CIESIN Director Alex de Sherbinin gave an invited talk on February 18th at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Massachusetts, on How Religion Influences Our Relationship with the Environment. The talk was based on a 2020 study entitled "Religious affiliation and environmental challenges in the 21st century", published in The Journal of Religion and Demography. The study sought to understand the relationship between the degree of religious affiliation of country populations and the greenhouse gas emissions, climate risks, and adaptive capacities of those countries, with an additional breakdown in the analysis for the world's two largest religions, Christianity and Islam. In the second part of his talk, Dr. de Sherbinin addresses the role of Christians in the current environmental crisis, identifying misinterpretations of BIblical texts that have caused some Christians to behave irresponsibly towards nature.
The talk is available as a YouTube recording.
