Nearly two-thirds of religious people (63%) believe that their faith and scriptures have a greater influence on their environmental actions and beliefs than science or Government policy, according to a new Bible Society poll.

The poll - which used Faithbook, an inter-faith social networking site, also revealed that 47% of people want their leaders to set an environmental example by flying less.

7 in 10 people added that they believe caring for the environment is part of their religious duty.

The poll has been published in the run up to a new, virtual interfaith, climate change conference, which takes place on Thursday night in London.

The conference will also see the launch of a new website called Faith Climate Connect which aims to help Christians talk to people of other faiths about their environmental beliefs and find out more about how they can get involved with caring for the planet.

Rachel Ward, Senior Press Secretary at Bible Society, said: 'The Bible is alive with verses about caring for the environment. 84% of the world's population belong to a faith.  The Faithbook poll suggests that a greater emphasis on the scriptural support for care of the world God gave us, rather than focusing on the role of Governments or science alone, could have a massive impact on how we look after our planet.'

Note to Editors

Please call Rachel Ward on 07545 924983 for further information

• 285 people completed the Faithbook poll, which was constructed using Survey Monkey, the leading survey tool on the web (ranked by Alexa), with over 80% of the Fortune 100 currently using it. The poll was linked directly on the Faithbook on Facebook home page. The raw poll data is available to all media on request. 
• Faithbook is an interfaith social networking page on Facebook and has 3721 fans (as of 10 January 2010). It was set up in 2008 by Global Tolerance to improve interfaith relations and tackle extremism on the web. Faithbook on Facebook is the number one Google entry when searching ‘Faithbook’ and can also be accessed at http://www.facebook.com/pages/London-United-Kingdom/Faithbook/15455922917