Finding political solutions to climate change is more likely if faith communities first engage believers in combating global warming on the local level, the green-minded Anglican bishop of Liverpool said Wednesday during a visit to Colorado.
“This is where I think faith communities have a very important role to play in changing people’s hearts and minds,” the Right Rev. James Jones said in an interview between talks on climate change at Episcopal churches in Colorado Springs and Denver.
Along those lines, Jones is involved in an interfaith project in England called Operation Eden, which promotes recycling, displays “eco-art” and conducts renewable-energy technology demonstrations.
Jones also met in Colorado Springs with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, who has resisted engagement on global warming and signed a statement with other evangelicals saying “global warming is not a consensus issue.” A Focus spokesman said Dobson enjoyed the meeting but that “no minds were changed.”
While his name may be unfamiliar to Americans, Jones is part of a growing movement of religious figures from a mix of traditions trying to frame global warming as a faith-based issue.
“People go to their moral roots to begin to ask questions, and the religious leadership starts to step forward then,” said Celeste Rossmiller, a religious-studies professor at Regis University in Denver who studies the issue.
Acknowledging that many businesses oppose increased regulation on economic grounds, Jones points to studies that show even more dire economic consequences of failing to act: melting glaciers, raised sea levels, floods, withering crops.
The fact that the poor will be victimized should strike another chord with people of faith, including evangelicals, Jones said.
“I think this is creating a new context for the debate,” he said.
Jones said he believes heightened governmental regulation and business incentives are needed to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.
Staff writer Eric Gorski can be reached at 303-954-1698 or egorski@denverpost.com.
