Just one in 10 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints view climate change as a crisis. Less than half — 48% — believe human activity is fueling climate change.
Those are some of the results of a new nationwide survey from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, which asked more than 5,000 Americans their thoughts about climate change and broke down their responses by religious affiliation.
LDS respondents had some of the lowest responses for both of those questions about climate change being a crisis and one that’s caused mostly by human activity. They were also the second-lowest religious group when it came to supporting policies to combat climate change, such as funding renewable energy, taxing fossil fuel companies and capping vehicle emissions.
Members of the church stood out in the survey for other reasons, too.
Nearly three-fourths of LDS respondents said they felt a deep spiritual connection with nature. That’s by far the highest of any religious group and 21% above the national average. When asked if having a God-given role as stewards who care for the Earth is important to them, 84% of LDS respondents said yes — the highest of any religious group.
The disconnect between the church’s love for the Earth and a lack of urgency about climate change is sobering but not surprising to Ben Abbott, an ecosystem ecologist at Brigham Young University and board member of the Mormon Environmental Stewardship Alliance.
“Many members of the church haven't realized how directly their strong beliefs about being caretakers of the Earth [and] good stewards … they haven't seen how that connects to climate change, though it does in very direct ways.”
But that may be shifting for younger generations. Jackie Grant, a professor of geosciences at Southern Utah University, has seen it play out in her classrooms.
The number of students in her conservation biology class has doubled since she began teaching it 11 years ago, she said, and her environmental science class this semester is packed to the gills.
The way she and her students talk about climate change — and humanity’s role in it — has drastically changed in recent years, too.
“Things that I would have said 11 years ago that may have shocked some students or caused a little bit of outrage don't even cause students today to blink,” she said.
SUU’s Student Association also recently launched a sustainability committee tasked with finding ways to reduce the school’s environmental impact. Part of the reason young people are more likely to take initiative on environmental issues, she said, is because they see more of the effects of climate change in their daily lives.
There’s broad consensus from scientists worldwide that climate change — which often shows up as extreme weather events, such as intense heat waves, floods or wildfires — is caused by human activity, specifically sending fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere.
Abbott has seen increasing awareness of these issues among his BYU students, too. He points to Y Talk, a student-led effort at BYU that aims to start 1 million conversations about environmental stewardship. He’s also seen increasing interest in the university’s first-ever class entirely focused on climate change, which he teaches.
“Some of that interest comes from the fact that this isn't a concept that they have discussed with their family,” Abbott said. “That speaks to the fact that — if we are looking at middle-aged and older members of the church — this has not at all been at the center of what they've been focused on.”
So how can this message reach more church members beyond Gen Z?
One idea SUU’s Grant has found successful is focusing on practical actions people can take to improve the local environment in their neighborhoods.
Rather than leading with the broad hot-button issue of climate change, she said, talk about the tangible benefits of growing pollinator-friendly native plants, conserving water with rain barrels or commuting with a bike instead of a car.
“All of those things will contribute to mitigating climate change. But that might not necessarily be the person's driving interest,” she said.
The fact that so many church members already feel a connection with nature and value stewardship, BYU’s Abbott said, should theoretically make it easier to bridge this gap, too. The Book of Mormon and the other texts that make up the foundation of the faith, he said, are clear about the specific personal and community responsibility to care for the planet and its people.
“The doctrine and the cultural history of the church does really prepare Latter-day Saints to have an Earth-oriented view,” Abbot said. “We don't always live up to that.”
Many members aren’t sure how environmentalism fits with the other values they hold, he said, and the church’s modern prophets haven’t provided enough clear teachings to answer those questions.
That stands in stark contrast to the strongly worded bulletin Pope Francis recently released that essentially serves as a call to action against the modern Western lifestyles that fuel climate change. Abbot said not addressing this vital global issue from the highest levels of the LDS Church is a missed opportunity to lead.
For instance, when church leadership released a letter earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic urging members to get vaccinated and wear face covering at public gatherings, he said, that made a tangible impact on how members responded.
“We need that kind of clarity on these environmental issues, where we're going beyond the general teaching and considering what's the application here.”
There are signs that some leaders are trying to work against that in recent years, Abbott said, such as Utah's 3rd Congressional District Rep. John Curtis founding the Conservative Climate Caucus in 2021 or Bishop Gérald Caussé giving a talk about the church’s “sacred responsibility” to care for the Earth at the October general conference in 2022.
But more needs to be done to remove the stigma that environmentalism is a politically progressive stance that runs contrary to church members’ other beliefs, he said, especially as Americans’ religious and political identities become increasingly entangled.
Finding ways to directly connect the impacts of climate change to core values of the church, such as caring for the poor and vulnerable, could help these messages resonate with more LDS audiences.
“Environmental issues are actually human rights issues and humanitarian issues,” Abbot said. “As we are trying to alleviate poverty around the world, we need to fully integrate consideration of these environmental issues or we're not going to succeed.”
