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Environment
By E. Calvin Beisner (Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, Newsletter, May 10, 2008)National Spokesman, April 29, 2008 In an ad on p. 49 of the April 19/26 issue of World magazine, the Evangelical Climate Initiative claimed, based on an Ellison poll done last summer, that "84 percent of evangelicals support federal legislation to significantly reduce carbon emissions that cause global warming." It didn't tell readers Ellison's definition of "evangelical" was hopelessly broad. A more recent Barna poll, dividing the nation's self-professed born-again population into two groups--"evangelicals" (about 18 million) and "non-evangelicals" (about 77 million), found that "Evangelicals perceive global warming very differently than any other slice of the population--and they view the issue with significant skepticism. Among evangelicals, just 33% say that the issue is a major challenge, compared with 55% of non-evangelical born again Christians. That qualifies evangelicals as the least concerned segment among more than 50 population groups studied." Of all the demographic groups identified in Barna's poll, evangelicals showed the lowest belief in global warming as a critical problem.