Young Evangelicals fight climate change from inside the church: "We can solve this crisis in multiple ways"

Ahead of September's U.N. General Assembly in New York City, thousands of youth activists flooded the streets of Manhattan, calling for the end of the use of fossil fuels. Among them was Elsa Barron, 24, a young Evangelical Christian looking to make change in her community. 

Barron, a climate research fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, a non-partisan institute of the Council on Strategic Risks, told CBS News that she is hoping to change the minds of those in her church who don't believe in climate change. A Pew Research Center poll from 2022 found that 53% of Americans say human activity is responsible for a warming planet, but only 32% of Evangelical Christians agree. That's the lowest amount of support from any of the religious groups surveyed, 45% of Christians said that human activity is responsible for a warming planet, and 50% of Catholics said the same. In general, Evangelical Christians are the most skeptical religious group when it comes to climate change. 

"There's a lot of emphasis on sort of God's divine care for the world and his good plan for the world," Barron told CBS News. "But some people kind of take that and say ... 'If you think the world is at risk, then maybe you don't have enough trust or faith in God.'"