Study: US Won’t Act On Climate Change Because Citizens Believe The World Is Ending [View all]

A new study concludes many Americans have failed to take action about climate change because they believe that the world will be coming to an end anyway.

In their study, titled “End-Times Theology, the Shadow of the Future, and Public Resistance to Addressing Global Climate Change,” David C. Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David H. Bearce of the University of Colorado argue that citizens who believe in the end of days “often resist policies trading short-term costs for hypothetical long-term benefits.”

“(T)he fact that such an overwhelming percentage of Republican citizens profess a belief in the Second Coming (76 percent in 2006, according to our sample) suggests that governmental attempts to curb greenhouse emissions would encounter stiff resistance even if every Democrat in the country wanted to curb them,” Barker and Bearce wrote in the study.

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That sentiment is not just confined to average citizens. The chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy, Rep. John Shimkus, said in 2010 that he opposed action on climate change because “the Earth will end only when God declares it to be over.”


http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/study-us-won-t-act-climate-change-because-citizens-believe-world-ending