Some estimates predict that the glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro will disappear completely by 2020. Without the ice and snow, the rivers that flow down the mountain will simply dry up. "Then there is no life here. The people will have to move or they die," says assistant bishop Frederick Shoo.

"Drought does not need to mean famine," according to Niger's president, who adds that the country is tired of needing help and not being able to feed its own people. "We need to escape from emergency aid. We need to help our population produce and provide for itself."

The federal trial over BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill was slated to start this week (Feb. 27) but was delayed for more settlement talks. Watch farmer, poet, and conservationist Wendell Berry, who said the BP spill showed "we're putting too much at stake" in the way we go after oil and mineral resources.

Using ancient Chinese spiritual principles, says Raymond Lo, a feng shui grand master in Hong Kong, “we can establish where is the good energy and where is the bad energy.”

When disaster strikes, the character of a culture is revealed, and in Japan, perceptions of disaster are deeply rooted in traditional religious culture.

According to US government figures, more than 40,000 people have been brought in to help clean up the oil and deal with the crisis. But many in the fishing industry say they haven’t been able to get work, and they don’t know when they’ll be able to resume their livelihoods.

Watch more from New Orleans Roman Catholic Archbishop Gregory Aymond, Margaret Dubuisson of Catholic Charities of New Orleans, and Rev. John Dee Jeffries of the First Baptist Church of Chalmette on the spiritual toll of the Gulf Coast oil spill crisis.

Religious communities are part of a growing movement across America that is concerned with the ethics of how food is grown and how it gets to our tables.

Paul Root Wolpe, director of Emory University's Center for Ethics, says ethics should precede our economic and political judgments and our response to events like the Gulf oil spill.

"The issue here is not BP's behavior, it's not the Obama administration's behavior. It's our behavior. That is where the deepest change has to happen."