How should governments respond to global warming?

Governments would have to tackle the causes they themselves have allowed: a way of life that cannot do without pollution, and a competition between nations that keeps them from acting. Because remedies only take effect after decades, they would have to start early.

If we ask how governments should respond to global warming, we must first see who has caused it. To a large extent it is those very governments. They have allowed industries to grow that burden the environment in many ways, including through chemicals.

Behind this lies a way of life that has become very demanding. If you look closely, you find that much of what modern life requires comes from industries that produce pollution. Our daily life keeps going only because the earth pays a price for it. This is exactly what the verse above describes: corruption on land and sea comes from what people's hands have wrought.

On top of this is the economic competition between nations. Every government fears weakening its economy if it alone becomes stricter. Whatever is produced brings in money, at home and through trade with the whole world. In this way national interests, the economy and an artificial way of life together keep governments from acting decisively.

There is also a problem of time. Measures that affect the environment work very slowly. They have to be started decades in advance before they bear fruit. So the danger is great that help for those who suffer will only come long after it was needed. That is nothing to be glad about.

A real answer would therefore have to go deeper than individual laws. It calls for finding again the right measure the Holy Qur’an speaks of, and for thinking beyond national advantage to the whole earth.