Scientist turned deacon urges faith leaders to implore followers to act on climate
At annual UN climate confab, speakers at event organized by Jerusalem-based interfaith group say scientific proof of crisis is necessary, but it’s not motivating humanity to change
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
BAKU, Azerbaijan — Religious figures must use their moral authority to convince their followers and world leaders to act on the climate crisis, because calls by the secular world and climate scientists are falling on too many deaf ears, speakers at a meeting at this year’s UN climate conference said Tuesday.
At an event hosted by the Jerusalem-based Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, Lisa Graumlich, President of the American Geophysical Union, described how last year she became one of the first climate scientists in the US to be ordained as a deacon of the Episcopal Church, driven by a conviction that religious institutions are uniquely placed to push for climate action.
Graumlich said she had spent years going to conferences like the two-week United Nations COP29 confab, which this year is being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, until November 22.
Having begun to study climate change in the 1970s, she explained, “I was convinced that if the scientific community just assembled more data and analysis, and wrote even thicker reports, then skinnier reports, then presented more Powerpoint presentations, that the public and especially world leaders would wake up and take action. I did that for 40 years.”
“I discovered that scientific understanding is necessary but insufficient to create the motivation for the kinds of transformative changes humanity needs,” she continued.
Faith leaders have several advantages, she went on. Climate change presents profound moral challenges. All religious traditions were founded with the principles of compassion and justice, which resonate with the need to care for the earth as a shared creation. Religious leaders could inspire, mobilize and serve as role models for communities by, for example, cutting emissions, saving energy and using renewable energy in their public spaces. They could help protect communities vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as drought, flooding, and sea level rise. Religious institutions were usually “trusted voices” with the power to educate and shift public attitudes, she said.
Noting how climate change had become politically divisive in the US, Graumlich, who lives in Tucson, Arizona, said faith leaders could “diffuse the sharpness of that boundary.” She cited ranchers in Arizona who were finding it harder to manage with the weather because of climate change. She said it was important to “start the conversations, setting the politics aside and using the values of stewardship of the earth to build an awareness of climate action as an antidote to what’s being seen on the ground by these individuals and communities.”
Noting the international community’s inability to halt rises in global gas emissions over the past 50 years, Metropolitan Serafim Kykotis of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa, said, “We come here to remind leaders that the only way to protect humanity and the planet is to behave like responsible adults.”
“As faith community members, we challenge our leaders to hold dialogue and solve the problems and not waste money every day on killing people, on military spending, on (behaving) like Cain fighting his brother Abel,” said Kykotis, who serves in Zimbabe and was one of the most senior clerics at the conference. ” After the suffering of the Second World War and the genocide of Jews and other communities, we established the UN to offer peace and security. The climate change crisis is related to our security and peaceful coexistence.”
Rabbi Yonatan Neril, founder and director of the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, said that while 85 percent of the world’s citizens were affiliated with a religion, “in democracies worldwide, most religious voters choose candidates who oppose climate action.”
Quoting the late Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, who said God gave humanity the ability to take responsibility, Neril suggested that religion could help people in despair over climate change by giving hope — “not blind hope that God will wave a magic wand, but hope that we can change.”
The conference, attended by just under 66,800 people, according to the UN, is hosting a Faith Pavilion for the second year, featuring 40 events with around 200 speakers, including Neril.
