Spirituality and Confronting Climate Change

By Chris Brice, Adviser for Social Justice, Diocese of London, 12th February 2010

Some theological, spiritual or other wider scene-setting...which may be useful

Joseph interpreted Pharoh’s dream of times of plenty and a time of famine. Noah heard God’s voice warning him of the flood. And today’s prophets are the scientists. They don’t dream dreams about the future, or hear God’s voice in their heads, instead they present us with scientific predictions as hard and as accurate as can be – and their warnings are stark. Unless the nations of the world can restrict Global Average Temperature rise to 2C the world will be in deep trouble - and this requires a global cut in carbon emissions of 85% by 2030. To achieve this our own government will have to cut UK emissions by 100% by 2030.

Many fear that there have already been sufficient CO2 emissions to take the global average temperature rise beyond the safe 2C level, whatever we do – and once that happens we move into increasingly dangerous waters.

But far from cutting our emissions year on year , we continue to recklessly spew out ever increasing amounts of CO2, driving up the global temperature more and more.

Even a 2 C rise carries with it unacceptable levels of degradation and suffering. A rise of 6 degrees C (the top end of scientifically predicted rise for this century) would lead to the extinction of all life on earth.

Here are some of the scenarios set out by Mark Lynas in a recent book after he had scrupulously researched every peer-reviewed piece of scientific writing he could find on the subject :

Restricting the Rise in Global Average Temperatures to 2.5C...  would mean that climate change would eventually largely be halted but it would take well over a hundred years to achieve this. And the climate change impacts at such a rise of temperature would be large:

• A steady rise in sea level will continue for many centuries

• Heat waves such as in Europe in 2003 would be common place

• Devastating floods and droughts would be much more common

• In North America agriculture and cattle ranching are wiped out as sand dunes appear across five USA states from Texas in the south to Montana in the north

•  Rising sea levels accelerate as the Greenland Ice Sheet tips into irreversible melt, submerging atoll nations and low-lying deltas. In Peru disappearing Andean Glaciers mean 10 million people face water shortages.

• Warming seas wipe out the Great Barrier reef and make coral reefs virtually extinct throughout the tropics. A third of all species face extinction

A rise of plus 3.4C...  causes the Amazonian Rain Forrest to burn in a firestorm of catastrophic ferocity, covering South America with ash and smoke. Once the smoke clears, the interior of Brazil has become desert, and huge amounts of extra carbon have entered the atmosphere, further boosting global warming. The entire Arctic ice-cap disappears in the summer months for the first time in 3 million years. Polar bears, walruses and ringed seals all go extinct. Water supplies run short in California as the Sierra Nevada snow pack melts away. Tens of Millions are displaced as the Kalahari desert expands across Southern Africa.

A rise of plus 4.4C... leads to rapidly rising temperatures in the Arctic putting the Siberian perma-frost in the melt zone, releasing vast quantities of methane and C02. Global temperatures keep on rising rapidly in consequence. Sea level rises displace more than 100 million people, particularly in Bangladesh, the Nile Delta and Shanghai. Heat waves and drought make much of the sub-tropics uninhabitable: large scale migration takes place within Europe, where deserts are growing in Spain, Italy, and Greece. More than half wild species are wiped out. Agriculture collapses in Australia.

A rise of plus 5.4C... causes Sea Levels to Rise by Five Metres: If these temperatures are sustained, the entire planet will become ice-free, and sea levels will be seventy metres higher than they are today. South Asian society collapses due to the disappearance of glaciers in the Himalayas. Super El Ninos spark global weather chaos. Most of humanity begins to seek refuge away from higher temperatures closer to the poles. Tens of millions of refugees forces their way into Scandinavia and the British Isles. World food supplies run out.

A Rise of plus 6.4C... most of life on earth is Extinct:

All this against a background in which all the major scientists and scientific institutions agree that during the 21st Century global average temperature is predicted to rise between 2 and 6 degrees C

All this against a backdrop in which the International Energy Agency said last Wednesday that emissions of greenhouse gases will rise by 57 percent by 2030, causing a rise in Earth's surface temperature of at least 3 degrees C

All this against a backdrop in which our own government’s aspiration to cut CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050 would lead to a Global Average Temperatures rise of 3 or 4 degrees and the kind of catastrophic, runaway consequences I have just described.

In the face of such need and such a bleak outlook – “what use” we might ask, echoing the little boy in the parable of the five loaves and three fishes, “are 11 churches and 35 deanery reps?” To which Jesus might reply as he accepts and blesses our attempts to Green our Churches: “that’s all I need to redeem this situation… make the people sit down, and share out the Marylebone churches offering…….”.

Or, to take another biblical story: in the face of such a desperate situation we might beg Jesus in the words of the father of the demon-possessed son “Lord if you can – please heal our world! ………….”

To which we need to hear Jesus’ frustrated and anguished response

“What do you mean ‘if I can?’ Faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I put up with you… in truth I tell you, if you had faith as small as a mustard seed you could say to this mountain of environmental problems, be moved and it will be thrown into the sea, for with faith nothing will be impossible for you.”

Both these narratives give the lie once and for all to the claim of the sceptic that small, individual, acts of faith in the face of apparently impossible odds are of no significance. In the first narrative, five thousand hungry people were fed by one small boy’s tiny contribution. In the second, one small step of faith released the healing power of God to redeem a situation which seemed impervious to human solutions. And note: when the disciples asked Jesus why they had not been able to heal the boy he replied that “some kinds of obstacles can only be overcome by fasting and prayer”.

So what you setting out to do this evening is not only a thoroughly practical initiative, but also, and equally importantly, a deeply spiritual and faith-full initiative.

Quite apart from the statistical fact that if each building in the country were individually greened we would start to make a real practical difference; from God’s perspective what you are attempting to do is an essential spiritual part of the solution to this seemingly impossible situation.

1. First It is a step of faith - like the step the father took to draw Jesus’ attention to his demon-possessed son. And faith can overcome the most impossible situations.
2. Second, it is your contribution – like the boy with his loaves and fishes – which will help to release spiritual and practical resources that without your offering would never have been released.

If you add to that a determination, which I hope will grow, to fast and to pray regularly as individuals and churches, about this mountainous problem of human induced climate change – then what a power house for change and for redemption you will become.

God will bless you in this endeavour in which every small step of faith to green your churches, and to make a change to your community and personal life-styles, will become a giant God-empowered step to bring healing to our diseased and increasingly incapacitated global environment.

And if people laugh at you – as they did at Noah when he was building his ark in a desert with no sight or sniff of the encroaching waters of environmental destruction – just do what he did : ignore the sceptics and keep on building your greener churches.

Amen