Science turns to religion for "mass mobilisation" on environmental change

Ahead of the UN summit on climate change, two leading scholars in the field make a watershed appeal to religious leaders for help in mobilising public opinion on the planet's future. An organisation like the Catholic Church is remarkably effective at leading a famine relief campaign. These are mechanisms that we should be using to tackle other global problems, including stopping governments from riding roughshod over people's lives with disastrous effects for biodiversity - Partha Dasgupta Two eminent scientists have made an impassioned appeal to the world's religious leaders for help in curbing the potentially catastrophic effects of the ongoing abuse of the planet's natural resources. Writing in the journal Science the researchers say that religious leaders can instigate the "massive mobilisation of public opinion" needed to stem the destruction of ecosystems around the world in a way that governments and scientists cannot. The call is made in an essay, co-written by Partha Dasgupta, an economist at St John's College, University of Cambridge, and Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate and atmospheric scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, who collectively have eight decades of experience researching environmental change and its effects. Earlier this year, the pair organised a workshop involving more than 50 other academics at the Vatican, during which they also met with the Pope to discuss their concerns. Their essay appears ahead of the United Nations summit on climate change in New York on September 23, at which Ramanathan will speak about the role that religions can play in mobilising public action on environmental issues.