A BITTER rift over climate change has developed between a senior member of the Anglican Church and Sydney Catholic Archbishop George Pell.Canberra Bishop George Browning, the Anglican Church's global environmental chief said Cardinal Pell was out of step with his own church and made no sense on global warming.
Bishop Browning also criticised the Federal Government for its "utter obsession" with growth and warned that climate change refugees would be a bigger problem than terrorists in a century of desperate struggle.
At the national Anglican synod in Canberra yesterday, Bishop Browning attacked the cardinal for saying Jesus said nothing about climate change. "It's almost unbelievable," said Bishop Browning, who is the chairman of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network.
"I wrote him a letter saying Jesus had an awful lot to say about the rich taking what belonged to the poor and about the heritage of the children, and as he spoke about both of these things he spoke about climate change."
Later, he told The Age that Cardinal Pell was an exception even in his own church. "I frankly don't know where he's coming from or why he says what he does. It doesn't make any sense to me. The contribution he should make as leader of the Catholic Church is muted because of his stance."
Cardinal Pell replied scathingly that church leaders should be allergic to nonsense. "My task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people's minds and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes," he said.
"Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don't need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness," he said.
Cardinal Pell said he was sceptical of extravagant claims of impending man-made catastrophes.
However, the Vatican accepts that climate change is a serious threat to the world.
Bishop Browning said Australian politicians "were driven by their obsession with growth. The future is about sustainability, not prosperity on its own. Prosperity without sustainability is economic death."
On climate refugees, Bishop Browning said that over millenniums people moved when their environment changed.
"The 21st century will be a desperate struggle, especially for water," he said.
He said the science of global warming was settled and accepted even by US President George Bush.
"It is also settled morally. Jesus made it absolutely clear that the poor are not here to pay the bills of the rich, but that's exactly what's happening."
He told the synod: "It's not inevitable that humanity will face an apocalyptic world. To do something about it will cost us, but we will still have three meals a day and live in a comfortable house. We need to do it today. I want all of you to leave the synod today believing this is our core business, it's not (just) something greenie Christians do."
Meanwhile, Rosie Catt, of the Australian Anglican Environmental Network, said inaction on climate change amounted to genocide according to the United Nations definition.
"If we know climate change is having that effect on the most vulnerable people and we can do something about it, are we not guilty of the destruction of a way of life, in whole or part?" she said.
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