WHEN the leader of the world鈥檚 1.2 billion Catholics called for action on climate change in June, observers wondered whether this would move the needle in the public debate.
A now suggests that it has. Pollsters interviewed the same nationally representative sample of more than 900 respondents before the release of the pope鈥檚 encyclical, a major document setting out Catholic doctrine, in June and after his trip to the US in late September.
Some 17 per cent of all respondents and 35 per cent of Catholic respondents said they were influenced by Pope Francis鈥檚 message that climate change is a crucial moral issue. The percentage of Catholics who said they were 鈥渧ery worried鈥� about global warming more than doubled compared with spring. And the number who denied the scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is happening declined by 10 percentage points among Catholics and 6 points among the US population in general.
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鈥淲e were expecting to find fairly small changes. The magnitude of the shift was surprising to me,鈥� says of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. 鈥淚n many of the specifics of the way people view climate change 鈥� for instance, seeing it as a moral issue and understanding that climate change is going to hurt people in developing countries and the world鈥檚 poor the most 鈥� we saw really large shifts.鈥�
(Image: Pete Marovich/Corbis)
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淧ope鈥檚 climate call heard鈥�
