Source: The Guardian

Two years ago Yeb Sano, the Filipino government’s lead climate negotiator, broke down in tears in front of the world’s diplomats in Warsaw as typhoon Haiyan ripped through his home city of Tacloban, killing thousands of people.

This week he arrived at the Paris climate talks a changed man. No longer a star diplomat, he came on foot after completing a 58-day, 1,500km pilgrimage from Rome. He is now an official adviser to the archbishop of Manila.

The politics of climate change are limiting, he says. “I am happy not to be stuck inside the [negotiating] rooms all night. Now I feel I am part of a larger fight and can say what I want to say. No one should be deluded that a single conference like this will change very much. The real changes will take place in communities. People listen to priests and churches in most developing countries far more than they do to politicians and mayors,” he said.
World leaders urged to cut air pollution to save lives in poor countries

Sano has joined faith leaders from many developing countries in urging decision-makers to act not just on scientific or political grounds, but for moral reasons.

Arguing that 80% of people worldwide are churchgoers of one sort or another, the faith groups match the hundreds of NGOs campaigning loudly at the talks for climate action.

On Thursday, a statement signed by 154 religious leaders of different faiths was handed to the UN. It called on politicians to come up with a strong agreement, and follows statements by the pope, the Dalai Lama and other leaders of the Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islam, Jewish, Shinto and Sikh faiths.

“The political leaders of the world are speaking like preachers. May they continue as believers,” said Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC).

Earlier this week, Pope Francis, on his return from Africa, was asked if the climate summit could win the fight against global warming. “I am not sure, but I can say to you, ‘Now or never’,” he said. “Every year the problems are getting worse. We are at the limits. If I may use a strong word I would say that we are at the limits of suicide.”

His words were echoed on Wednesday by James Hansen, one of the world’s foremost atmospheric scientists, who ran the Goddard space laboratory at Nasa and who alerted the world to climate change in US congressional hearings in 1988. Invited to Paris by a Buddhist organisation, he said: “We are on the edge of handing our children a climate system which is out of their control. One species is taking over the planet and threatens one quarter to one half of all the other species. This is an injustice.”

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