Faith groups can – and must – lead the response to climate change. That is the message of the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
In a letter to The Herald newspaper in Scotland, the Right Rev Bill Hewitt, described the reduction of carbon emissions as a moral issue and said that Christians must use their power as consumers, citizens and activists to change the way we live on earth.
This is the full text of his letter:
The news from Copenhagen that the world’s political leaders have failed to find a collective way to tackle climate change is devastating for us all, but especially for the world’s poorest people.
Climate change is the single biggest challenge to humanity’s stewardship of the Earth and so far we are failing the test. Doing everything we can to reduce our carbon emissions and to take care of this world we have been given is not simply a political or an economic issue, or even an environmental one. It is a moral issue. People are dying because of our actions and our inaction and yet somehow this has been lost in political machinations and national stand-offs.
This issue will not go away. We cannot avoid the consequences of our own lack of care for the planet. Neither can those whose carbon footprint is much lower than ours but whose vulnerability to the devastation of global warming is far greater.
If governments cannot lead, then faith groups and others must step forward to do so. We cannot change the world but we can show, community by community, that where politicians have failed the people can succeed. Having been let down by our political leaders, it is in our hands to change the way we treat our planet. We need to use our power as consumers, as activists, as members of global organisations, as digital citizens, as believers in hope over adversity to change the way the world lives on Earth. We now need to lead our leaders to show them the way.