Christianity has a weird relationship to the climate cause. On the one hand, in theory they have more reason than most to care for the Earth — they believe it is God’s good creation, after all. On the other hand, quite a number of the faithful are … sceptical.
Professor Katharine Hayhoe is a rock star in the climate world — one of the earth’s best climate science communicators. She’s also a Christian. And she says the chasm when it comes to climate doesn’t have to be this deep.
Whether you’re a believer or doubter in Christianity, this episode is really more about whether you’re a ‘believer’ or ‘doubter’ in climate change … and the things that often lie behind such beliefs (hint: faith is just one factor!)
But, if you listen to Katharine, climate change shouldn’t be about belief anymore. It’s real. It’s happening. The question now is, what can we do about it?
Special thanks to Zondervan Academic, our show sponsor, publishers of How To Fight Racism by Jemar Tisby.
LINKS
- Meet Katharine Hayhoe over on her website.
- Watch Katharine’s 2018 TedTalk (along with the 3.6 million other people!)
- Check out Rolling Stone magazine’s conversation with Katharine
- And also … the New York Times profile of Katharine
- Read the press release from the United Nations, announcing it has named Katharine Hayhoe a UN Champion of the Earth
- Here’s the Pew Research from 2015 that found only a third of white evangelical protestants believed climate change was the result of human activity.
- Read more on AOC’s talk with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates where she said millennials were frustrated with inaction on climate change and said “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change, and your biggest issue is how we are going to pay for it?”
- Ever watched The Newsroom? You totally should. Here’s a link to the series.
- Read the New York Times 2013 report when the world passed 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
- Then, read this report from the 360 Environment 360 Magazine which explains in an easily understandable why such a carbon threshold matters.
- Here’s the link to the full Sky News interview with environmentalist Michael Shellenberger, that we excerpted in this episode.
- More on the Gospers Mountain fire in New South Wales
- While you’re at it, here’s more data from Australia’s 2019/20 bushfire season
- More on California’s devastating wildfire season in 2020. This report from October 25 suggests this week is expected to have the most perilous fire weather event for the season.
- Then read this Washington Post interactive report on what is fueling the West Coast’s infernos.
- Get Lynn White’s 1967 article in the Science Journal: The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis
- Read James Bhagwan’s opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald from 2019, titled A climate plea to Scott Morrison from a churchman of the Pacific’s sinking nations
- “I want to remind Scott Morrison that for the people of Tuvalu – and Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands, and all the other Pacific Island Nations – nothing worries us more than climate change,” he writes.
- Read more about the island of Kiribati in the Pacific, and the immediate threat of rising sea levels.
- Check out Skeptical Science website run by John Cook
Meet our guest
Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist. She studies climate change, one of the most pressing issues we face today.
Hayhoe doesn’t accept global warming on faith: “I crunch the data, I analyze the models, I help engineers and city managers and ecologists quantify the impacts.”
Together with her husband Andrew Farley who is a pastor and a best-selling author, they wrote A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions, a book that untangles the complex science and tackles many long-held misconceptions about global warming.
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Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today.
