Scotland's religious leaders call for binding agreement at Cancun climate talks

Climate negotiators at U.N. talks in Mexico are struggling over proposals that would abolish a two-decade divide between rich and poor on scrutiny of greenhouse gas emissions. Developed countries say fast-growing emerging economies led by China, which has become the top carbon emitter, have to do far more to curb their emissions. Many poor nations oppose changing a 1992 U.N. convention that obliges the rich to lead.

Meanwhile, leaders from both the Christian and Islamic communities in Scotland sent a letter to Prime Minister David Cameron earlier this week, calling on the British government to do “everything it can to ensure agreeing a fair, ambitious and legally-binding global agreement” at the Cancun summit.

“We are responsible for most of the problems a with regard to climate change,” says Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh and one of the signatories of the letter.

“We just abuse the planet […] without a thought of who is being affected," Cardinal O’Brien told Vatican Radio. “We’ve got that heavy responsibility to think about on our consciences.”

Listen to Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien’s full interview with Kelsea Brennan-Wessels: