The vast majority of Americans who want to mitigate the effects of climate change can make that happen: they just need to vote in accord with that desire.
By the conclusion of my talks to congregations about climate change and religion, it is usually clear that people concur that climate change is both an environmental and religious issue – they see the biblical connections. I respond to the frequent question of what they, personally, can do, by urging them to vote to save the planet: vote to preserve the hospitable, God-created world we inherited.
According to various polls, one done by Stanford University, over 70 percent of Americans accept the science of climate change and want the government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the currently dominant political party remains hostile to addressing this crucial issue and in 2018 is making it worse. This means many people vote out of habit for a candidate that they know will not act on an issue they care deeply about, and then lament the fact that the government is doing nothing about climate change.
Climate change is one of the paramount issues of our time and is already causing devastating damage: e.g., hurricane Florence, fires in California, and hurricanes that struck Houston, Louisiana, and Puerto Rico serving as harbingers of what’s to come. Climate change is increasing the intensity and duration of extreme weather events and will make life far tougher for us, our children, and grandchildren.
We will experience shortages of food and water and commensurately higher prices, affecting hardest “the least of these.” We will witness mass withdrawals from highly populated coastal areas, at costs that are uncalculatable. We will experience less predictable airline travel and more turbulent flights. And the list goes on. With the Atlantic on one side, the Pacific on the other, and the Gulf of Mexico, sea level rise, storm surges, and flooding will affect huge swaths of our country.
We say we’d do anything for our children, but will we? Will we at least vote to preserve the habitability of this planet for ourselves and our descendants, or will we vote for a party that is accelerating damage to America and the world? Yes, the stakes are that high.
My talks and book, Hospitable Planet: Faith, Action, and Climate Change, demonstrate that climate change is a biblical issue, as well as a scientific one. If your faith is important to you, then put your beliefs into action: set aside historical party loyalty and vote to save the planet (V2SP).
Please help spread this perspective of voting to help save the planet by using the acronym V2SP to facilitate its adoption by others.