We need ‘spiritual transformation’ to contain global warming

Activist urges choices based on compassion

Can God save us from global warming?

Yes, in a sense, said a climatechange activist in Kitchener on Sunday.

When religious teachings encourage us to feel compassion for others and to behave ethically, it gives us the tools for the “spiritual transformation” we will need, Sailesh Rao told about 50 people from local environmental and faith groups.

“The good news is solving climate change is entirely up to us. It’s all in our hands,” said Rao, an engineer who also helped make the 2014 environmental film “Cowspiracy.”

“It is very similar to other problems that we have tackled before,” he said, such as getting a human astronaut to the moon, or having the internet dominate communication in our lives.

“It’s just that the scale is a little bigger.”

Rao said it would make a big difference to contain global warming if people around the world stopped eating animals and their products, such as dairy and eggs.

It has long been argued that the methane in livestock emissions are an overlooked but major source of greenhouse gases, and that when we cut down forests to produce cattle ranches, the trees are no longer there to hold in the carbon we produce.

Our faith traditions can help us by teaching us that humans’ cruelty to other species, such as keeping poultry in crowded chicken barns, the conditions in slaughterhouses and female pigs held in cages (called sowing crates) so narrow the pig can’t even turn around, is against what our God wants from us.

“We have to go from a system of normalized violence to normalized non-violence,” he said.

“How many of you would deliberately hurt an innocent animal unnecessarily?” he asked the room. No one raised his or her hand.

“You are made in the image of God,” he said. “God is compassionate.”

Rao said the three major problems of climate change are selfishness, greed and apathy. Those are the underlying reasons that we don’t do enough to contain climate change even though we know what to do.

“To solve them we need a spiritual and cultural transformation,” he said.

“Scientists don’t know how to do that.”