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CALLING ALL FAITHS

CIWEM Executive Director, Nick Reeves, says a coalition of the faiths for action on climate change could save the planet.

Professor Bob Watson, the Chief Scientist at Defra, has warned us to prepare for a four degree rise in global warming. This is a significant statement because, only a year ago, we were told that a two degree rise must be avoided at all costs by achieving a 60 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Fat chance. The values of successive post-war governments has been defined by economic growth at almost any cost and, more recently, conflicting actions and messages on the environment. Airport expansion, biofuels and energy from coal are just three ideas that make no sense at all. They trump the Government's Climate Change Bill and have no place in a world at risk from runaway climate change.

That we are failing to reduce emissions means that we are now staring at something much more sinister and four degrees is now a real prospect. In reality this would mean an end to living and the beginning of survival. Or, more realistically, the start of extinction. The idea that humankind could adapt to global warming on this scale is inconceivable and dangerous talk. Four degrees hotter would mark the beginning of a new geological era, the planet transformed and the death of billions of people. Truth be told we don't really know what would happen but, like as not, it would be very scary indeed.

And while it's okay to be spooked, we must not despair…..not yet, at least. To do so is a luxury we cannot afford. There is the faintest of faint chances that we can avert climate catastrophe, if we act now. But, we need strong leadership based on sound and unwavering moral principles; and if we can't rely on the politicians to do what's right, we must surely look to the faiths and to those who have already stepped down from the pulpit and spoken with real conviction on what needs to be done.

Tracking the award-winning environmental campaign work of Archbishop Bartholomew of Constantinople, spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians, isn't it possible to believe that religion can help prevent eco-catastrophe?  After all, as the Archbishop has said: 'Religious people were indifferent, or even hostile, to science. Scientists and ecologists could see little relationship between their world and the world of faith.' But all that has changed.

At a CIWEM global environment conference in London representatives of all the major faiths came together. There was one matter on which they all agreed: the need to collaborate for action on the environment, and especially on climate change. The leadership of Archbishop Bartholomew was held as a beacon and an inspiration. His annual eco-conference-cruises for those in control of the levers of power - to the most blighted parts of the world - bring home the reality of a world bent out of shape by an altering climate.

But the world's faith groups have been silent for far too long on the crisis, and should do far more to remind us of our moral duty to restore and protect the fragile ecological balance of the planet and its finite resources. As the Archbishop reminds us: 'We are all culpable. Each one of us has a smaller or greater contribution to the deliberate degradation of nature.'

The environmentalism of some religious leaders suggests that we may have cause for hope and that an ecological coalition of faiths is possible. I doubt that there is a religious leader in the world who is not pre-occupied by the problems of pollution and climate change and seen the corrosive effect on people's lives. In the last year or so we have seen an eclectic mix of faith leaders, including The Dalai Lama, The Bishop of Liverpool and Pope Benedict, step down from the pulpit and speak directly to us on environmental issues. This is good news and 'God-bothering' of the sort we need for the twenty-first century.

What the faith groups can offer is a framework - ethical, spiritual, imaginative and intellectual - for the pursuit of all the good that relates to human destiny. Fazlun Khalid, Director of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences, has urged time and again that faiths can civilise and change behaviour for a fairer sustainable world. But they must engage with people and evangelise first - promoting a different economic model that is about replenishment, compassion and nurturing. In other words: it's creation, stupid!

In the meantime, cohorts of secularists continue to pursue greedy and harmful lifestyles, believing that technofix solutions alone will be our salvation and allow business as usual. The truth is that blind faith in the ability of technology to sustain a growing global population - hard-wired to materialism and fossil fuels - that has already breached environmental limits, caused armed conflict and made the poor poorer, is bonkers. Faith group leaders must be more vociferous in challenging this. They have unique access to governments and institutions and must exercise that influence by holding them to account.

Together they must argue for (among other things): a single global cap on greenhouse gas emissions; an acceleration on the use of renewable energy; greater energy, water and resource efficiency; protection of forests; sustainable populations and life-style change; different economic models that promote wellbeing; oppose GDP as the defining measure of success and human worth.

When the Environment Agency invited me and other environmentalists to suggest 50 things that would save the planet I was amazed when my suggestion, that the religious faiths should come together to hold the world to account, came second in a table of the most popular ones. That it did so seems significant. Maybe there really is a growing belief that religion can help prevent eco-catastrophe. After all, religious leaders are in a better position to make an impact on their congregations than politicians or celebrities. They have a huge audience and legitimacy over the issue. If I'm right - what are they waiting for?  There's not a moment to lose.