Thou Shalt Halt Global Warming

What does religion have to do with climate change? More than you might think.

Religions around the world own seven to eight percent of the world's habitable land, including over five percent of the forests, according to Environment News Service (ENS). Sustainable land use and forest conservation are major pieces of the climate puzzle.

And these faiths — which claim 85 percent of people on Earth as followers — have huge carbon footprints. In one example, the 16,200 churches and other buildings owned by the Church of England emit about as much carbon dioxide as the entire country of Gambia (PDF). Another example: pilgrimages, which remain the biggest travel events in the world, contribute enormously to our atmospheric carbon.

With realities like these to account for, it looks like religions indeed need to be part of the solution. Thanks to Britain's HRH Prince Philip, who hosted a meeting of faith leaders from around the world last week at Windsor Castle, many of these faiths are are now engaged in addressing global warming as both a practical and a moral issue.

The conference, titled "Many Heavens, One Earth: Faith Commitments for a Living Planet" and organized by Prince Philip's Alliance of Religions and Conservation, took place from November 2 to 4 and was attended by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, and leaders from the faiths of Baha'ism, Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Shintoism and Sikhism.

"The fact that the majority of the world's faiths ascribe the creation of the world to an all-powerful deity, implies that the leaders and followers of each faith have a moral responsibility for the continued well-being of our planet, and particularly for its natural environment," said Prince Philip, according to ENS.

With critical timing just a month before the global climate conference at Copenhagen, the conference participants announced 31 long-term commitments aimed at protecting the Earth, including greening religious buildings, massive tree-planting campaigns and ecotourism policies for pilgrimages, among other things.

Egypt's Grant Mufti announced a Muslim seven-year plan for the environment, which will involve making Medina in Saudi Arabia, one of the most important sites in Islam, a model green city. The Shanghai Eight Year Plan on Environmental Protection involves 90 Buddhist temples and monasteries that have vowed to reduce their pollution and emissions. Other faiths announced a range of other plans.

And it was good.

Photo courtesy of PhillipC on flickr