Competing to save the earth

[cbayer]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2014/09/religion-and-climate-change

Sep 19th 2014, 16:26 by B.C.



WHEN heads of government from across the world convene in New York next week to consider ways of cooling the planet, a crescendo of religiously-inspired voices, as well as secular green rallying cries, will be resounding in their ears. During the 48 hours before the big meeting opens on September 23rd, two worthy inter-faith organisations—the World Council of Churches and Religions for Peace—will host a "summit" of their own, backed by 30 prominent faith leaders. Meanwhile, it is hoped that millions of people of "faith and moral belief" from across the world will have signed up to an e-petition, ourvoices.net, which urges the world's political leaders to act boldly on climate change, both in New York and at next year's "make-or-break" session in Paris.

The petition, organised by the British pioneer of green investment, Tessa Tennant, has won backing from a series of "ambassadors" who are already familiar figures in the world of faith and religion. They include: Sally Bingham, a California-based Episcopal cleric whose energy-saving initiatives have drawn in 15,000 communities and parishes; Mary Evelyn Tucker, who runs the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University; Seraphim Kykkotis, an Orthodox archbishop based in southern Africa; and Martin Palmer, secretary-general of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, which co-ordinates the environmental activities of a dozen faith groups round the world.

If this sounds like a "Pope is Catholic" story, it is nothing of the kind. Getting to the point where secular and religious players with the declared aim of "saving the planet" can appear on the same page—or website or e-petition—has been more difficult than usual in recent months. Perhaps harder than at any time since religions began to began to pay public attention to the physical fate of the earth, a quarter of a century ago.

To understand why, consider the surreal condescension with which Christiana Figueres, the UN bureaucrat who is steering the global climate negotiations, addressed the religions of the world, as recently as May. "Many forward-looking cities, progressive companies and concerned citizens are urging their governments to ink in a new climate agreement in 2015. It is time for faith groups and religious institutions to find their voice and set their moral compass on one of the great humanitarian issues of our time...." she declared, disclosing her (or her speech-writer's) lamentable ignorance of what religious leaders from the Dalai Lama to the Patriarch of Constantinople have been doing and saying since the early 1990s.

more at link

[Brettongarcia]

1. I notice that when Cbayer doesn't want to answer objections to a story in one OP, she posts another

On the same topic. Hoping to leave the first behind and forgotten?

But in your 1st presentation of essentially this same story - on Pope Francis and pollution - I noted this. Which suggests that religion has been part of the problem, more than the solution:



The best thing the Church could do to help global warming: drop the ban on contraception. There are many things causing global warming: 1) high energy consumption, fossil fuels. But also? 2) Population increase is the key multiplier in pollution and environmental problems: the more people, the more consumption, and the more production of pollution (all other factors being equal).

We can work to have cleaner energy production; but I suggest that birth control would be the easier and more effective and cheaper solution to global warming.

Scientists by the way are hinting that the Catholic Church or other churches, need to make adjustments to their current policies, if they want to help global warming.

Churches backing off their sometimes-adamant resistance to birth control, would be the solution.

Hopefully the Church is heading in this direction. But if so, it will have to change existing policy.