have to “buy into the whole package,” including theories that seem to exclude God as the creator of the universe.  

These misconceptions turn climate change into an “article of faith,” according to Heyhoe, and frame it as a sort of false religion which must be knocked down.

Peer-reviewed studies polling climate scientists have shown 97 percent of them agree climate change is happening and is linked to human activity. But skeptics and countless media stories and op-eds – often fueled by skeptics – assert climate science is “not settled yet” and reinforce the view that climate change must be discredited.

Heyhoe said about 30 studies have claimed climate change is not linked to human activity. However, when Heyhoe and her colleagues set about replicating those studies they found at least one error in each. When those errors were corrected and the studies replicated, the results “were in line with 200 years of climate science,” she said.

That review of erroneous climate studies was itself subjected to strenuous peer evaluation. The the end result – accepted by the reviewers of the study – was, “it’s real, it’s us, it’s serious, and the window of time to prevent widespread dangerous impacts is closing,” said Heyhoe.

Still, Christians of various denominations are not convinced.

A 2015 study by the Pew Research Center studied the link between religious affiliation and belief in the human impact on climate change. The results were surprising: in the U.S., 77 per cent of Hispanic Catholics believe the earth is warming due to human activity. About 64 per cent of religiously unaffiliated people believe the same.

The numbers decreased as the study went through other Christian denominations and religious affiliations. Almost at the bottom of the list were white Catholics, only 44 per cent of whom believe human activity is linked to a warming planet.

“Don’t they have the same Pope?” Heyhoe asked, showing her audience the cover of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si, which called climate change “a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods.”

The document said humanity must recognize its role in combatting warming “or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.”

Aside from the popular misconceptions around the implications of getting on board with climate change science, several economic, logistical, political and psychological factors are also at play.

Heyhoe pointed out five of the 10 largest companies in the world are oil companies and two are car manufacturers. Addressing the need to reduce the amount of gases society releases into the atmosphere goes against the very operations of some of these companies.

Climate change is an overwhelming issue and the changes that need to be made to human activity to prevent dangerous impacts are not small, according to Heyhoe. It is easy to think, “I’m just one person, what difference can I make?” or to focus on the pitfalls of addressing climate change – like cost.

The key to overcoming climate change inertia, according to Heyhoe, is to focus on the deepest common values shared between climate change believers and skeptics. In the case of Christian skeptics, “our deepest shared value is faith. At its core our faith is about caring for others – for the most vulnerable – and it becomes a compass for dealing with climate change,” said Heyhoe.

Focusing on what can be done in a specific place, by a specific group or person, can make things less overwhelming, break down inertia on climate change, and inspire hope that something can be done to prevent dangerous consequences of climate change.

“Without hope we will be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Heyhoe.