Time for Deep Reflection and Bold Action

On 7^th October, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change launched a special report on limiting global warming to just 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial average temperature (the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement).

Its message was stark, but with hope. If we don’t reduce our carbon emissions rapidly we are on course for a very dangerous 2-degree temperature rise by the end of the century – spelling higher sea level rise, droughts and floods, drops in food production, mass migration, and faster species extinction. 

The good news is that if we can keep temperature rises to 1.5 degrees it would be ‘manageable’. The solutions are out there; the report points to the need for action particularly in energy (getting off fossil fuel), land use (reforesting was one example), and curbing greenhouse gas emissions from industry and cities, including electrifying transport.

But here’s the real challenge: the window to achieve remaining below 1.5 degrees is the next twelve years, and this will require “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. 

What does that mean for Christians and Churches, as part of society? We ... Read more...

Comment: Walking for Wildlife

In September, A Rocha staff and supporters joined a crowd of thousands on Chris Packham’s People’s Walk for Wildlife. The march in central London celebrated the fabulous wildlife we have in this country and called for people to join together to protect and restore it.

It was a typically English day, complete with drizzle, but thousands of people turned out nonetheless, cheering and playing birdsong through their phones, demonstrating that there is a real appetite in this country to see nature protected and restored. The difficult truth, however, is that the goodwill and fun of the march needs to be followed up by urgent action, in our homes and in our politics, to halt the decline of nature in these isles.

On this, as in so many of the great issues of our time, the church has a key role to play. In the mid-noughties, it was the church that gave the critical momentum to the campaign to substantially reduce the debt burden on countries in the global south. Our aim then was to reduce poverty, but environmental degradation—one symptom of which is the devastating loss of so much ... Read more...