General Synod Climate Change Debate |
The challenges that we all face as the 21st century unfolds are so complex and interconnected that there is a temptation just to hope that they will go away and that our present life style will be largely undisturbed - at least for our time. The scale of the problems and the energy needed to confront them has hardly begun to sink in. As Al Gore said recently “Denial is not just a river in Egypt”.
The biggest challenges - climate change, the flaws and forces of globalisation, the scramble for resources, the conjunction of weapons of mass destruction and the lethal ambitions of people with an apocalyptic view on life – all of these need global as well as national and regional solutions. It is easy to be immobilised. But as GS1705 makes clear there are things we can do.
We certainly need a coherent communications strategy to bring before the church the decisions this Synod has already made about cutting our carbon emissions and the various initiatives which have been taken. We have a responsibility to put our own house in order as an institution with schools halls and churches which produces as much CO2 as the largest supermarket chain.
We need to identify our allies very clearly and the report points to the potential of a close working partnership with TearFund. With the Bishop of Liverpool who has played such a very significant role in this whole area particularly in his work with American Evangelical leaders, I helped to launch TearFund’s excellent Carbon Fast project at the beginning of Lent this year and was impressed by their zeal and the efficiency of their operation.
Then we also have a part to play in enlarging the room for manoeuvre for politicians with some awareness of the challenge we face to operate without facing electoral suicide. The Church helped to create a positive climate for debt reduction in the Jubilee 2000 campaign and again made a decisive contribution to the Make Poverty History Campaign.
This report has been prepared for the Mission and Public Affairs Division of the Archbishops’ Council and it is largely the work of Charles Reed to whom we all owe a great debt of gratitude for this and other initiatives. I am not a member of Mission and Public Affairs and so in a sense stand here as what the American call a “non remunerated endorser”. I am however Chairman of the Shrink the Footprint Campaign and of the Bishops’ Panel on the Environment.
We all know without benefit of special revelation that if everyone in the world lived as we do, then we should need three planets worth of resources to make it possible. As it is we only have one planet - already under strain and we are living on the capital which we should be passing intact to our children.
Sometimes in the past religion, science, politics and economics have declared a truce on the basis of mutual irrelevance. But now is the time for a re-alignment – a new holism. It is this spirit which informs the report.
The Church and other religious bodies have not been quick off the mark partly because many people feared that a concern for the natural environment could be a distraction from the needs of the world’s poor and the need for development.
GS1705 points to Stern and countless other reports which establish the connection between the need to tackle climate change and the threat to the well being of poor communities world wide. The reality of our interconnected world is that we are all afloat in a great ark. The first class accommodation will not long remain immune from the effects of leaks in steerage.
There is a particularly good section on the impact of climate change on our ability to deliver the UN Millennium Development Goals addressed to the eradication of global poverty and disease. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said that in some respects we risk going backwards. There is a summit in New York in September 25th which Gordon Brown will be attending.
One of our first tests is whether in the midst of our own economic woes we shall be able to help people focus on this event with the kind of passion which will strengthen the hands of the politicians involved. This is very much an ecumenical matter and the Cardinal and I are proposing an ecumenical observance of a period of study, prayer and fasting on the eve of this event – possibly under the title Think: Fast.
We are participants in a web of life, responsible as stewards “to till and keep the earth” – to develop and husband its resources for all the people of the world and also other life forms. Instead of the self serving way of being which has scarred the earth and polluted the waters, we need a greater awareness and a genuine enlightenment that happiness does not come from accumulating more and more but in sharing “enough” with our neighbour.
These are ancient spiritual themes, a glimpse of the deep reality in our world which is being revealed afresh by the challenge which we face together. The key is a recovery of balance in our lifestyle.
Part of the answer is to reinvigorate ancient spiritual practices. Don’t let’s wallow in guilt, mainline on apocalyptic visions or be measured for a hair shirt but recognize that life can be more joyful if feasting and fasting are kept in balance; if it is all carnival with no ensuing lent then the result is just a hangover; let’s recover the idea of a Sabbath in the week, in the year, a time of lying fallow and attending to our relationships – no one in my experience on their death bed ever regrets that they did not spend more time in the office. We are not going to be successful in persuading others unless we have taken heed to ourselves.
But for the churches and Christian organizations there is also the opportunity of our network and our institutions. I am also acting Chairman of the Board of the Church Commissioners and your investment arm is focusing a substantial part of its strategy on vehicles which serve today’s theme.
Well over 70% of the population of our country claimed to be Christian for the purposes of the most recent census. Practice is obviously much lower but even in Greater London the most sober estimate is that there are 630,000 Christians worshipping every ordinary week in more than 4,000 churches. If that were true of a political party we would hear about it. London’s Church Leaders have made a united effort by distributing free to every one of those churches a practical tool kit to achieve a shrinkage in our carbon footprint.
We intend to have a measurable impact of the emissions of the capital. There are many such initiatives country wide and we need to send a message of support to the Diocesan Advisers where they exist and an urgent appeal to places where they do not to consider how we shall together forward this great cause.
GS1705 certainly does not condescend to its readers. It assumes that most members of Synod know what COP – 13 stands for? I must confess that I didn’t until I put it into my search engine. The COP is an annual event, a Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Currently the successor agreement to the Kyoto accord which expires in 2012 is being debated.
There will be a particularly significant COP in Copenhagen at the end of next year 2009 and for the first time world religious bodies including ourselves will have a place not on the margins among the fringe events but as part of the official programme. The idea is that the various religions should present their own plans for responding to the global challenge of climate change and I hope that I shall be able to present our plan to you next July for Synod’s approval.
It is vital that we seek to communicate not only with fellow Christians ecumenically but also with members of other religions and also the many secular groups involved in this enterprise. The idea of investigating a formal affiliation with the Stop Climate Change Chaos, one of the recommendations of the Report makes obvious sense and builds on Anglican participation as a part of Operation Noah in the great demonstration in Grosvenor Square.
With many other bishops especially Liverpool and Chester, I have been participating in the debates on the Climate Change and Energy Bills. One of the most fascinating things is that the science which everyone agrees should decisively inform our approach to this challenge is constantly changing. The moral imperative to embrace a low carbon world as a relevant expression of neighbour love does not change.
I commend this report to Synod and invite you to support motion 12 on your agenda as a small response to the Micah Challenge. What doth the Lord require but to do justly; to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?
