Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap is the national organizer and spokesperson for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, and is a public voices fellow of the Op-Ed Project and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
Before the coronavirus and economic recession took up all the oxygen, 2020 was shaping up to become the “Climate Election.” Now with historic wildfires raging out west and hurricanes exhausting the alphabet two months early, climate change is once again front and center in the presidential campaign.
If climate change does end up defining this election, one unlikely group of voters may decide its outcome: young evangelicals.
Evangelicals in the U.S. are hardly leading the charge for climate action: White evangelicals remain the most skeptical of the science behind human-driven climate change and the least receptive to climate solutions; white Catholics are scarcely more open.
Yet these numbers are a lagging indicator, and what they fail to capture is that young evangelicals are becoming overwhelmingly supportive of the need to address climate change. I don’t blame the pollsters. If I hadn’t spent the la... Read more