To mark the Kyoto Protocol, which took effect in the rest of the world this week, the National Council of Churches issued an open letter, attempting to refute “false gospel” about the environment and urging American Christians to repent “ecological sins.” The NCC wrote that, while they honored the efforts made by churches to change environmental policy, “we have clearly failed to communicate the full measure and magnitude of Earth’s environmental crisis — religiously, morally, or politically. It is painfully clear from the verifiable testimony of the world’s scientists that our response has been inadequate to the scale and pace of Earth’s degradation…To continue to walk the current path of ecological destruction is not only folly; it is sin.”