The following appeal was signed by more than 500 hundred of Massachusetts religious leaders and scientists including Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston, Dr. Philip Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center and Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, Associate Minister for Ecological Justice at Bethel AME Church. -- Editor.

Climate change is an ecological and moral emergency that impacts all other aspects of our shared lives and requires us to work together to protect our common home.

As a community of scientists, we see greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation causing dangerous changes to the climate and threatening the stability of the planet. We are trained to simply report the facts, but now our findings compel us to public advocacy.

As a community of faith leaders, we have worked together to alleviate poverty, to fight racial and social injustice, and to defend human life. All of these social goods are negatively impacted by climate change, which devastates the most vulnerable and jeopardizes us all.

Motivated by the climate crisis, we come together as people of scientific competence and people of faith because continued inaction is both scientifically irrational and morally indefensible.

All of us -- religion, science, business, labor, government, education, civic organizations, communities, and individuals -- must do our utmost to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to protect our communities from the catastrophic impacts of climate change. We especially call upon our political representatives to address the climate crisis with the boldness and urgency it requires, with substantive and immediate action.

Massachusetts has a proud history of national leadership in science, technology and public policy that responds to the concerns of all people. We now have an opportunity and an obligation to be leaders in protecting our common home. We are called to be a beacon to the nation and the world. There is still time to take action, and that time is now.