(Transcript from World News Radio)
Representatives of five different religious faiths in Australia have backed calls from Pope Francis for urgent action on climate change.
In an encyclical released last week, the pontiff has called for fresh policies to reduce fossil fuels and to develop renewable energy.
The Australian religious leaders have now taken that same message to Parliament House in Canberra, calling on the federal government to take stronger action to curb carbon emissions.
Michael Kenny reports.
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The delegation was made up of leaders from the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim communities.
In a statement released ahead of the Parliament House visit, the Grand Mufti of Australia Ibrahim Abu Mohammed described protecting the environment as a moral imperative.
He said that failing to act on climate change was a form of moral pollution.
The President of the Australian Muslim Voice in Canberra Diana Abdul Rahman, says it is critical for religious faiths to work in harmony on a problem which impacts on everyone around the world.
"We are doomed together if we do not work together and once we work together, we can find a common goal to come together when it comes to climate change because climate change is going to effect everybody, regardless of your faith."
That's a view shared by Rabbi Jonathan Karen-Black, the Environmental Advisor with the Council of Progressive Rabbis.
Rabbi Karen-Black says he agrees strongly with Pope Francis that climate change is a spiritual and ethical problem, as much as it is an environmental one.
"God from the very beginning has put humans here as caretakers of the world. That's our task and we have a responsibility over and over again and the Jewish texts and the Christian texts talk about our responsibility to look after the world."
Rabbi Karen-Black believes the federal government is failing to take the problem seriously.
"We are moving in Australia in the wrong direction at the moment and we're going the other way to most of the significant emitters in the world at this stage and we've got to turn it around. For a start, we should be investing in wind farms and being much more positive about wind farms, instead of setting up a commission and putting limits on wind farms. We've got huge solar resources in this country and we ought to be supporting stronger renewable energy targets."
Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt has defended the Australian government's record, following the release of the papal encyclical on climate change.
He says Australia is on track to cut its greenhouse emissions by five per cent of 2000 levels by 2020.
Mr Hunt has also praised Pope Francis for his comments about consumerism and the waste of resources, especially in wealthier countries.
Meanwhile, an Australian research centre has also joined calls for a stronger government response to climate change.
The Centre for Policy Development has released a new report, claiming Australia is underprepared for the defence and security challenges posed by rising carbon emissions.
The centre's Chief Executive Officer Travers McLeod says Australia's key security allies such as the United States and Britain have already started preparing their military forces for some of these challenges.
"Some of the implications with a rising number of natural disasters and extreme weather events are displacement from natural disasters at home and abroad and the threat multiplier effect of resource scarcity and what climate change does to exacerbate the tensions that resource scarcity generates. They are all challenges that the Australian defence establishment will be called upon to mitigate and adapt to."
Dr McLeod says Australia also needs to prepare ahead for a possible influx of climate change refugees over coming decades.
He believes the country will need to adjust its immigration program accordingly and allow for a lot more refugee places.
"Australia is in a region with the most vulnerability to climate change. By 2030, nearly a billion people will be living in low-elevation coastal zones to our north- 70 percent of those people will be in Asia. So as natural disasters rise, we would expect their to be greater numbers of displacement of people- both internally and externally. That's all the more reason for Australia to work with the region to develop a comprehensive approach to managing the flows of people through the region."
