What Would the “Texan of the Year” Say About Climate Change?

For making a Christian case for combating climate change, Texas Tech’s Katharine Hayhoe is a finalist for Texan of the Year

From the Dallas Morning News Editorial, Dallas, TX, December 19, 2019

Katharine Hayhoe is an evangelical Christian AND a professor at Texas Tech University who researches climate change. And because she was born in Canada, it took her some time to understand why those things don’t tend to go together here in the U.S.

For making a Christian case for combating climate change, Texas Tech’s Katharine Hayhoe is a finalist for Texan of the Year. As an evangelical Christian, Hayhoe talks to people about their values rather than their fears.

She’s become a bridge to help nonscientists, particularly people of faith, understand climate change and to spread hope that humans can find solutions that make life better for everyone.

Hayhoe might call herself Canadian, but we’ll claim her as a Texan, and not just because she’s worked in Lubbock for a number of years. She reflects the Texan values of free thinking, commitment to her faith and respect for others. In 2019 the United Nations named her a Champion of the Earth. We’ll do them one better and name her a finalist for Texan of the Year.

Hayhoe has identified the biggest obstacle for addressing climate change: People rarely talk about climate science. Most people don’t discuss climate change with their friends and family, and they don’t really understand the problem or the solutions. This gives politicians and activists the opportunity to stoke fear and stump for votes on the issue.

“The No. 1 predictor of whether we agree that climate is changing, humans are responsible and the impacts are increasingly serious and even dangerous has nothing to do with how much we know about science or even how smart we are, but simply where we fall on the political spectrum,” Hayhoe said last year in a TED Talk. “The No. 1 thing we can do is the thing we aren’t doing: talk about it.”

Hayhoe speaks to congregations, schools, Rotary clubs, community groups, and political and academic gatherings around the country. Her message is simple: She doesn’t want to change anybody’s values. She wants to connect why climate change is important to her audience because of their own values.

“We don’t have to be a liberal tree hugger to care about a changing climate,” she said in the Ted talk. As a Christian, Hayhoe says she believes God created the earth and assigned humans responsibility for living things. And her faith leads her to care about those suffering from poverty, hunger and disease. Therefore, because as a scientist she understands the impact humans are having on the climate, she believes humans should change.

Hers is not a message of fear, of hellfire and brimstone for anyone who uses a plastic drinking straw or takes a cruise vacation. She said, “What we need to fix this thing is rational hope.”

Hope that by collectively, for example, conserving natural resources, eating more local food and adopting more renewable energy, humans can take care of the earth and prevent climate disasters that hurt impoverished people the most.

We share the hope that by turning down the volume on climate rhetoric, people can examine scientific findings and adopt not what feels good, but what will actually improve lives.

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See also: Us and Them : Touching the Third Rail with Katharine Hayhoe, by Trey Kay, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, May 9, 2018

In today’s culturally polarized society, discussing whether the planet is warming and if humans have an impact on the climate is a topic that’s often avoided. Why? Because speaking about it can be akin to touching the “third rail” of religion and politics.

Us & Them’s Trey Kay speaks with a person whose professional and personal lives revolve around the highly charged topic of climate change. Katharine Hayhoe is a respected climate scientist, as well as a devoted evangelical Christian – two descriptions that some Americans don’t think naturally go together.