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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (June 19, 2015)
Street Roots • June 19-25, 2015 Page 5 News HAYHOE, from page 4 even on CNN, which most people regard as a fairly middle-of-the-road news network, 30 percent of the information on climate change was false. On Fox News, over 70 percent of the information was false. In 2012 on Fox News, over 90 percent of the information was false. When you look at CNN, where does that < false information come from? It came from two talking heads arguing with each other. In fact, every time I have received an invitation to appear on CNN, it was always, “Would you debate so-and-so, who is saying that climate change isn’t real, or if it is (real), it isn’t human (caused), or even if it is humans, it’s not a big deal?” < Every time they asked, I said no. I feel it is morally wrong for me, as a scientist, to perpetuate the myth that it’s 50-50 by engaging in a 50-50 debate. E.G.: What kind of impact doyou think Pope Francis’ statement solidifying climate change is going to have on the faith-based community? , K.H.: Here in west Texas, one of my close colleagues attends a Catholic church. He’s shared with me how he’s horrified by th e . number of people at his church who’d rather listen to what Fox News says about climate change than the pope. If we look across thé entire United States, Catholics are more similar to mainline Protestants m what they would say about climate change, whether it’s real or not, or caused by humans or not. ¡hope, thepope^s encyclical will improve those numbers further. But in the evangelical world, we don’t have a pope. We don’t even have a very strong hierarchy of religious .leadership. So our vacuum of leadership has been filled by the media and by our political leaders, E.G.: I f every conservative Christian accepted that climate change was real, do you think that would be enough to motivate them : to vote for political leaders who want to do something about climate change but who disagree with them on some of their other values? - | .. , ' ' s a * change is real in public if you actually want to be elected.” Politicians respond to what they believe their electorate wants. A big part of the issue of climate change, perhaps the ; biggest, is the fact that what people really object to are the solutiorfs, not the science. The solutions have been presented as | solutions that involve government policies^ government intervention in people.’« personal ànd private lives. That’s how the solutions have often been framed. And so I think that there is room for free market, conservative solutions in the debate, and Bob Inglis is one of the people who is championing this idea. E.G.: How do you explain to Christians . that they can say climate change is real and also still believe in intelligent design or creationism? K.H.: I think that would be enough to K.H.: I ask people to walk with me change the tune of most of our politicians. through what we believe, to listen and think We have examples of politicians, starting about how we connect those beliefs to the with (James) Inhofe, who have said things issue of climate change, to consider the like, “I thought it must be true until I found evidence that God’s creation is giving Us as out how much it cost.” And I-have other examples from colleagues who have been on the reality of climate change, and then to think about what are ways we can respond an airplane, for example, sitting beside a that are consistent with our faith and our Republican congressman well kndwn for his , values. public rejection of climate science, saying in Along the way, I have made a conscious' private, off the record, things like: Of course decision - onq that not all my fellow climaté change is a very important problem, scientists would agree with, I’m sure - that but I can’t get elected if I say that. in order To convince people of the reality Bob Inglis is a very conservative and the urgency of acting on climate, I am Republican congressman who lost his seat willing to walk around some very ancient in the primaries just because, when and very explosive mines that divide science Confronted with the evidence by his son, he from faith. decided to publicly say, “Yes, climate change I took our ice ebre data, which shows us is real.” I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a what temperature, carbon dioxide and room somewhere with a picture of Bob, a methane were like going into the past, and I room that young, promising, potential created a figure that looks at the history of Republican candidates are led into and sat our planet over the last 6,000 years. down and told, “Do not be like Bob. Look For example, from ice core data, which what happened to him. You can say shows us thé Earth’s temperature, carbon whatever you want in the privacy of your dioxide and methane for hundreds of own home, but do not say that climate ' . PHOTO: ASHLEY RODGERS / TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY thousands of years in the past, if we’re looking at the warm interglacial period that we’re in right now, we’d probably want to go back 18,000 to 20,000 years. If a scientist is responsible for the planet now. We’re not usurping the role of God; we are the ones in charge, and God is saying, “How will you steward the resources I have given you?”, I plotting any given data set, we’d usually ju st I n t p e Bible, we are told very clearly, th a t we reap what we sow, that our choices have consequences. We can look around in-the World today, and each of us can find an example of something tragic that God has let happen, because God created human .beings to make our own decisions, and we don’t always make the best decisions. Climate change is nothing more than a consequence of a decision that we humans made. Way back when, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we didn’t know that burning so much coal-and natural gas would put all this carbon into the atmosphere. But by the 1800s, we did know that we were wrapping this extra blanket around the planet, and by the early 1900s, we knew the planet was heating up in response. Now we know the consequences of our decision; it’s time to make a different choice. The second argument is, “The world is going to end anyway, so why do we care?” Again here we can go back to the Bible and look at the book of Thessalonians, where E.G.: And what do you say to skeptics who people were saying, “You told us that Christ say, “The Earth will be our habitat for as long was returning any day now, so I’m going to as God wants it to be, and there’s nothing we quit my job, lie around, eat, drink and be can do about it”? ■ merry, because hey, the world’s going to end anyway. Might as well enjoy the last few K.H.: Well, there are two arguments in days we have.” that one sentence. Liberally paraphrasing the apostle Paul’s The first argument, “God would neyer let response, he said: “Get a job, support your this happen,” is often invoked by politicians. family, care for the widows and the poor It centers around the concept of the who can’t care for themselves, because we sovereignty of God and the idea that, “How don’t know the day or the time the world can we puny humans imagine, in our will end, and in the meantime, we’re not arrogance, that We are powerful enough to supposed to sit around twiddling our fingers; affect something as great as this planet, we’re supposed to love others as_ Christ which God created?” And to answer that loved us.” , question, we don’t go to science; wë go to And how loving is it if we bury our head in the Bible. the sand - or in a barrel of oil - and pretend In Genesis, God gave us responsibility for every living creature pn this planet. We are See HAYHOE, page 6 show the entire record. In this case, however, I used ice core data to make a figure showing only the last 6,000 years. Why did I do that? Because a large proportion of people here in the U.S. believe the Earth is quite young* So I made this plot and looked at it, and here’s th e amazing thing. When we look at the last 6,000 years, the impact of human activity on our climate is unmistakable. There are no major large natural cycles over the last 6,000 years. In fact, our temperature was on the long, slow élidé into what we know was going to be the next ice age — until the Industrial Revolution, that is. And then all of a sudden, boom — it goes almost straight up. What I say to people is: We don’t need to agree that the Earth is any more than 300 years old to agree that humans; are changing climate. And I think we can all âgree on that. |
