Your Faith and the Planet

As we near Earth Day and everyone thinks about what they can do to go green, one minister is asking whether one’s spirituality or religion might be holding us back from saving the planet.
 
In an interesting op-ed in USA Today, Oliver “Buzz” Thomas, a minister and author of 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can’t Because He Needs the Job), asks whether religion is contributing to global overpopulation and, by extension, climate change. He argues that each major religion promotes the idea that people should “be fruitful and multiply,” and couple that with the shunning of birth control and you get a huge population that requires more water, food and air than is currently available, and that population also creates even more carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane—the chemical soup that fosters climate change.
 
Thomas argues that spiritual leaders need to take a leading role in changing the dialogue and finding solutions—starting with advocating a limit on the number of children that people should have.
 
Do you think that religious leaders should take a stronger stand to save the planet? [USA Today]