Many perils may be still undiscovered. The burdens, as usual, will fall most cruelly upon the shoulders of the poorest among us, especially upon children. But no one will be unaffected. At the same time, the human community grows by a quarter of a million people every day, mostly in the poorest nations and communities. That this crisis was brought about in part through inadvertence does not excuse us.
Many nations are responsible.
The magnitude of this crisis means that it cannot be resolved unless many nations work together. We must now join forces to that end. Our own country is the leading polluter on Earth, generating more greenhouse gases, especially CO2, than any other country. Not by word alone but by binding action, our nation has an inescapable moral duty to lead the way to genuinely effective solutions. We believe that science and religion, working together, have an essential contribution to make toward any significant mitigation and resolution of the world environmental crisis.