SYDNEY - Australian Catholic leaders have added their voice to calls for Canberra to ratify the 1997 Kyoto pact, and urged the government to show solidarity with poor nations and island states that may suffer from climate change.
The Australian Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes (ACLRI) said on Thursday it sent Prime Minister John Howard a letter last month in dismay at his government's sympathy for the U.S. rejection of the landmark environmental accord.
Caring for the earth was "intricately connected with spirituality," ACLRI executive director Sister Mary Cresp told Reuters. Global warming was a "moral issue for all humanity," the conference said.
The organisation, which represents all the Catholic religious congregations in Australia, sent the letter ahead of the current meeting in Bonn of world environment officials at which the fate of the Kyoto agreement may be decided.
President George W. Bush early this year rejected the accord struck in the Japanese city of Kyoto in 1997, arguing it would harm the U.S. economy and was flawed because it did not include developing nations.
The United States is the world's largest polluter.
Australia, the world's largest coal exporter, sympathises with U.S. concerns over Kyoto, under which developed nations agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
A relatively small total polluter but second only to the United States in per capita terms, Australia does not believe the protocol is worth pursuing without Washington.
Greenhouse gases, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, are thought to cause rising world temperatures. That could lead to higher sea levels as icepacks melt, more violent weather, widespread drought and lower food production in some areas.
The Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes urged Howard to ratify the Kyoto protocol by 2002, work to reverse the U.S. position and "develop a sense of solidarity with the nations and peoples most likely to be negatively impacted."
In Australia's immediate neighbourhood of the South Pacific, several small island states like Kiribati say they fear they will be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels.
Tuvalu, with some 10,000 people, has appealed to Australia and New Zealand in case it has to evacuate its population, estimating it has 50 years left before its nine islands and atolls sink under the waves.
But Australian Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock on Thursday said Canberra would not give special immigration treatment to the South Pacific nation because it was not in any immediate danger.
00:32 07-19-01