Religious right calls for action on climate

WASHINGTON - Evangelical Christians, pillars of the Bush Administration and the Republican majorities in Congress, are increasingly breaking with the White House and demanding real action to tackle climate change.

Yesterday 86 prominent figures in the movement, among them leading pastors, the heads of evangelical colleges and the Salvation Army, released a statement warning that "millions of people could die this century" because of global warming - most of them in the poorest regions of the earth.

Until recently global warming has not been a priority for evangelicals, most familiar for their uncompromising stances on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, and their emphasis on the family.

"Many of us required considerable convincing" that it was a problem, the statement acknowledges. "Now we have seen and heard enough."

The manifesto will be followed up with information campaigns at evangelical churches, schools and universities across the US, backed up by radio and TV spots. All will spread the word that the Government must curb carbon dioxide, preferably by "cost effective, market-based mechanisms".

That last is a nod in the direction of the business community, which evangelicals have generally supported in the past. But new urgency - spurred by Hurricane Katrina at home, and by the devastation of drought and starvation, witnessed first hand by missionaries in the Third World - is striking enough nonetheless.

The initiative is actively opposed by some of the biggest names in the movement - among them James Dobson, head of the highly influential conservative group Focus on the Family.

That group signed a public letter in January claiming that "global warming is not a consensus issue", and urging the National Association of Evangelicals, the movement's umbrella group, not to take a definite position on climate change.

Thus far the NAE has not done so - but there is small doubt which way it is moving. Although neither Ted Haggard, its president, nor leading member Richard Cizik have signed the manifesto, the latter made his feelings plain in an interview last month.

"We, as evangelical Christians, have a responsibility to God, who owns this property we call Earth," Cizik said. "We don't own it. We're simply to be stewards of it. And if climate change is occurring, can we simply ... pretend it isn't happening?"

Such sentiments are not those of the White House, which has resolutely played down climate change and mankind's responsibility for it. Arguing that market forces will resolve the problem, it has regularly tried to gag officials who suggested otherwise.

But unease among evangelicals will only have grown after the State of the Union address, in which Bush did not once touch on climate change.

Nor will this unease be easy to ignore. In 2004 the evangelical vote split four to one in favour of Bush, accounting for a third of his support, and the decisive margin in his narrow victory over Democrat John Kerry.

Yesterday's statement is also proof how religious groups of every shade feel increasingly obliged to speak out on the global warming issue. The trend has seen the religious right make common cause with the "religious left" and other liberal religious groups.

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