A few years ago, Bill McKibben wrote a piece for Science & Spirit magazine in which he explained that "we've spent 99 percent of our life as a species living in a world where you had to react instantly to procure dinner (or to avoid becoming dinner). It is, therefore, extremely difficult for us to take action against, say, global warming because the dangers are a few years away, and the costs are immediate, and we're just not built that way."
He's right. For the most part, we're designed to live in the present, and we attach greater value to immediate rewards than future rewards. But in a new paper, researcher Peter Sozou reports that in some cases, our biology seems designed for the long term. Sozou used a mathematical model to look at how we value future benefits and found that we discount future personal benefits more than we discount future benefits for our community.
As Sozou notes:

This analysis shows that the social discount rate is generally lower than the private discount rate. An individual’s valuation of a future benefit to herself is governed by the probability that she will still be alive in [the] future. But she may value future benefits to her community over a timescale considerably longer than her own lifespan.
Evolution is driven by competition. Caring about the future of your community makes evolutionary sense to the extent that future members of your community are likely to be your relatives.

Rural Americans are divided along religious lines when it comes to environmental issues, according to "Religion, Politics and the Environment in Rural America," a new report from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. Overall, 43 percent of rural Americans favor conserving natural resources for future generations rather than using natural resources to create jobs, while 29 percent favor job creation, and 28 percent think both priorities should be weighed equally. But only 40 percent of born-again Protestants favor resource conversation (compared with 49 percent of Catholics and 48 percent of unaffiliated rural Americans), and these Protestants were significantly more likely to say that urban sprawl and global warming have no effects on their communities.
Rural Americans, "who are more often evangelical, may see the effects of global warming and other environmental issues first-hand, given how central natural resources are to their livelihoods,” says sociologist and report co-author Michele Dillon. “Yet we found that born-again Protestants tend to be the least likely to perceive the effects of global warming.”
Research show that born-again Protestants are especially prominent in chronically poor communities and declining resource-dependent communities, which are found mainly in Appalachia and the Midwest. In these declining resource-dependent communities, 59 percent of born-again Protestants see no effects of global warming (compared with 50 percent of nonevangelical Protestants). “There seems to be a confluence of experiencing decline and being born again that is particularly antithetical to perceiving environmental threat,” Dillon says. —Heather Wax

"The truth is that blind faith in the ability of technology to sustain a growing global population—hard-wired to materialism—that has already breached environmental limits is bonkers," writes Nick Reeves, executive director of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, in a piece on religious environmentalism in today's Guardian. "Faith group leaders must be more vociferous in challenging this—they have unique access to governments and institutions. They must exercise that influence by holding them to account." According to Reeves, who's responding to an earlier profile of Archbishop Bartholomew of Constantinople, a spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians and an environmental campaigner, "faith groups have been silent for too long on this crisis, and should do far more to remind us of our moral duty to restore and protect the fragile ecological balance of the planet." —Heather Wax

Earlier this week, 25-year-old seminary student Jonathan Merritt, with the support of many influential leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, released a proposal of action and conservation in response to the challenge of climate change. The "Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative" makes four points on the issue: Humans have a responsibility to care for the environment, addressing the problem is prudent, environmental stewardship is required of all Christians, and individuals and organizations should act now. The proposal conflicts with a resolution on global warming passed last June at the South Baptist Convention's official annual meeting, which urged caution on the issue in light of what it saw as conflicting evidence. (The scientific consensus is that climate change is real and occurring; the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found, with more than 90 percent certainty, that global warming has begun and is a result of human activities.) Ultimately, no one group speaks for all of the 16.3 million members of the Southern Baptist denomination, who leave final decisions to the local churches, but Merritt's declaration will likely have a strong influence as congregations begin to address the issue for themselves. —Stephen Mapes

Eco-theologians and religious environmentalists got together this past weekend at the "Renewing Hope" conference at Yale University, sponsored by The Forum on Religion and Ecology, to discuss new and creative ways religions can help encourage environmental activism and awareness. Religious environmentalism is on the rise, and now The Boston Globe is reporting that a number of Christians across New England have pledged to "go green" and give up carbon for Lent, using clotheslines rather than dryers and candles in place of lights, eating only locally grown food, and carpooling more. These "Lenten environmentalists," as they have come to be known, recognize that their small, individual actions will do little to slow global warming, but say the 40 days of penance and sacrifice leading up to Easter is the perfect time to re-examine consumption and to take greater responsibility in caring for creation. —Kaitlin Shimer

Old wood from historic churches has become a new resource for researchers hoping to reconstruct weather patterns and climate history. When the Salt Lake Tabernacle, a sacred Mormon building built from local trees beginning in 1863, was renovated in 2005 and the structural timbers were replaced with steel beams, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gave Matthew Bekker, an assistant professor of geography at Brigham Young University, the opportunity to study the wood. By studying and dating the growth rings of these timbers, a science known as "dendrochronology," Bekker discovered that when Mormons arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, it was one of the driest periods in the region's recent history, meaning Utah's first Anglo settlers faced the hardships of a severe drought. —Kaitlin Shimer

Thousands of academic and religious organizations across the country have planned events for "Focus the Nation: Global Warming Solutions for America," a week dedicated to drawing national attention to climate change. In New York, for instance, Syracuse University, in collaboration with the State University College of Environmental Science and Forestry, will hold a teach-in on global warming today, and Le Moyne College, a Jesuit school also in Syracuse, held a teach-trek yesterday (with students walking and bicycling through downtown Syracuse to raise awareness of the issue) and has a series of presentations and discussions planned for today. Other area religious groups, including the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society and St. James Episcopal Church, joined the effort by organizing their own events last Sunday. —Stephen Mapes

Do different religions—with their differing views on the role and place of humans in nature—shape the role their followers take in protecting the environment?

As the global warming debate continues to heat up, "green sermons"—in which religious leaders call for environmental activism—are beginning to sweep the Southeast, thanks to movements like the Interfaith Power and Light campaign. These messages from the pulpit are raising awareness of key environmental issues, such as energy conservation and the reduction of carbon footprints, among a large demographic of American society. Advocates hope to see the trend spread to congregations throughout the country. —Stephen Mapes

Mary Tucker and John Grim, coordinators of the international Forum on Religion and Ecology, have been granted five-year appointments at Yale University's School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. The environmental ethicists will work closely with the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, the Divinity School, the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and the department of religious studies to develop a program of study relating religion and ecology. —Stephen Mapes