Facing the Environmental Crisis

Consequences for Scientific and Religious Communities

At the end of the year of 2015, an international conference shall take place in Paris to which the UN has invited the leaders of all nations in order to make an internationally binding treaty about the necessary measures for preventing that the global warming surpasses the limit of two degrees since the beginning of industrialization. The import of making this treaty this year is that, without taking the necessary measures now, a worldwide climatic cataclysm may start that, after having started, cannot be stopped by any treaty to be decided on later, when all nations are ready for it, because they have been sufficiently hit by that cataclysm. Accordingly, the political leaders on this globe have a last chance to prevent that cataclysm of which early signs are already visible everywhere, though to very different degrees. Precipitations fall less frequently than in former decades, and when they fall, they much more often cause floods that, by their immediate impact, more frequently produce destructions of a degree that, until recently, were unheard of. The number and extent of forest fires has drastically increased, as have hurricanes and tornados. And the sea level is rising from melting glaciers and ice sheets around the North and South Poles, so that island nations in the Pacific Ocean are on the brink of drowning in the surrounding seas.