In a January speech to ambassadors to The Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI denounced the failure of world leaders to agree to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen, saying world peace depends on safeguarding God's creation.
CAPTIONBy Maurizio Brambatti, APWhat would God do? A rising chorus of voices is framing efforts to fight climate change in moral and religious terms -- from the pope to a leading climatologist.
"The predominant moral issue of the 21st century, almost surely, will be climate change, comparable to Nazism faced by Churchill in the 20th century and slavery faced by Lincoln in the 19th century," writes James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981, recently in The Huffington Post.
Climate scientist James Hansen, pictured at the 2008 Green Apple Festival in Washington, D.C., says climate change is the predominant moral issue of the 21st century.
CAPTIONBy Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images"Our fossil fuel addiction, if unabated, threatens our children and grandchildren, and most species on the planet," says Hansen, who won the $100,000 Sophie prize last week for his decades of work in warning about climate change.
Hansen says many religions -- Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Evangelicals -- see climate change as a moral and ethical challenge, and some are pressing Congress to pass legislation
