I have just come home and turned on the local London news to hear something which I find highly, highly problematic. London mayor Sadiq Kahn today took part in a conference on climate change organised by the Vatican and chaired by the Pope in Rome. Of course, I have no objection to climate change conferences – climate change is irrefutably one of the most urgent issues humanity faces – but why on earth are we allowing the catholic church to use it as a tool to bolster it’s authority? By organising this conference, and by inviting so many important people to it, the vatican is using one of the most pressing issues we face as a tool to boost it’s political and cultural relevance. It is framing itself as an international political body without anybody voting for it, and despite deriving it’s authority from a set of anachronistic myths and ‘traditions’. After all, since when did christianity give a zark about global warming? It is simply using one of humanity’s most crucial issues to try to regain it’s fading importance, something which I find utterly sickening. Religion has no right to intervene in such matters, or use them to gain attention and authority.