Dina Medland recently penned an article regarding a joint effort by the world's top corporations to reduce carbon emissions. Much of the language employed by Medland was an act to illuminate the similarities between running a business and supporting climate action. Put simply, if the earth is our business then we are the shareholders. A sentiment shared by the Church of England, who earlier this week relinquished their historical divide with the Catholic Church to show its support for climate action.
Climate change, as many pressing issues, has acted as a unifier of moral leadership. Long gone are the days of blame, instead, we are united in our effort to protect our investment (God's creation). Faith leaders are making a concerted effort to join together to remedy the effects of climate change. Will you join them?
Church of England Wields its Influence in Fight Against Climate Change
By Damian Carrington for The Guardian
Climate change campaigners have long liked to believe they are acting on the side of the angels. Now it seems the angels may be acting on the side of the climate change campaigners.
The growing involvement of the world’s religious organisations in the fight to tame global warming, which will hit the poorest hardest, took a significant step forward on Friday when the Church of England for the first time decided that climate change was an ethical reason to dump some investments from its £9bn endowment.
Earlier in the week, the Vatican called for a moral awakening on climate change, ahead of an encyclical from the pope, which is expected to be one of the most influential interventions in a year that ends with a crunch UN climate summit in Paris. With Methodists, Quakers, United Reformed Presbyterians and many other denominations across the UK and the world taking action on climate change by selling off their investments in coal, oil and gas, the question is how great an impact will the moral authority conferred by religious groups have?
“In all the great social movements in history, a part of the church has always been at the forefront, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu with apartheid, Baptist minister Martin Luther King with civil rights in the US, and William Wilberforce with slavery,” argues Christine Allen, Christian Aid’s director of policy and public affairs. “But there has always been a bit of the church at the back too – the church is broad. It takes a while to get to agreement, but when that happens things move very fast. We really are at that tipping point now.”
