Pastor Hal Mayer

Speaker / Director

Scientists Turn to Pope/Religion to Save the Planet 

At least one group of scientists is hoping that religion can save the planet. An essay, published in the journal Science, has argued that scientists and faith leaders should unite to fight climate change and habitat destruction. Engaging religious leaders could be “the key to mobilizing billions of people to change aspects of their lifestyles to prevent catastrophic climate change.”

Saying that religion can combine “moral leadership” and “global organizational structures,” the article calls on the pope to influence his network of 1.2 billion believers, but wants all faith leaders of every religion to join the fight.

The article comes as the pope is finalizing a papal encyclical on the environment, which will put the full weight of the Catholic Church behind the movement. “The transformational step may very well be a massive mobilization of public opinion by the Vatican and other religions…,” wrote the authors, Prof Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta, an economist based at St John’s College, Cambridge. They say that economic or market incentives or penalties alone will not solve the problem. It requires the moral leadership that religious institutions offer.

Professor Naomi Oreskes, historian of science at Harvard, said: “This is a watershed moment… Professors Dasgupta and Ramanathan remind us that we are all responsible for the common good.”

Even secular scientists now wonder after… Revelation 13:3