Scale-jumping and climate change in the geography of religion
pp. 203-215
in: Stanley , Stanley D. Brunn (eds), The changing world religion map, Berlin, Springer, 2015Abstract
This chapter discusses how religious responses to global climate change vary with regard to global, regional and local scales. Reactions are shown to be paradoxical and span from no action and disbelief to interfaith efforts geared to combat climate change. Moving from the macro to the micro the essay describes how the national scale is helpful for gauging broad policy initiatives among denominations, while congregations and individual adherents provide a more fluid medium for investigating the growing religious conflicts surrounding climate change. Drawing on scalar challenges such as ecological fallacy and emergence, we argues that there are potential solutions to bridging the massive jump in scale between an individual religious adherent and the planet, enabling the religious to jump scale, if only theologically, from individual lifestyle choices to collective global impact.