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Ever worry about climate change? I don't. I figure I'll be dead long before Wendover becomes a beach town. It's selfish, I know. But I'm trying to be honest.

This doesn't mean I don't believe in global warming, or that human beings aren't a major factor in it. I'm just not worried about it messing with my property values.

I do, however, worry about my kids and grandchildren. It's why I take public transportation, eat less beef, and limit the number of bowling balls I try to put on the moon. If I don't care much about my future, I do care about theirs.

Exactly what it would take to fix or even slow global warming is a mystery to me. That's something scientists will have to figure out. I'm not smart enough to come up with an answer.

Climate change skeptic Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich, believes he is smart enough. Speaking at a town hall meeting in Michigan on Friday, he told a constituent that if there's a real climate problem, the only solution is a heavenly one.

"Why do I believe that?" Walberg said. "Well, as a Christian, I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us. And I'm confident that, if there's a real problem, he can take care of it."

Now I am worried. See, God has a different idea about problem-solving than most of us. The last time he came up with a global fix, he reportedly drowned 99.999 percent of the entire planet — kids, animals, dogs, bugs, everything. Except fish.

I don't know about you, but that's not what I call an acceptable fix. Those who believe differently do so only because they weren't there treading water while Noah waved goodbye in the rain.

Note: This, of course, presumes that I believe in a flood that covered the entire Earth. I don't. Frankly, there's far more physical evidence to support human participation in climate change than there is in the Earth being scrubbed shiny and new a few thousand years ago.

Herein lies one of the big problems I have with religion — the idea that we can do whatever we want with the Earth without paying a price.

Really, why worry about the environment if God is either going to fix it for us, and/or rapture/kill us all at any moment?

It's a convenient thought for people who've been watching the sky for 2,000 years waiting for something special to happen. Unfortunately, so far all we have is pollution and holes in the ozone layer.

A religious belief that explains away or attempts to dismiss the absolute need humans have to take care of the rock we're sitting on isn't a belief that merits much respect. If God gave us the Earth, then don't we have a moral obligation to stop treating it like a toilet?

This also applies to people who believe our pre-eminence on this planet comes to us via evolution. Just because our ancestors once had foreheads no taller than their eyebrows doesn't mean we can still act like it.

But, hey, that's just me. What do I know? I'm just an idiot columnist who winds people up by lampooning their cherished beliefs.

Here's what I do know. It's possible to be so focused on heaven that we forget we're creating our own hell.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.