Belief That "Second Coming" May Be Preventing Climate Change Action [View all]

[BainsBane]

And I don't mean the WB Yeats poem.

"Belief that the "Second Coming" of Jesus is nigh may be stemming climate change action, according to a study published in the Political Science Quarterly.
The research, conducted by David C. Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David H. Bearce of the University of Colorado, examined data from the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to discover that belief in the "end times" reduced a person’s probability of strongly supporting government action on climate change by 12 percent when controlling for demographic and cultural factors.

Furthermore, when the effects of party affiliation, political ideology and media distrust were removed, this number increased by almost 20 percent.
“It stands to reason that most nonbelievers would support preserving the Earth for future generations, but that end-times believers would rationally perceive such efforts to be ultimately futile, and hence ill-advised,” Barker and Bears said, according to the Raw Story. . . .

“That is, because of institutions such as the Electoral College, the winner-take-all representation mechanism, and the Senate filibuster, as well as geographic distribution of partisanship to modern partisan polarization, minority interests often successfully block majority preferences,” they wrote. “Thus, even if median voter supports policies designed to slow global warming, legislation to effect such change could find itself dead on arrival if the media Republican voter strongly resists public policy environmentalism at least in part because of end-times beliefs.”

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/1734/20130503/belief-second-coming-jesus-nigh-preventing-climate-change-action-study.htm