Elspeth Kernebone
17 September 2024
Multi-faith communities are calling on Australia’s major political parties to commit to divesting from coal and gas, as community-members gather for a week of climate action.
Organisers want both the Labor and Liberal-National parties to improve their policies ahead of 2025’s election, saying there is an urgent need to reduce carbon emissions before 2030.
Among the commitments they hope to see are an outline of specific plans to phase out coal and gas, financial assistance provided to Pacific neighbours, support for a global Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, and investment in clean energy.
St Paul’s Cathedral was among the churches hosting an event, and calling for action.
Dean of Melbourne Andreas Loewe said Australia needed to act, as its neighbours in the Torres Strait and the Pacific were quickly losing land and habitat.
Read more: Australia must pay fair share for Pacific Islands damage: Climate advocates
Dean Loewe said he hoped to highlight the faith community’s very strong views a about climate action, driven by the belief that the world was a gift of God, and God’s good creation.
He said this included stopping the extraction of coal and gas to arrest the climate emergency.
Dean Loewe said he wanted the government and opposition to make firm commitments to uphold the Paris Accord, and to give a precise roadmap. He said the faith groups wanted a commitment to international accords to reduce carbon emissions, and to reach net zero in the framework agreed at various COP meetings.
“[The event is] saying to politicians we need to act urgently, we need to raise our ambitions, and we need to act on the [energy] alternatives that are available,” Dean Loewe said.
“For me as a Christian this has a gospel imperative, because we are given this world as good stewards, and we haven’t been good stewards.
“We have been exploitative in a way that is not good for creation. We do need to take our stewardship responsibilities seriously, because this is something that has been given to us in trust to nurture and to safeguard.”
Australian Religious Response to Climate Change is calling for commitment from both major parties to:
- End new coal and gas projects.
- Outline their plan to move away from coal and gas towards clean energy, and provide a date by which they will phase them out completely.
- Get public money out of the coal and gas industries.
- Put protecting the climate at the heart of the main national environment law Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
- Provide serious financial assistance to neighbours in the Pacific to keep their heads above water.
- Support a proposed global Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to phase out fossil fuels.
- Make a massive historic investment in clean energy that will create jobs in the process.
- Amend the Native Title Act to remove flaws that favour mining interests over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ rights and provide capacity for Traditional Owners to enact free, prior and informed consent with capacity to refuse mining.
- There is also a sharp message to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton: nuclear is not the answer and will take too long to roll out to address the climate crisis before it’s too late.
ARRCC community organiser Tejopala Rawls said people from different faiths acting together sent a clear message that religious traditions were unified on climate change.
Read more: ‘However bleak it gets … God has called us to make a difference’
He said calls from faith communities made it clear that action on climate change was a mainstream message, not confined to a small or elite urban subsection of society.
Mr Rawls said ARRCC wanted to frame the debate as Australia headed into an election in 2025.
“We’re saying this is mainstream, this is not a message where we’re preferencing any one party over another. It’s saying we need both major parties to lift their game,” Mr Rawls said.
Dean Andreas encouraged people to write to their elected representative, demanding that Australia no longer invested in exploration of new coal and gas, and transitioned to renewables.
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