Religions and greenhouse gases

Since the installation of the present Pope, the Catholic Church has shifted strongly towards giving priority to environmental protection. Leaders of the religious right in the US have also moved large distances towards a full recognition of the destructive effects of man's activities on the natural environment. These are extraordinarily hopeful signs. The addition of the world's main faiths to the coalition demanding action on greenhouse gases can only add to the pressure for substantive action on climate.

At a conference this week (April 26/27th) in the Vatican, the Catholic Church seems at last to have seen the connection between issues of global development and concerns over rapid climate change. No longer does it present development and climate care as being in conflict. Instead it seems to have come to recognise that without actions to mitigate atmsopheric pollution, the world's poorest will never rise out of poverty. This is a historic transition.

In this year, the 200th anniversary of Britain's legislative ban on the involvement of its citizens in the Atlantic slave trade, we need not look far for an analogy. It was only the addition of the conservative evangelicals led by William Wilberforce to the Quakers (and Clarkson) driving the anti-slavery campaign that gave the movement any chance of political success in the UK. In 1787, Thomas Clarkson finally asked Wilberforce, a member of the ruling class and a man of noted integrity, to back the campaign in the British parliament. It took another twenty years to pass legislation, but Wilberforce's recruitment to the cause was a vital addition to the anti-slavery movement. (Read Adam Hochschild's 'Bury the Chains').

Those of us involved in the climate change movement need to grasp the hands of our new allies. Cranky environmentalists cannot succeed without broader support. All the world's main religions give some weight to the protection of the natural world. It is only by drawing in broad and politically powerful sections of society such as the faith communities that we can possibly hope to succeed.