The Theology of Opposition to the Existence of Anthropogenic Climate Change.

Abstract

In the United States, religious opposition to anthropogenic climate change, and policies to deal with it, is a largely, but not exclusively, conservative Evangelical phenomenon, and tied to white middle-class support for the Republican Party and Donald Trump. This paper examines the theological reasoning employed by conservative, or fundamentalist, Christians, both Evangelical and Catholic, in the US and UK, to justify and rationalise their disbelief in climate science and opposition to climate policies.

The Climate Emergency, the Biodiversity Crisis and the ‘Doomsday Argument’.

“…Regarding the conservative religious climate change deniers, it is not necessary to repeat here what the present author established in [3], save to note that theological opponents of action to remediate climate change remain as vocal as ever, orin the case of the American Catholic bishopsas silent as ever, even when their spiritual leader, Pope Francis, urges them to speak out on the issue in a positive way, as noted by Danielsen, DiLeo and Burke (2021 [67]). Evangelical Protestants in the US, particularly white ones, align with the Republican Party and with climate change denialism, as pointed out by Bardon (2020 [68]); Veldman et al (2020 [69]).…”

“…gravitational field, are attracted away from it by other, stronger, gravitational forces, this happening an average of 72 billion years, and no more than 100 billion years, from now. As Bertrand Russell declared (Russell, 1903 [21], p.2): 'all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and... the whole temple of Man's achievement... inevitably... buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins...' [3] Extinction in the Near-Term Future?…”