A spokesperson with the Cornwall Alliance has labeled as "misleading" a new report showing the majority of evangelicals believe alleged "man-made climate change" is a serious issue that needs to be dealt.
The report was commissioned by Faith in Public life and conducted by Public Religion Research. According to the report, 69 percent of evangelicals believe that climate change is having a negative impact on poor people -- and 61 percent of evangelicals believe that addressing climate change now will result in the creation of jobs. Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, spokesperson for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, reacts to the report. "It looks to me as if the questions were very broadly, vaguely worded, resulting in being able to get responses that were much like what the sponsors of the survey wanted to get," says Beisner. "When you ask more narrowly defined questions, when you ask people how strongly they believe that human action has been the primary cause of climate change, the results go down quite significantly." Currently Congress is debating a climate bill under the guise of a "jobs creation" bill. OneNewsNow asked Beisner if there was any truth to the notion that the regulation of industrial carbon emissions would lead to a net gain of so-called "green jobs." He points to Spain as an example. "[Spain] has done more to attempt to create green jobs by pushing climate-change legislation to reduce CO2 emissions," he points out. "And the finding there has been that for every one job created, you destroy 2.2 jobs. "That's not a good exchange at all -- and there is no reason to think that it's going to be any better here." A recent survey by LifeWay Research indicated that Protestant pastors were evenly divided on the statement: "I believe global warming is real and man-made." The division was significantly more pronounced, however, between evangelical pastors and those in mainline denominations. Only 32 percent of evangelical pastors agreed with the statement, while 75 percent of those in mainline denominations agreed that global warming is real and man-made. (See related story)
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