Cancun: Joined faith leaders sign letter to David Cameron

A letter on climate change has been signed by four senior religious leaders in Scotland.

Scotland’s religious leaders have described the West’s failure to help developing nations cope with climate change as a “moral outrage”.

Senior members of the country’s Christian and Islamic communities outlined their position in a letter to Prime Minister David Cameron. They urged the UK government to do all it could to ensure progress was made at the UN climate change conference.

The summit opened in Cancun, Mexico, last Monday.

The letter to Mr Cameron has been signed by the Moderator of the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly, John Christie, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, David Chillingworth, and Shaykh Ruzwan, a senior figure in the Islamic community.

It highlights disappointment at the outcome of last year’s UN climate change conference in Copenhagen and says every day that passes sees lives “affected and even lost”.
Scotland’s climate change minister, Stewart Stevenson, will be part of the UK delegation at Cancun. He has said he will use the opportunity to call for the international community to be more ambitious in its efforts to tackle climate change, and will argue that the transition to a low carbon economy is sensible, sustainable and ultimately unavoidable.
However, the Mexican government has already warned it is unlikely that a comprehensive deal will be secured in Cancun.