Researchers have concluded that industrial and agricultural emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other GHGs threaten to change the climate rapidly over the next 100 years and beyond. This may have dramatic consequences for both people and the environment. Much uncertainty remains, but the message is clear: climate change poses a risk to future generations, and this risk needs to be taken seriously. While the first steps to combat climate change have been taken, the most difficult decisions still lie ahead. It is not just governments that must act: progress will only be made if there is widespread support from all sectors of society, including local authorities, NGOs, relevant industries, communities, and individuals. For policy-makers it means incorporating climate change considerations into their day-to-day and long-term decisions. For corporate executives, it means including the potential costs of both climate change and actions to minimise them in their business and investment calculations. For individual citizens, it means favouring climate-friendly products and services and adopting climate-friendly habits and lifestyles.
Indeed, climate change exists here and now - there is mounting evidence that it may already be responding to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, the issue of climate change is a reality for today’s world.
The international community must act, and we must reconstruct a reverence for God’s creation that allows us to have the strength and courage to do everything we can to respond to climate change. The international community has made some momentum on climate change, yet it must do more. The issue was addressed in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since the Convention entered into force in 1994, governments have been quantifying their national greenhouse gas emissions and developing strategies for dealing with climate change. Tougher emissions – control targets, more rigorous national policies, and intensified international co-operation have been high on the agenda, especially since the Kyoto conference in December 1997 and the subsequent debates. Governments adopted the Convention in response to the dramatic progress scientists have made in understanding how the Earth’s atmosphere system works. So while there has been some progress, it is a shame that Trump has taken the USA out of the Paris Accord, a revolutionary agreement. Clearly, certain politicians – even those who claim to be Christians – are not understanding the threat of climate change for what it is.
A religious perspective, then, might give policy-makers and politicians the incentive to act over the long-term to help resolve this critical issue. Genesis gives us two creation narratives – the first proclaiming, “and God called the Light Day” (Genesis 1:5) and the second stating, “Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew” (Genesis 2:5.) These both tell the story of creation, but with a contrasting style. In God, creation has a depth of meaning that shows that man-made climate change can not be declared as the work of God. Just as the scorching east wind, like the Arabian sirocco, destroyed plants and grass, so God was understood to destroy human pride (see Psalm 103:15-18; Jeremiah 4:11). Just as a plant springs up, fresh and green, only to be withered before the blast of the hot desert wind, so human empires rise, only to fall before the face of God.
Examining the Bible helps us to realise, then, that man’s obsession with consumption is negatively affecting God’s creation. Namely, our effect on the environment has led to pollution and a slow destruction of the environment. This moral failing and the immoral activities of humans on earth seems to be separating man from God. The failings involve extraction of natural resources without regard for future generations, and turn our resources into merely something to barter and exchange. For example, pollution is contributing to complications with our natural health. In addition, unsafe production methods - full of human errors due to use of artificial systems – create a mode of consumption which is certainly not compatible with what God intended.
The dogmatic notion that God has ceded the earth to man, and therefore it is the right of man to plunder and abuse the resources without concern for God’s spiritual creations, can be interpreted as disobedience to God’s will and what he had intended for mankind. We must understand the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must intercede and assist in our personal decisions as well as those of policy-makers, moving the heart and turning it to God as well as opening the eyes of the mind and giving us joy. Surely this will allow Christians to long for truth as well as an understanding of it. Through looking after God’s creation and realising how we have affected our natural environment, we will be able to reconstruct our relationship with God.
Comments