A recent study by researchers at Charles Sturt University suggests that the followers of different religions have different views on climate change, with Buddhists and Christian literalists on opposing ends of the spectrum.
In the study, published in PLOS One, researchers conducted an online survey of 1,927 Australians across four religious groupings: secularist, Buddhist, Christian non-literalists and Christian literalists.
The results showed that climate change attitudes differed across religious groups in Australia. “We found substantive effects on climate change beliefs based on religious affiliation. Christians (both literalists and non-literalists) were the least engaged with climate change issues and Buddhists the most engaged,” Mark Morrison and his colleagues wrote in the study.
The researchers found that secularists and Buddhists tended to be more concerned and alarmed about climate change. They were more likely to believe that global warming is occurring and caused by human activity. Secularists and Buddhists also tended to have a higher level of knowledge about climate change.
Christian literalists, on the other hand, tended to doubt that climate change is real, and were less likely to believe that global warming is occurring and caused by human activity. The Christian non-literalists fell between the two extremes, and were only slightly less likely to be alarmed by climate change than the average participant.
The link between religious affiliation climate change beliefs was still a significant factor among Buddhists and Christians even after researchers accounted for other variables.
“[W]e ran a series of ordinal regressions to examine the effect of socio-demographic variables, environmental attitude and knowledge about climate change on segment membership,” they explained. “Our results indicate that for those who are Christian literalist or Christian non-literalist, the effect of their religious affiliation substantially diminishes with inclusion of socio-demographic variables, environmental attitudes and knowledge.”
“Nevertheless, religious affiliation was still demonstrated to be a significant factor; Christians had a tendency to be more dismissive of climate change than secularists, while Buddhists had stronger engagement and support for climate change policy than secularists. For all three of these religious groups, the effects could not simply be explained by socio-demographic variables, environmental attitude or knowledge about climate change.”
The values of Christian literalists can partially explain why they are the least likely to believe in climate change. Christian literalists had faith in humans’ ingenuity to overcome environmental problems, believed humans should have dominion over nature, and were more dismissive of natural limits on human population growth. “This set of beliefs is consistent with and may sustain a weak belief in (or even denial of) climate change as a problem and, if there is a problem, a strong belief in human capacity to overcome it,” the researchers said.
However, they cautioned the relationship between values and climate change attitudes was “nuanced.” Buddhists also tended to believe that humans should have dominion over nature but supported pro-environmental policies to fight climate change.