From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… The climate crisis demands new ways of thinking … and religion is fundamental to achieving that. …”

Why religion is fundamental to addressing climate change

Published: February 25, 2025 12.25am AEDT
Hanane Benadi
Research Officer, Religion and Global Society, London School of Economics and Political Science

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Building a global response to the climate crisis requires us to learn about the many ways people make sense of climate change and learn to live with its consequences. And for most of the world’s population, a purely scientific framing is unhelpful. 

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With my team from the LSE Religion and Global Society research unit, I ran a climate change and religion workshop in Cairo with Muslim and Christian female and male faith leaders. Many of the 30 participants explained they felt frustrated that the climate science lens dominates. 

One member of a faith-based organisation told me during an interview after the workshop that: “We are often approached by western organisations and research institutions to collaborate. However, when we ask about the nature of these collaborations, it is often reduced to our logo and a couple of statements that tell people that they should care about climate change.” 

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As Russian author Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “Science is meaningless because it has no answer to the only questions that matter to us: ‘What should we do and how shall we live? ‘” The climate crisis demands new ways of thinking, new ways of perceiving reality, and religion is fundamental to achieving that.

…Read more:

 https://theconversation.com/why-religion-is-fundamental-to-addressing-climate-change-248074

One thing I really like about the US Christians is their tolerance. Providing someone lives a decent life, there is room in the USA for everyone to find their own path.

But this advancing nexus between climate and religion in my opinion represents a descent back into Dark Ages thinking, in which oppressive religious figures dictated every aspect of people’s lives.

In a free society you can question religion, and you can question science. But when science becomes an apocalyptic end of world religion, questioning is heresy and blasphemy. And we’ve all seen what happens to people who question, when religious leaders assume the mantle of scientific authority.