Dear Friends,
While no single political party has a monopoly on climate action or ensuring a stable ecosystem, politics matter: who wins a given election, and how we engage with that politician or party, can make the difference between a liveable planet and an unliveable one.
Take for example this past Sunday’s election in Brazil, which saw President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (‘Lula’) unexpectedly defeat Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the jailed former leader of Brazil.
As the BBC’s climate editor Justin Rowlatt writes: ‘Satellite data from Brazil’s space agency, INPE, which has tracked Amazon clear-cutting since 1988, shows 3,335 km² cleared in the year to July – 42% less than the year before. It is a dramatic turnaround. Lula’s predecessor was Jair Bolsonaro, father of Flávio, his opponent in Sunday’s runoff. Bolsonaro pushed to open the Amazon to development..and fired INPE’s director after disputing its data. Clearing during his administration totalled nearly 45,600 km², against about 24,600 km² under Lula, according to INPE data. Environmental groups credit restored enforcement for much of the decline.’
Though the future is uncertain, Flávio Bolsonaro posed a much greater threat to the Amazon – which is arguably the most important ecosystem on the planet – than did Lula, who has at least demonstrated a willingness to protect this critical rainforest which stores enormous amounts of carbon and is home to a disproportionate number of the world’s insect, bird and plant species.
Through our faithful political engagement, we too can influence the trajectory of history and protect the world God made, including here in the UK as the government gets closer to deciding the fate of the planet-heating Rosebank oil field: oil which would be mostly exported and ultimately increase planet-heating emissions at a time when we urgently need emissions to fall.
Some in the UK and Brazil would have us believe that we must continue to exploit new fossil fuel developments and destroy nature in order to secure our economic wellbeing, while others have suggested that approving some new fossil fuel developments, like the recently approved Jackdaw gas field, is ‘pragmatic’. But you don’t solve the problem of fossil fuels with more fossil fuels, nor do you improve living standards by destroying the very ecosystems which sustain life.
Join us on 10 November at St John’s Waterloo as we discuss this and more, finding ‘Hope in a Divided Age’ with the Director of Christians in Politics Andy Flannagan, theologian Dr Ruth Valerio, and Rachel Millward, Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales.
Read the full October 2026 newsletter here.
The Operation Noah Team
