Cancun Faith Groups Gather In Prayer For Climate Conference

Jess Leber is Change.org's environment editor and is writing from COP-16 in Cancun this week, where 193 nations are meeting from Nov. 29-Dec. 11 in their yearly attempt to forge a new international treaty to tackle the global warming crisis.

A surreal air surrounds the global climate talks. That air is cloaked in diplomatic floweriness, impenetrable acronyms, and conditional language—the total effect is to ensure no nation takes responsibility for much at all. But underneath that cloak are some scarily bold statement by omission. By diplomats not saying—and not doing—what needs to be done to slow global warming is in fact an overt decision to consign humanity to a perilous future.

These are the general sentiments expressed by 350.org's Bill McKibben, who spoke at a side event of the COP-16 meetings yesterday. The man is a walking dose of reality, but more on that in a bit. I'd like to first tell you about another dose of reality I experienced here yesterday

Far from the conference center on the Plaza De La Reforma, in front of Cancun's city hall, residents of this city yesterday joined together to say a prayer for the earth (Una Oracion Por La Tierra) and prayer for a successful outcome of the talks they are hosting.

It was an inspiring scene. More than 20 churches of all denominations, and Jews and Muslims too, joined together for the 4-hour event, each group coming up to the stage to say (or sing) their hopes for the global climate system. By my estimate there were some 200 people there in the plaza, and this week they are joined with prayers in churches all over the world, from China to the Canada, and Nicaragua to France. Some 5,000 people are set to participate overall.

The prayer was largely organized by students and churches in Cancun. Almaiza Muñoz, one of the organizers who will attend university soon, told me that at first, many Cancun residents and media were more interested in the business opportunities brought by the conference's 1,000s of attendees. They also remembered the tear gas sprayed during a World Bank meeting here a few years ago, and so were antsy about security measures.

But students like Muñoz have worked to educate the city about the importance of the topic of the conference—and why climate change mattered to Cancun residents as much as it does to the delegates inside. Cancun, for example, is straight in the path of hurricanes the more intense hurricanes coming from the Gulf, and has seen its treasured beaches–the heart of the city's entire economy—shrinking in size in recent years. Now, these students and activists are working to push their city to implement sustainability measures that save water and make the city greener.

The event illustrated the power of the faith community to bring an audience that might not otherwise attend an environmental rally, and why the work that 350.org is doing to bring together these disparate threads of a nascent climate movement is crucial.

McKibben also spoke about why such a movement is needed. At the conference, government delegates are working to secure a target that limits warming to 2 degree Celsius temperature rise. There are two problems with this: 1) Based on actions so far, countries are nowhere near on track to meet a 2 degree target, and 2) That target is way too high to begin with. Already the Earth has warmed a mere 0.8 degrees, and we are starting to see the brutal impacts on our civilization (witness the string of disasters this summer).

In sum, even if we're lucky, "the set of documents that they'll producte will define a world that doesn't work," McKibben said.

The solution? That's the work of grassroots activists around the world. People like the students who organized this rally last night.

"We've got to build a movement quickly that changes the political reality in which they [the negotiators] operate. The problem is not the lack of information on their part. The problem is lack of a political power on our part to force them to act in the ways we need to act," McKibben says.

"The bargaining position of chemistry and physics is now clear: 350 parts per million if you want a world that works the way we're used to it working. Chemistry and physics are unlikely to budget on their negotiating position."

Photos: Una Oracion Por La Tierra rally in Cancun on November 30, 2010, Jess Leber

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