As diplomats from more than 190 nations spent nearly two weeks in Paris hammering out details of an international agreement to reduce climate change, faith leaders also traveled to the talks in hopes of offering a moral witness.
The COP21 United Nations climate talks concluded Dec. 12 with the signing of the Paris Agreement, which commits countries to cap warming at 2 degrees Celsius (the Earth has already experienced a 1 degree increase) and sets a goal of finding a way of stopping warming at 1.5 degrees. The agreement also expressed a goal of eliminating greenhouse emissions and established funding mechanisms to assist developing countries in energy transition and adapting to climate change.
Carbon emissions
The agreement also requires participating nations to submit public plans for reducing carbon emissions and to reconvene every five years beginning in 2023 to report on their progress.
Many leaders expressed that the agreement was a good start but needed more work.
Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership, believes the political community alone will not solve the issue of climate change.
“I’m here because I don’t believe governments will do what they should do and must do unless we in the faith community make it impossible for them not to,” he said.
Cizik joined hundreds of Christians from multiple denominations and countries in Paris, like John Christy, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and former Southern Baptist missionary.
Looking out for the effects of the Paris Agreement on the poor, Christy said, “The overriding concern I have here is that the ‘solutions’ to this climate change issue, in nearly every case, hurt people. They cause energy prices to rise or make energy more scarce right at a time when billions of people will need access to the energy.”
When energy is available, “people live longer and better lives,” said Christy, a former lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and recipient of NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
In a Dec. 8 testimony before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, Christy said computer-generated climate change models “have a strong tendency” to overestimate the atmosphere’s warming when compared with the actual warming measured by scientists.
In contrast, The New York Times wrote that “scientists who have analyzed” the Paris accord said “it will cut global greenhouse gas emissions by about half enough as necessary to stave off an increase in atmospheric temperature of 2 degrees Celsius” — at which point “the world will be locked into a future of devastating consequences including rising sea levels, severe droughts and flooding and widespread food and water shortages.”
Calvin Beisner, founder and national spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, agreed with Christy’s assessment that a global campaign to cut carbon emissions could harm the poor.
“We should pray that compliance [with the Paris Agreement] will be as low as possible,” Beisner said, “because the benefits will be slim to nonexistent, but the harms large and real, especially insofar as compliance would prevent developing countries from availing themselves of the most abundant, affordable, reliable energy sources — fossil fuels — to overcome poverty.”
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) weighed in on the issue of global warming in 2007 when a resolution was adopted at the annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas.
Compliance with proposals to reduce carbon emissions, like those of the United Nations-sponsored Kyoto Protocol of 2005, according to the resolution, “are estimated to only reduce the likely rise in the average global temperature by 10 percent or less” and could cost the global economy up to $1 trillion annually — a cost that could impact “poor people and underdeveloped regions of the world … most severely.”
The resolution urged “Congress and the president to only support cost-effective measures to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions and to reject government-mandated reductions in greenhouse gas emissions” and urged “governments to begin to take steps to help protect vulnerable communities and regions from the effects of the inevitable continued cycles of warming and cooling that have occurred throughout geologic history.”
‘Appropriate balance’
It also urged “an appropriate balance between care for the environment, effects on economies and impacts on the poor when considering programs to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions.” The statement denounced as “very dangerous” proposals “to regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions based on a maximum acceptable global temperature goal.”
Gerald Harris, chairman of the 2007 SBC Resolutions Committee, said he continues “for the most part” to “stand by our 2007 resolution.”
The resolution “underscored our commitment to be good stewards of our planet and our environment,” said Harris, editor of Georgia’s Christian Index. “The resolution also suggested that ‘we should proceed cautiously in the human-induced global warming debate in light of conflicting scientific research.’
“I still agree with that. With our national debt skyrocketing, I am also deeply concerned about the cost of the proposed implementation of global warming remedies.”
Liya Rechtman, manager of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, said “the faith community played a critical role in the (Paris Agreement) negotiations, one distinct from the role of traditional environmental groups.” She noted how Jewish and other faith traditions provide moral teachings relevant to “the issue of climate change from the perspective of justice, protecting not just our earth and natural resources, but also poor and vulnerable communities most impacted by climate change.”
Interfaith cooperation
She particularly sees the importance of interfaith cooperation in the work for climate justice.
“None of the faith community work would have come to fruition without interfaith collaboration. While the Jewish community cares deeply about climate justice, we must join with our … interfaith counterparts to do effective advocacy and ensure that our position is heard. I think the interfaith community’s cooperation serves as a positive paradigm for international cooperation.”
Rechtman called the agreement “a much needed step in the right direction” but added it “is only the beginning of combatting climate change.” She remains pleased that a couple of key moral items survived as various drafts of the agreement changed.
She said “faith advocacy has focused on ‘loss and damage’ mechanisms and adaptation finance, both issues that were included in the final agreement.” The “loss and damage” section deals with how to help communities whose homeland will be irreversibly damaged by climate change, such as low-lying Pacific Island nations. The adaption finance section deals with providing financial assistance to vulnerable nations as they deal with a changing climate.
(BNG, BP, TAB)
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