Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: climate change constitutes a spiritual and ethical issue

“Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is a special privilege to attend and address this unique assembly of religious leaders, devout citizens, and people of good will, in our shared concern and prayerful objective to consider ways of responding to urgent challenges in a world where uncertainty seems to be the only sure reality faced by so many of our brothers and sisters across the planet,” said the patriarch. “Climate change and the refugee crisis are no longer an external or remote possibility, far removed from our daily attention and responsibility.”

They are immediately and profoundly affecting our lives, the patriarch noted.

“We no longer have the false luxury of ignorance or indifference,” he said. “We are now either directly contributing to the problem or else decidedly committed to a solution.”

He also reflected that no one is saved alone.

“The threats that our world is currently facing can only be addressed and overcome in collaboration,” he said. “And this is where the dialogue and partnership of religious communities proves to be essential and vital.”

Global warming has become the greatest threat to our planet and its population, the patriarch continued. “The growing but neglected toll from rising global temperatures will undoubtedly and undeniably eclipse the current number of deaths from all the infectious diseases combined if climate change is not constrained,” he said. “Environmental sustainability will only be achieved through drastic lifestyle changes that we must make.”

Climate change primarily constitutes a spiritual and ethical issue, the Ecumenical Patriarch said.

“What religious leaders must always remember and consequently remind civic leaders is that there is no way of endlessly manipulating our environment and its resources that comes without cost or consequence—material and human,” he said. “We are—as we know very well today, and as mystics have taught very clearly through the ages—intimately and inseparably bound up with the history, present, and destiny of our world.”

We must adopt a spirit of honesty and humility, he urged. “We must be prepared to look at options and solutions that affect us personally and not just other people,” he said.

“Unfortunately, so often, we are convinced that solving the ecological crisis is a matter of acting differently or living more sustainably.”