WEA's View On Climate Change
The WEA’s official position on climate change is articulated in the creation care declarations and statements it is party to. To be specific, the WEA believes that climate change is real, is a threat to the integrity of the planet’s ecosystems, and thus a threat to human wellbeing. Human causes are a contributing factor to climate change, and humans have a moral responsibility to both mitigate the root causes of climate change, and to work toward just, equitable, and ecologically sustainable solutions to this issue.
To read a compilation of WEA statements related to climate change go to this link.
Some other points to consider regarding climate change:
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We realize some Christians who do not believe that climate change exists, and some who do don’t accept anthropocentric contributing causes. Unfortunately, sometimes these differences between Christians can be sharp. We are thankful, however, that whatever a Christian believes regarding climate change their belief on that point is not determinate of whether one is a Christian or not. Christians who believe in climate change, and those who do not are bound together by a deeper, more important connection, and that is a shared faith in Christ and the unequivocal biblical mandate to care for creation. To put it another way, there is a clear, primary biblical mandate to care for creation regardless of whether one believes that climate change exists or not.
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The WEA respects that some evangelicals do not share the CCTF’s position on climate change. The CCTF will monitor the balance of evidence on the veracity of climate change and change our position if warranted. In the meantime, our limited resources and energies will be focused on caring for creation from our perspective the best we know-how. Likewise, we encourage and pray for our evangelical brothers and sisters who do not believe in climate change to care for creation the best ways they know-how, and to their fullest extent possible.
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The measure of our respective efforts to care for creation is determined by the integrity of the earth’s ecological systems (i.e., are ecosystems healthy and functioning as God intended them to be?), which is something we can all work toward regardless of our belief in climate change.
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Climate change is an aggregate of many different economic, cultural, and social forces ranging from our energy systems, to our food systems, to our business models, to the way we design our cities and the places we live, and the values and beliefs underlying those systems. In other words, climate change isn’t one thing, with one solution. Climate change is a multi-causal challenge, which requires a plethora of discrete practical responses to its plethora of causes. In light of this fact the CCTF will focus primarily on discrete environmental issues and concerns, and not the nebulous “climate change problem.” If successful our efforts will protect or improve the integrity of ecosystems, which in turn will benefit human wellbeing. They will also have a positive impact on mitigating and adapting to climate change.
The WEA, in collaboration with other evangelical partners, attended COP21 in Paris in 2015. This statement was issued after the Paris Agreement was finalized. Read the WEA Secretary General's reflections on his experience at COP21 in Paris.
The WEA, along with many other Christian partners attended COP26 in Glasgow in Nov. 2021. This report describes some of their activities