#WCW: Katherine Hayhoe
The dichotomy between those who believe in God and those who believe in climate change is rendered useless by people like Katherine Hayhoe. Hayhoe is a climate scientist and an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University. But, she is also an evangelical Christian who has made it her mission to close the gap between belief in climate change and belief in God.
From katharinehayhoe.com
Explaining climate science to people of faith is hardly something you would find as part of the job description of a climate scientists, but because of her unique position within the evangelical community, Hayhoe is perfectly set up to take it on—and it really does need to be done, considering that polling has shown that white evangelicals are 30% “very unconcerned” about climate change and 34% are “somewhat unconcerned” about it. This is compared to the American people at large where 20% of people are “very unconcerned” and 29% are “somewhat unconcerned”. With these grave polling results, it even puts into better context how Hayhoe feels: that her community has been targeted by climate deniers in order to spread the wrong information about climate change.
Climate Change believers may scoff at evangelical Christianity and how people within the community have used religion to obfuscate the very real issue of climate change. Hayhoe, to her credit, has shown that the conflicts between religion and science are rather silly, and that religion can indeed play a role in how we respond to this current crisis. In a book that she co-wrote with her pastor husband called, A Climate for Change, Hayhoe acknowledges that much of our responses to climate change are emotional. And because an unknown future has been set in motion due to the effects of climate change, one of the most prominent emotions we can feel towards climate change is fear.
Watch Hayhoe talk about the intersections of faith and climate science
But as Hayhoe puts incredibly well and in words that are accessible to Evangelicals and non-believers alike (to which I will quote at length), “As Christians, we are told that God is not the author of fear. God is love. When we are acting out of fear. When we act out of love we are not thinking about ourselves, we are thinking about others. Our global needs, the poor and the disadvantaged. The people who do not have the resources to adapt. And so I believe that we are called to love one another and second of all to act.”
I don’t think you have to be a Christian to connect with Hayhoe’s message that fear is not really going to help anybody when addressing the global crisis of climate change. And while there can be pitfalls to public engagement and political discussion, the fear of what could go wrong cannot stop us from taking action and helping others understand climate change for the phenomenon that it truly is.
