White and Latino Catholics “Living in Different Worlds” On Climate Change

[cbayer]

http://religiondispatches.org/white-and-latino-catholics-living-in-different-worlds-on-climate-change/

BY SARAH POSNER JUNE 15, 2015

Ahead of Pope Francis’s highly anticipated encyclical on the environment, due out Thursday, Public Religion Research Institute has found a remarkable split between Latino and white Catholics on climate change.

According to data collected for the November 2014 PRRI/AAR Religion, Values and Climate Change Survey, white Catholics (34 percent) in the U.S. are twice as likely as Latino Catholics (15 percent) to question the reality of climate change. Latino Catholics are far more likely (61 percent) than white Catholics (40 percent) to say climate change is caused by human activity, and are much greater believers that climate change is a “crisis” or “major problem” (73 percent) than white Catholics are (53 percent).

Daniel Cox, PRRI’s research director, told me the data shows “really dramatic differences between Latinos and white Americans,” representing a “huge gulf between these two groups.”

On climate change, said Cox, “it’s like they’re living in different worlds.”

more at link

[DetlefK]

1. How many of those white Catholics are conservative?

As the recent pope is rather progressive on the topics of poverty and environment, this would lead to a prejudice among Catholics of various political preferences.

[trotsky]

2. Interestingly, he isn't all that more progressive on those issues than the guy before him.

Environmental manifesto may confirm Pope Francis as ‘Benedict 2.0’
http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2015/06/14/environmental-manifesto-may-confirm-pope-francis-as-benedict-2-0/

Mythology and media narratives to the contrary, Pope Francis has far more in common with Pope Benedict XVI than whatever separates them. Francis probably could be better understood as “Benedict 2.0,” supplying a warmer and more populist package for the same basic positions espoused by his more cerebral predecessor.

It's just that they also share disdain for homosexuality, women's equality, etc., etc.

[cbayer]

3. Interestingly, there is a correlation here with the article about space.

Latinos in the US are more likely to hear about climate change in their churches than white catholics.

There is no breakdown of liberal/conservative in this study, but the argument can clearly be made that we have to get the catholic hierarchy on board.

[AtheistCrusader]

4. Just the airlock.

That's as on board as we need them.

[okasha]

5. They are literally different worlds--

or at least ecospheres.

Most Hispanics live in, or have recent family ties in areas where climate change is already apparent. It's evident not only in changing weather patterns but in migrations northward of neotropical species. The ringed kingfisher, for example, has been moving northward by roughly 30 miles per year.

[cbayer]

6. That's a good point, but this data comes from white and latino american catholics.

So they are currently living in the same world, no?

[okasha]

7. Reread my post.

South Texas is not the ""same world" as Vermont.