In the poignant yet hopeful panel discussion “building a spirit of solidarity to overcome climate crisis” faith leaders from around the world urged us to pursue a higher consciousness that taps into our potential for compassion, service and community as we tackle climate change together.
Debra Roberts reminded us about fostering a mindset for service when addressing climate change. Science is an extremely powerful tool that allows us to acquire new knowledge by “shining light into dark spaces.” However, the knowledge gained from science should be seen through the lens of service and how this new knowledge can ultimately be used to serve and protect people and the world.
Martin Frick talked about the challenges of trust. Frick compared the negotiations to ordering food at a pizzeria. The “climate negotiations is like trying to order one pizza for 100 people but you can only order one pizza. Each person has their own dietary restrictions and flavor palate. In order to accommodate each person you slowly take away ingredients until all you are left with is a piece of cooked dough. However, despite the apparent failure, you still have a piece of bread that you can break and share with your brothers and sisters, and what could be more human than that?” Building solidarity requires trust and faith in the basic goodness of humanity.
Isabel Adarve talked about the potential for solidarity comes from human compassion. Building bridges begins when you can step into another person’s shoes, when we can start having meaningful conversations with the people that we most disagree with. Barnardito Auzo echoed the importance of dialogue. He asked, are we limiting our dialogue to people that agree with us? What if we engaged with the people that still have doubts? Barnardito Auzo gave further reflections based on the Encyclical Letter from Pope Francis on climate change. He believes that solidarity comes from our collective ecological conversion. We will grow closer when we make a conscious choice to change our lifestyle. We can begin to make this recalibration in our own lives through our daily choices. This kind of conversion may require changing the way we eat, our mode of transport, and our overall culture of consumerism. These are not easy changes, but these changes are easier to make when we realize they are for the sake of humanity; our human family. As countries begin implementing the Paris Agreement an important question for leaders and policymakers to ask is, what kind of world do we want to pass on to our children and grandchildren?