Climate change is happening.

I am not a scientist. Nor do I pretend to be. But drawing on information taken from natural sources — like ice cores, rocks, and tree rings — recorded by satellites, and processed with the aid of the most advanced computer processors the world has ever known, NASA experts report “there is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate” and that “[h]uman activity is the principal cause.”

From global temperature rise to melting ice sheets, glacial retreat to sea levels rising, the evidence of a warming planet abounds. While Earth’s climate has fluctuated throughout history, the current season of warming is happening at a rate not seen in 10 millennia — 10,000 years.

Many of the undergraduate students in courses introducing them to religious traditions — Islam, Christianity or otherwise — have no reservations about climate change and its disastrous effects on the environment and the most vulnerable in human society. In my classrooms, there is a palpable fear about the planet’s future.

It is little wonder, then, that students often ask how religious actors interpret their sacred texts and confessions or how they, in turn, address climate change or engage with the environment.

What they discover can often be disappointing — if not infuriating.

“The road,” wrote Spanish poet Antonio Machado, “is made by walking.”

Often adopted as a metaphor for pilgrimage, Sarah Moring, a climate activist living in Manchester, England, said she walked with this quote every day as she joined the Young Christian Climate Network (YCCN) — an advocacy community of young Christians in the U.K. — on its relay before the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), in September 2021.

Stretching over 750 miles and cutting through Cardiff, London, and Oxford, YCCN participants joined a “crusade for climate justice” by walking the route between the end of the G7 meeting in Cornwall on June 13 and COP26’s opening ceremony on October 31 that year.

When I covered the pilgrimage for Christianity Today, I had not done much reporting on people like Moring. But over the last two years, I have reported from India and Israel, Lisbon, and London, where people of faith are coming together to respond to climate change and demand action based on their religious beliefs.

It was with a desire to see more widespread coverage of faith actors advocating for environmental justice that I teamed up with abby mohaupt to write a “Reporting Guide on Religion and Climate Change” for ReligionLink, a nonpartisan, monthly newsletter with source guides and story ideas for journalists reporting on religion.

Developing the guide, I learned how diverse faith groups view climate change and are coming together to address it.