Religious leaders in climate call

LCA Bishop John Henderson has joined hundreds of religious leaders from around the world in adding their names to an interfaith statement urging the world’s political leaders to take swift and just action on climate change.

Bishop Henderson signed the statement last month on behalf of the district bishops and the LCA.

The statement was issued in the wake of the Paris Agreement coming into effect on 4 November and came out while global government leaders again met on the issue in Marrakech, Morocco. At last year’s conference in Paris, national leaders signed an agreement committing them to climate change reduction measures aimed at limiting global temperature rise to below 2 Celsius and preferably below 1.5C.

The Paris Agreement came into effect by reaching its threshold of 55 per cent of nations representing 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. On 10 November Australia became the 104th nation to ratify it. New Zealand ratified the agreement in October.

Bishop Henderson said religious leaders recognised that the task of cutting global emissions was ‘enormous and difficult’.

‘May God grant to humankind the wisdom, the creative ideas, the commitment, the empathy and the generosity that we will need to achieve a just transition to a world of reduced greenhouse gas emissions’, he said.

In 2015, through its General Convention of Synod, the LCA accepted the challenge of placing the issue of responsible care of creation before its members.

Read the interfaith statement here.