Buddhist Leaders Call For Climate Change Action At Paris Talks

"The earth is not just our environment. The earth is our mother."

A dozen Buddhist authorities, in what they're calling an unprecedented effort, appeal to world leaders to take strong climate change action at next month's Paris conference.

In the letter released Thursday and titled "Buddhist Climate Change Statement to World Leaders," the Dalai Lama and 11 other signatories urge the phasing out of fossil fuels and movement toward 100 percent use of renewable energy. This letter, the authors note, is the first time this so many Buddhist leaders have united to take a stance on a global issue. 



"When we harm the earth, we harm ourselves," said signatory Sister Chan Khong of the Plum Village International Community of Engaged Buddhists in a related press release. "The earth is not just our environment. The earth is our mother. We are all children of the earth, and we must help one another as brothers and sisters of one big planetary family. We must take action, not out of a sense of duty but out of love for our planet and for each other."

She added, "The Buddha has shown us that we can all live simply and still be very happy."


"We are not God," the pope wrote in his encyclical, released in June. "The Earth was here before us and was given to us."

There are more than a billion Roman Catholics and between 500 million and a billion Buddhists (depending on how you count them). Although they won't all fall in step behind their religious leaders, their numbers amount to a quarter or more of the world's population.


"This is not a question of one nation or two nations. This is a question of humanity. Our world is our home," he said in that video. "There's no other planet where we may move or shift."

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