I’ve been a pastor, and I know how busy pastors can be. So why would I urge America’s Christian leaders and clergy to take on yet another concern: namely, standing against global warming alarmism?

Because while on the surface this might seem like a peripheral issue, it has profound spiritual, moral, and economic implications for believers -- and especially the poor -- that pastors can ill afford to ignore.

It is widely believed that increasing emissions of carbon dioxide are causing global warming that threatens to harm people, wildlife, and ecosystems through rising sea levels; increasing droughts, floods, and storms; and an altering of natural habitats.

In response, some people propose to fight global warming by slowing or reversing the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere through massive, forced reductions in use of carbon-based fuels–oil, coal, and natural gas.

The most recent example is a bill that recently passed the House of Representatives. It would create a so-called "cap-and-trade" system to reduce CO2 emissions. Emitters would be required to obtain permits, which would be limited in number (the "cap"), from the federal government and could then buy and sell them on the market (the "trade"). The cap would gradually decrease, increasing the cost of energy over time.

A recent study by the Heritage Foundation found that the law would:

$ raise the average family’s annual energy bill $1,241 (over $100 per month);

$ raise electricity rates 90%, gasoline prices 74%, and residential natural gas prices 55%;

$ raise unemployment by nearly 2 million jobs in 2012, with additional job losses to follow;

$ raise the inflation-adjusted federal debt 26% by 2035–about $115,00 per family of four; and

$ reduce gross domestic product by an average of $393 billion per year, or $9.4 trillion through 2035.

The payoff? About 0.09 degree F reduction in global average temperature in the year 2050. (The real reduction might be only 1/10 as much.) At that rate, counting the costs only through 2035, we’d be paying $940 billion for every 1/100th of a degree reduction in temperature. Assuming—optimistically!—that costs after 2035 were slashed in half, we’d end up paying an additional $2.9 trillion, for a total of over $12 trillion, or $1.2 trillion for every 1/100th of a degree. That’s an awful lot to pay for so little return when growing numbers of qualified scientists reject the case for destructive manmade global warming anyway.

In the face of these facts, we should remember that the Bible requires us to care for the poor. The Apostle Paul wrote that the other Apostles in Jerusalem had one main concern on their minds when he visited them: that he should "remember the poor–the very thing [he] also was eager to do" (Galatians 2:10).

The costs of climate change policy will hit the poor harder than anyone else. Indeed, they can least afford the general rise in prices, and energy constitutes a larger share of their spending than of others with more discretionary income.