Today is Earth Day, but global warming activists worry that the planet’s residents are growing cool to their message.

Count many Catholic Americans among the global warming skeptics.

This Wall Street Journal article posted yesterday cites a recent Pew Research Center poll. The poll found that more non-Hispanic Catholic Americans disbelieve than believe that conclusive evidence exists establishing that man-made global warming is the primary driver of climate change.

While 44% of these Catholics believe the facts support the theory of manmade global warming, 48% believe either that global warming is occurring but man isn’t the primary cause or that the evidence that global warming is occurring at all is not persuasive.

These Catholic global warming skeptics are joined by many informed scientists who also argue that the existing evidence does not support the theory that contemporary climate change is caused primarily by human actions. And as The Wall Street Journal notes in its article, in today’s difficult economic climate, Americans collectively are focusing on the economy, not the climate.

All this makes the balanced approach of Pope Benedict XVI toward environmental issues even more prudent. As the Register has reported previously in its coverage of the global warming file, the Pope has refrained from taking sides in the debate over the validity of specific climate change theories.

Instead, the Holy Father has emphasized that responsible stewardship of the Earth that God has entrusted to humanity’s stewardship requires a profound concern for the state of the environment and careful attention to the environmental consequences of human activities — including their possible effect on the global climate.

“Preservation of the environment, promotion of sustainable development and particular attention to climate change are matters of grave concern for the entire human family,” Benedict said in a message released in September 2007 in the context of an international conference convened by environmental and religious leaders to discuss threats to the Arctic environment. “The consequences of disregard for the environment cannot be limited to an immediate area or population because they always harm human coexistence and thus betray human dignity and violate the rights of citizens who desire to live in a safe environment.”

In his message to the Greenland conference, the Pope also stressed environmental issues must be considered in conjunction with concern for the ecology of the human person — a theme he spoke about in more detail last December.

While the Church needs to “defend the Earth, water, air, as gifts of the creation that belongs to all of us ... it must also protect the human being from his own destruction,” he said in his annual exchange of Christmas greetings with members of the Roman Curia.

“It is necessary that there be something such as an ecology of man, understood in the proper manner,” the Holy Father added.

“It is not outmoded metaphysics when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and demands that this order of creation be respected,” Pope Benedict said.

Said the Pope, “The rain forests certainly deserve our protection, but man as creature indeed deserves no less.”