How a top climate scientist, an evangelical Christian, is working to convince skeptics - Entrepreneur Generations

Katharine Hayhoe walks a fine line: an evangelical Christian, she's also a climate scientist and has made it her mission to help skeptical Americans understand climate change, Dan Zak reports for The Washington Post.

Hayhoe, a director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, does this by speaking the language of her audience. "We humans have been given responsibility for every living thing on this planet, which includes each other,” Hayhoe said at a recent conference. "We are called to tend the garden and be good stewards of the gifts that God has given us."

That goes for more than preaching the gospel of environmentalism. "Her skills of communication do seem miraculous by the standards of modern climate politics: She can convert nonbelievers — or, to put it in her terms, make people realize that they’ve believed in the importance of this issue all along," Zak reports. "She knows how to speak to oilmen, to Christians, to farmers and ranchers, having lived for years in Lubbock, Tex., with her pastor husband. She is a scientist who thinks that we’ve talked enough about science, that we need to talk more about matters of the heart."

Hayhoe rejects the appellation of climate evangelist, though. "She sees herself more like Cassandra, who predicted the fall of Troy but was not believed, or Jeremiah, whose omens were inspired by selfish kings and cultish priests in ancient Jerusalem," Zak reports.

"We are warning people of the consequences of their choices, and that’s what prophets did," Hayhoe told Zak. She gets a lot of backlash on social media, including occasional death threats, but told Zak that the Bible tells people not to live in a spirit of fear.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2M7I466 How a top climate scientist, an evangelical Christian, is working to convince skeptics - Entrepreneur Generations

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