Are the Paris Climate Talks Part of a ‘Great Spiritual Seduction’?

Energized by Pope Francis’ encyclical calling global warming a moral issue, scientists are enlisting faith leaders to promote climate action as negotiators in Paris try to convince world leaders to reach an agreement to curb greenhouse gases.

 

Physicist John Schellnhuber, founder of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said he believes the interfaith community could play an important role in convincing world leaders to take action.

 

“They know they will be measured against the encyclical,” Schellnhuber, a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, said at a Catholic Church event.

 

In the initial days of climate talks, interfaith activists fasted, spoke to the media and prayed. At a Paris chapel, hundreds of people sang and prayed for the climate negotiators. Interfaith leaders recently handed top United Nations negotiators a petition with 1.8 million signatures requesting climate action.

 

Pope Francis spoke in St. Peter’s Square and appealed to those deciding on climate change measures to show courage by also fighting poverty, saying “the two choices go together.” He asked for prayers for those making decisions on climate change to receive “the courage to always use as their criterion of choice the greater good of the human family.”

 

Read More: Are the Paris Climate Talks Part of a ‘Great Spiritual Seduction’? — Charisma News