As CityLife reported back in March, Nevada’s (mostly) white, middle-class evangelicals are wondering (mostly in earnest) whether God cares about global warming. And whether they should, too.

Yet, if a new study from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies — one of the nation’s premier research and policy institutions, and the only one focusing exclusively on issues important to blacks and other minorities — is right, those pasty soccer moms and dads and rug rats won’t be the most affected by climate change. As with any great tumult, those closest to the bottom of society (i.e., blacks and other minorities) will face the greatest hell once the Earth’s atmosphere red lines.

Lest you dismiss this as some liberal rant, consider: The study finds that blacks and other minorities are twice as likely to live in cities, where a so-called heat-island effect compounds severe temperatures. They’re also less able to afford spiking energy costs, which hampers both their ability to turn up the air conditioning or move to cooler climes. As dwindling energy supplies and rising temperatures continue to push prices higher, those with the least suffer the most.

According to recent news reports, surveys have shown 81 percent of black Americans think the government should act strongly to mitigate the effects of climate change. Although some among white evangelicals (read: the Southern Baptists) have begun to take these global threat seriously, they’re not speaking out to the degree that their brothers and sisters of color are. For example, one of South Carolina’s largest coalitions recently spoke out on global warming, seeing as how minorities will be most affected when things heat up beyond repair.

Still, Nevada’s white evangelicals continue to either: 1. Deny the science that explains climate change; 2. Wonder how they can give parishioners real tools to curb global warming; or 3. See all this talk as a sign of the end times (a historical mistake of gargantuan proportions on the part of Christians, since the original Greek and Hebrew “holy” texts refer to the end of an astrological age, the age of Pisces, instead of actual Armageddon).

Folks, this reluctance to act — preferring endless jawboning to real action — hampers Nevada in so many ways. From a wariness of constructing a rational tax base to continued endurance of inefficiency and malfeasance across all local and state governmental agencies. There have been times in American history (the American Revolution, pre-Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement) when many Christians embodied both the better angels of our nature and national drill sergeants, who kicked our asses into action. Can Christianity again rise to this challenge, or are the atheists correct when they say it’s just one more cult that should be tossed into the dustbin of history?