Poll: Religious Americans less worried about climate change

Most adults in the United States – including a large majority of Christians and people who identify with other religions – consider the Earth sacred and believe God gave humans a duty to care for it.

But highly religious Americans – those who pray daily, regularly attend religious services and consider religion crucial in their lives — are far less likely than other US adults to express concern about global warming.

Those are among the key findings in a comprehensive report released today by the Pew Research Center, which surveyed 10,156 US adults from April 11 to April 17. Its margin of error for the full sample of respondents is plus or minus 1.6 percentage points.

The survey says religious Americans tend to be less concerned about climate change for several reasons.

“First and foremost is politics: The main driver of US public opinion about the climate is political party, not religion,” the report says.

“Highly religious Americans are more inclined than others to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, and Republicans tend to be much less likely than Democrats to believe human activity (such as burning fossil fuels) is warming the Earth or to consider climate change a serious problem.”