The Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI) is a campaign by US-American church leaders and organizations to promote market based mechanisms to mitigate global warming.
The Evangelical Climate Initiative was launched in February 2006 by the National Association of Evangelicals. [1] The NAE worked with the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School to bring scientists and evangelical Christian leaders together to mitigate climate change. [2]
The two groups agreed that the Earth "is seriously imperiled by human behavior," and that this was affecting the "poorest of the poor, well over a billion people, who have little chance to improve their lives". The initiative stated that saving the creation required nothing short of a new moral awakening "clearly articulated in Scripture and supported by science”. [3] [4]
At this time Richard Cizik was the vice-president for governmental affairs at the NAE and an advocate of creation care. [5] [6] At this time, not all NAE members were in agreement with the ECI initiative and its statements calling for protecting the earth from global warming, pollution and extinctions.
The ECI was initially signed by 86 evangelical leaders and the presidents of 39 evangelical colleges. [7] [8] [9] The number of signatories had risen to over 100 by December 2007, [10] and as of July 2011 over 220 evangelical leaders (including the NAE) had signed the call to action. [11] David P. Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University, helped draft the document. [12]
The initiative was initially well received, with endorsements from public figures including Pat Robertson, Al Sharpton and Mike Huckabee. It appeared that pressure from voters could make a change in government policies. [13]
In 2009, the Tea Party movement was founded in Chicago. This was a conservative movement within the Republican party which had several beliefs, including reduced government spending. They stated that they opposed the teaching of ‘global warming theory’ in schools and that the ‘regulation of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere should be left to God and not government’. [14] As the Tea Party became more popular, climate skepticism and hostility towards climate science and policies became more prevalent in the US. [15]
The US is the only developed country where religious background can be linked to belief in environmentalism. [16] These differing religious views on climate and creation care can be seen as part of the larger Global warming controversy and political, social and economic Culture war in the 2020s.
The NEA continues to call on its members to act against climate change. [17] [18] Richard Cizik left the NEA and launched the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good. [19]
Other Christian organisations continue to work in the area of global warming, including A Rocha and Operation Noah.
The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) is an association of evangelical denominations, organizations, schools, churches and individuals, member of the World Evangelical Alliance. The association represents more than 45,000 local churches from about 40 different denominations and serves a constituency of millions. The mission of the NAE is to honor God by connecting and representing evangelicals in the United States.
The Global Warming Petition Project, also known as the Oregon Petition, is a group which urges the United States government to reject the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and similar policies. Their petition challenges the scientific consensus on climate change. Though the group claims more than thirty-thousand signatories across various scientific fields, the authenticity and methods of the petitioners as well as the signatories' credentials have been questioned, and the project has been characterized as a disinformation campaign engaged in climate change denial.
Sir John Theodore Houghton was a Welsh atmospheric physicist who was the co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) scientific assessment working group which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with Al Gore. He was the lead editor of first three IPCC reports. He was professor in atmospheric physics at the University of Oxford, former Director General at the Met Office and founder of the Hadley Centre.
Stop Climate Chaos is a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the United Kingdom that focuses on climate change. It was established in September 2005 and is known for running the "I Count" campaign from 2006 to 2007. In addition, the coalition organized 'The Wave" on 5 December 2009 as a lead-up to the UN talks in Copenhagen.
Joseph J. Romm is an American researcher, author, editor, physicist and climate expert, who advocates reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming and increasing energy security through energy efficiency and green energy technologies. Romm is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2009, Rolling Stone magazine named Romm to its list of "100 People Who Are Changing America", and Time magazine named him one of its "Heroes of the Environment (2009)", calling him "The Web's most influential climate-change blogger".
Joel Carl Hunter is the former senior pastor of Northland Church, a congregation of 20,000 that worshiped at three sites in Central Florida. He is the author of A New Kind of Conservative, Church Distributed and Inner State 80: Your Journey on the High Way. Hunter accepted the presidency of the Christian Coalition in 2006, but resigned before taking the office.
Richard Cizik is the president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good. He was the Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and one of the most prominent Evangelical lobbyists in the United States. In his position with the NAE, Cizik's primary responsibilities were setting the organisation's policy on issues and lobbying the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Cizik also served as NAE's national spokesman and edited a monthly magazine, NAE Washington Insight. Since 2003, Cizik has been active in a type of environmentalism known as "creation care." His stance on global warming has drawn both support and criticism from fellow Evangelicals. He serves on the board of advisors of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
Evangelical environmentalism is an environmental movement in which some Evangelical Christian organizations have emphasized biblical mandates concerning humanity's role as steward and subsequent responsibility for the care taking of Creation. While the movement has focused on different environmental issues, it is best known for its focus of addressing climate action from a biblically-grounded theological perspective.
James Max Spann Jr. is a television meteorologist and podcast host based in Birmingham, Alabama. He currently works for WBMA-LD, Birmingham's ABC affiliate. Spann has worked in the field since 1978. He is also the host of the podcast WeatherBrains which he started in 2006.
Christian views on environmentalism vary among different Christians and Christian denominations.
Climate crisis is a term describing global warming and climate change, and their impacts. This term and the term climate emergency have been used to describe the threat of global warming to humanity and the planet, and to urge aggressive climate change mitigation and "transformational" adaptation. In the scientific journal BioScience, a January 2020 article, endorsed by over 11,000 scientists worldwide, stated that "the climate crisis has arrived" and that an "immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis."
Climate change has led to the United States warming by 2.6 °F since 1970. The climate of the United States is shifting in ways that are widespread and varied between regions. From 2010 to 2019, the United States experienced its hottest decade on record. Extreme weather events, invasive species, floods and droughts are increasing. Climate change's impacts on tropical cyclones and sea level rise also affects regions of the country.
Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, first published in October 2007, is a book written by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, both long-time environmental strategists. Break Through is an argument for a positive, "post-environmental" politics that abandons the traditional environmentalist focus on nature protection for a focus on creating a new sustainable economy.
Philip David Radford is an American activist who served as the executive director of Greenpeace USA. He was the founder and President of Progressive Power Lab, an organization that incubates companies and non-profits that build capacity for progressive organizations, including a donor advisory organization Champion.us, the Progressive Multiplier Fund and Membership Drive. Radford is a co-founder of the Democracy Initiative, was founder and executive director of Power Shift, and is a board member of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. He has a background in grassroots organizing, corporate social responsibility, climate change, and clean energy. He currently serves as the Chief Strategy officer at the Sierra Club.
The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation is a conservative Christian public policy group that claims that a free-market approach to care for the environment is sufficient, and is critical of much of the current environmental movement. The Alliance is "engaged in a wide range of antienvironmental activities" and denies man-made global warming.
Deborah Fikes is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the board of directors of the Arms Control Association. She is a co-president of Religions for Peace, the world’s largest and most representative multi-religious coalition, with offices in New York. Fikes serves as an executive advisor to the World Evangelical Alliance, which represents a constituency of 650 million with alliance offices in 129 countries, and was the WEA's permanent representative to the United Nations from 2009-2016. She served for three consecutive terms as a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), which represents 45,000 churches in the United States.
The climate change policy of the United States has major impacts on global climate change and global climate change mitigation. This is because the United States is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses in the world after China, and is among the countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions per person in the world. In total, the United States has emitted over a trillion metric tons of greenhouse gasses, more than any country in the world.
The Bay Area Climate Collaborative (BACC) is an initiative of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group through its Sustainable Valley Foundation. It was established on March 6, 2009. The former mayors of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland launched the BACC with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and business and civic leaders. The BACC created a 10-point action plan including initiatives in solar energy, energy efficiency, electric vehicles, and green jobs.
Katharine Anne Scott Hayhoe is a Canadian atmospheric scientist. She is a Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor and an Endowed Chair in Public Policy and Public Law at the Texas Tech University Department of Political Science. In 2021, Hayhoe joined the Nature Conservancy as Chief Scientist.
The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative is a diplomatic and civil society campaign to create a treaty to stop fossil fuel exploration and expansion and phase-out existing production in line with the targets of the Paris Climate Agreement, while supporting a just transition to renewable energy.
