Apparently an awful lot of Americans have embraced "End Times Theology". As they see it, the world is ending soon anyway so there's no point worrying about trivialities like climate change.
A study by David Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David Bearce of the University of Colorado concludes there is simply too much resistance to hope for effective action by Congress to deal with climate change.
“[T]he fact that such an overwhelming percentage of Republican citizens profess a belief in the Second Coming (76 percent in 2006, according to our sample) suggests that governmental attempts to curb greenhouse emissions would encounter stiff resistance even if every Democrat in the country wanted to curb them.”
“[I]t stands to reason that most nonbelievers would support preserving the Earth for future generations, but that end-times believers would rationally perceive such efforts to be ultimately futile, and hence ill-advised.”
"...because of institutions such as the Electoral College, the winner-take-all representation mechanism, and the Senate filibuster, as well as the geographic distribution of partisanship to modern partisan polarization, minority interests often successfully block majority preferences.”
“Thus, even if the median voter supports policies designed to slow global warming, legislation to effect such change could find itself dead on arrival if the median Republican voter strongly resists public policy environmentalism at least in part because of end-times beliefs.”
And before we get too self-righteous, let's remember we have one of these heel-dragging, do-nothing fundamentalist jackasses running our country too.
The truly frustrating part is that their End Times nonsense could turn into a self-fulfilling prophesy at least for countless millions of unfortunates around the world for whom the ravages of climate change will be their personal End Time only without that Rapture bullshit.
