^{Above picture: George Marshall, author of Carbon Detox}

(extracted from Carbon Detox, part 10 (Thriving), p. 284/285 and 289/290. © George Mashall. Reprinted with permission).

Five of the Best.

People who really thrive

Life rewards people who are positioned for what is coming, and taking Climate Change seriously is like being a gambler with the inside tip.

People who have a thriving attitude decide that they are going to embrace Climate Change as a source of personal opportunity. They know that this issue will create the future heroes and villains, the millionaires and the bankrupts, the leaders and the losers. Although the details are still unclear, thrivers know that there is a revolution on the way and they want to be in the front line. Here are five of my favourite people - people who have heard this historic calling of climate change and have turned their lives around. Not one of them is a scientist of expert or career environmentalist. All of them took substantial personal risks in order to engage with an issue that was new and marginal at the time. And now all of them are thriving.

Paul Bodenham:

Paul Bodenham felt his first real foreboding about climate change on the eve of the new millennium. He remembers vividly a news report from the first country to witness the New Year from the Pacific islands of Kiribati. The reporter said, almost as an aside that, because of sea level rise, the islands would no longer be there in fifty years. 'This really struck home', he says. 'It made me feel that there were two worlds - the one in which we were all supposed to be celebrating the next thousand years and the one in which there was this unrecognized crisis that no one was talking about.' In October of that year, he was woken up by a huge crash as a 145-kph (90-mph) wind blew a slate off his roof. He decided it was time to do something.

Paul was no campaigner - his background was as an officer for local government and the Countryside Agency - but he was a highly committed Christian and believed he had a moral responsibility to do something. He was shocked to find that the Church had no position, no policy and was saying nothing at all about this huge problem. He decided to change that.

Operating from his front room, he launched Operation Noah as a call to Christians to take action on climate change. It moved slowly at first because Paul had virtually no funding and had to fit the campaign around his normal work. He started with a simple 'covenant' on which people pledged to reduce their emissions. As the project grew, 3,000 people signed the covenant.

In 2004 Operation Noah was officially launched by the Bishop of Hereford at a special service at Coventry Cathedral. Hundreds of Churches followed by holding services dedicated to climate change - with hymns, sermons and readings that celebrated God's creation and recognizing the challenge of the new threat. By 2007 Operation Noah had funded staff and the full backing of Churches Together, the ecumenical body that brings together all 40 mainstream Christian denominations.

Paul says: 'I knew all along that this would be a lot of work. I thought I must be mad. But I never thought twice about doing it. This work has completely changed the way that I see the world and made me into a much more aware person. What always amazes me is that, now, I don't feel too bothered about climate change itself. Somehow, when you feel that you are reaching people and feel that you are being effective you really do feel that you have power.'

About George Marshall:

George Marshall is director of the Climate Outreach and Information Network and has over 17 years' experience in research and campaigning for environmental organzations.

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