December 11, 2008

POZNAN, Poland – In its contributions to the UN Climate Change conference here this week, the Baha'i International Community stressed the importance of addressing the ethical and moral issues that surround global warming and its impact on the world's peoples.

"The search for solutions to climate change has revealed the limits of traditional technological and policy approaches and has raised difficult questions about justice, equity, responsibility and obligation," said the BIC in a working paper released at the conference.

Titled "Seizing the Opportunity: Redefining the Challenge of Climate Change," the paper offers initial considerations from a Baha'i perspective as the world faces the challenge of global warming.

"As communities and policy-makers worldwide have wrestled with these questions, they have brought us all to the threshold of a tremendous opportunity," said the paper.

"It is the opportunity to take the next step in the transition from a state-centered mode of interacting on the world stage to one rooted in the unity which connects us as the inhabitants of one biosphere, the citizens of one world and the members of one human civilization..."

Baha'i World News Service