newrepublic | Climate is changing and climate has always changed and always will,” Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a recent address to
the Senate. “The hoax is that there are some people who are so arrogant
to think they are so powerful they can change climate. Man can’t change
climate.” Inhofe has been arguing for years that only God and His
natural works—not the activities of humankind—can
affect the climate. "[M]y point is, God's still up there. The arrogance
of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what
He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous," he said in a 2012
address given to a Voice of Christian Youth America radio program. And
in his theological belief that the environment is outside of humanity’s
control, Inhofe is not alone.
For evangelical Protestants,
accepting climate change but attributing it to God’s direct or indirect
intervention, rather than human activity, appears to be the new party
line, despite the efforts of evangelical climate scientists like Katharine Hayhoe.
Recent polls suggest evangelicals are more likely than any other
religious cohort to chalk worsening natural disasters up to the
apocalypse, instead of human impacts on the environment.
