Could Church Be the Key to Solving Climate Change?

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In the past few months, the Holy See has been taking action in various ways to promote environmental stewardship and to reduce its own carbon footprint, all in a bid to protect “God’s creation,” explains a lengthy Globe and Mail article, which appeared this weekend (subscription required).

"We realize that climate change is a fact," said Monsignor James Reinert of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, last July in USA Today. "But we're not going to speak about global warming, or how or why. We're convinced that we still don't know."

The Vatican, with a population of 700, about 100 registered cars, one gas station and no industry, is preparing to become the world’s first carbon neutral state. The manoeuvre will be achieved thanks to a generous donation of offsetting carbon credits, from the reforestation of an island in Hungary.

The donation came from Klimafa, an eco-restoration firm dedicated to large-scale afforestation and reforestation projects in the European Union. The land selected for the reforestation is located in Hungary's Bükk National Park.

The new forest, on a 15-hectare (37-acres) tract of land, will be renamed the "Vatican Climate Forest". In theory, the area will absorb as much carbon dioxide as the Vatican makes through its various activities in 2007: driving cars, heating offices, lighting St. Peters Basilica at night, for example.

Right now, the island is covered in a mix of tangled weeds, wetlands, a lake and a few illegally planted fields of corn. "It is deforested enough that you pretty much have to start from scratch to restore the native forest," said Gergely Torda, a plant biologist from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, who is consulting on the project, quotes an International Herald Tribune article.

Torda explains that the growing forest will absorb up to 10 times the carbon that the land currently absorbs, and will be self-sustaining.

On top of this new carbon offsetting forest, the Vatican has taken other steps to reduce its footprint. The Holy See is preparing to install 1,000 solar captors on the roof of Paul VI Hall, adjacent to St. Peters Basilica, a building as big a football field which holds 12,000 people.

Pope Benedict has also shown support of nuclear energy as a non-polluting energy source, and is apparently under pressure from the greenest Catholics to say a mass on a melting glacier or in a threatened rain forest.

"The Vatican has to be there too. Good religion makes good human beings, and good human beings relate to the world around them," said France's Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, which oversees the Vatican's cultural, educational and scientific activities.

Green thinking is also taking the spotlight in rallies organized by the Vatican. In early September, Pope Benedict led the first eco-friendly Catholic youth rally, in Loreto, a shrine city on Italy's Adriatic coast.

At the event, youth were given backpacks made from recycled material and crank-powered flashlights, prayer books were printed on recycled paper and meals were served on recycled plates. These steps are expected be repeated at the next World Youth Day rally, next July in Sydney.

"Discover the beauty of love, but not disposable love, that is here today and gone tomorrow, that is deceitful and prisoner of an egoistic and materialistic mentality but a love that is real and deep," the Pope told the crowd, quotes a Reuters report.

Environmental groups such as Conservation International of Washington D.C., an independent organization focused on preserving biodiversity, believe all faiths can play an important role in raising awareness about climate change.

"In a vacuum created by the lack of political leadership and the [climate change] wiggle room from the scientists, you have to seek the moral authority and leadership from another area," says Ben Campbell, director of a Conservation International program that helps religions develop conservation and preservation partnerships, to the Globe and Mail. "The churches, mosques and synagogues can provide this authority."

Many point out that the Church, through previous Pope John Paul II, was the first to acknowledge the threat of climate change, in 1990 – seven years before the Kyoto Protocol was ratified.

He mentioned "the threat of ecological breakdown" and "uncontrolled deforestation" and how the culture of "instant gratification and consumerism" was tearing the world apart. He called the "greenhouse effect" a crisis, the result of "vastly increased energy needs," reminds the Globe.

But Pope Benedict may soon inherit the title of “greenest pope”. In fact, rumours indicate that he will issue an encyclical, a formal statement sent to the bishops, on the environment next year.

"We may be theological conservatives," says Bishop Christopher Toohey, a Vatican adviser on climate change and the chairman of Catholic Earthcare, the Australian bishops' ecological agency. "But we also see our role in coming from the classic definition of conservatism - I see my role as conserving something."

There were just over one billion Roman Catholics in the world, in 2005.