Global warming prompts faith-based leaders to act
By Patti Mohr
Jan. 16, 2008

Faith-based leaders have grown skilled in responding to natural disasters. When flood waters rise and tornados touch ground, faith leaders are there to help victims survive and rebuild. Now, faith-based leaders are also working to stave off increasing numbers of natural disasters resulting from one seemingly unstoppable condition: global warming.

Climate change is not a new issue on the national agenda. Neither is the faith community’s involvement with it. But, for the most part, climate change initiatives emanate from scientifically-based communities that are wholly separate from religious movements. The principles of religion and science, after all, are diametrically at odds. One is based on unseen spiritual faith; the other on empirical evidence.

When it comes to global issues like climate change, the two communities are finding more and more reason to join together.

Science shows the earth is warming; and it demonstrates that warming increasingly causes hurricane waters to flood low-lying areas, tsunamis to wipe out entire communities, and hot and humid air to more easily spread disease.

“Unfortunately, disaster news will be on the increase thanks to climate change,” said Fred Scherlinder Dobb, a rabbi with the Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, Md. and an advocate for climate change initiatives.

Dobb was one of many religious leaders who discussed global warming during a panel discussion at a Washington, D.C. conference on Wednesday. The three-day conference, sponsored by the National Council for Science and the Environment, brought together stakeholders from the scientific, public policy, education and government communities to seek ways to reduce carbon emissions, which cause global warming.

Policy analysts say fundamental changes are needed to slow the earth’s warming. “On the policy side, we recognize that transformational change is needed,” said Elisa Graffy, an employee with the U.S. Department of the Interior. But science alone cannot make change happen. The economic costs the policies would produce are simply too controversial for policymakers to enact without broad public support. “No policymaker wants to touch that third rail,” Graffy said.

In a free society, only faith and consciousness can drive people to sacrifice on behalf of the greater good. “There is a strong social justice question here,” said A. Karim Ahmed, director of the NCSE’s international program. “That’s where the religious community comes into play.

While many people of faith have yet to accept the science of climate change, others are eager to slow or even stop the warming.

“What I am finding more and more is people are really hungry for solutions,” said Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change. “The faith community can bring people together to talk about these things…. We need to be in dialogue with everyone who has a stake in the issue.”

“This is about education more than anything else,” said John Wood, an academic dean at the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies, an organization that leads undergraduate classes on the environment for more than 60 Evangelical colleges.

Rabbi Dodd says that education is important, but actions are also needed. As a board member with the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, Dodd advocates for public policies that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Dodd helps lead a national initiative known as the 1Sky Campaign, which calls on policymakers to:

  • Invest in energy conservation and clean energy technologies.
  • Reduce 1999 global warming pollution levels by 20 percent by 2020 and by 80 percent by 2050.
  • Stop supporting construction of new coal plants and subsidizing fossil fuel production.

The National Council of Churches, an organization representing more than 100,000 Christian congregations, is actively working to have its views included in climate change legislation being developed in the U.S. Congress. According to Cassandra Carmichael, a director of the council’s eco-justice programs, the faith community has been working on climate change initiatives for over a decade.

Carmichael says protecting the environment is a natural role for religious leaders. “There’s a theological underpinning for doing the work we do.” Concern for impoverished communities is the main factor motivating religious leaders to act on behalf of climate change initiatives. According to Carmichael, the poor are disproportionately impacted by global warming, but they are also the group that would experience the highest drawbacks from legislative solutions. Proposals to reduce carbon emissions would increase costs of heating homes, paying for transportation and consumer goods.

While poverty and climate change are inextricably connected, many of the grassroots organizations involved in global warming don’t advocate on behalf of poor communities impacted by warming. “[Poverty] is not something Greenpeace has at the top of their list,” said Carmichael. “It is the charge of the faith community.”

Though climate change is still not a topic for discussion in many faith-based communities, it is increasingly becoming part of the agenda of community-minded religious groups.

“We are only beginning what I believe is a great revolution,” said Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs with the National Association of Evangelicals. Cizik is not alone in predicting that faith-based leaders acting on of climate change issues today will create a snowball effect that will force the broader community to change. Peter Adriance, a NGO Liaison for the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the U.S. and a co-chair with the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development, suggests that “tremendous change” is underway. “Climate change really forces our hand. It affects every one of us, and we affect it.”

For information about the National Council for Science and the Environment, see www.NCSEonline.org.
For information about the 1Sky Campaign, visit http://www.1sky.org.


Patti Mohr is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C. See www.mohrmedia.com.