Posts

Steven Croft

Faith Communities and Climate Change

Last week I had the immense privilege of speaking with about 50 senior climate change negotiators from all across Europe and the developing world.  I spoke personally to lead negotiators from Sudan, Ethiopia, South Africa, Sweden, Bulgaria and Fiji. Everyone I spoke to affirmed the reality of climate change affecting their country through drought or extreme weather events.

The negotiators were in Oxford for three days for an annual conference which gives them the chance to get to know each other outside of the detailed pressure of negotiations.

The occasion was a dinner in Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History.  We dined among the dinosaurs and alongside the dodo.

The Museum hosted a famous debate in 1860 as one of its first events between Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and Thomas Henry Huxley, later known as “Darwin’s bulldog”.  The debate centred around faith and science in opposition to each other and in particular Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published a few months earlier.  The debate is commemorated on a large stone at the entrance to the museum.

The dinner last week looked back to this debate and focussed on the climate change and the approach of the faith communities and of scientists.  I was there as the present Bishop of Oxford.  Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change spoke for the scientists.  There were also contributions from Professor Paul Smith, Director of the Museum and Professor Benito Muller, Managing Director of Oxford Climate Policy, for the philosophers.

Unlike 1860, all parties were agreed that we must do all in our power to use our different insights to combat climate change for the sake of present and future generations.

After dinner there was an address to the delegates from Fiji’s Ambassador to the European Union on Fiji’s priorities as it takes on the Presidency of COP23, the UN Climate Change Conference which takes place in Bonn in November.  More on this here : http://newsroom.unfccc.int/cop-23-bonn/

My favourite photo of the evening shows the ambassador speaking under the Tyrannosaurus skeleton: a reminder that life on earth can change radically and of the urgency of climate change action.

The contributions were filmed and will be posted on the conference website in due course.  My own remarks are below.

Here are five compelling reasons why you should engage with faith communities in your role as senior climate change negotiators.

First and foremost because faith communities make up the majority of the global population.  Ten years ago, long before the historic Paris agreement, the UK’s environment agency asked 25 leading environmentalists what needed to happen[1].

There were 50 suggestions.  Second on the list, behind improving energy efficiency was that religious leaders should make the environment a priority for their followers because of the enormous potential influence for change.

Out of a global population of 7.1 billion just 1.1 billion people are secular, non religious, agnostic or atheist. The remainder belong in some way to one of the great world faiths.  31% of the global population is Christian.  22% belong to Islam.

Within Europe Union 72% of the population still claim some sort of adherence to Christianity.  Just 20% would claim to be atheist or secular though there is considerable variation across the continent.  What the churches and faiths teach on this subject matters.

Second faith shapes values and lives in powerful ways.  The Christian faith helps people aspire to virtue, to living as God intends and often against personal self interest and for the sake of others.  That is exactly the attitude the world needs to combat climate change.

The most powerful line in the Lord’s Prayer is “Give us this day our daily bread”.  It is often misunderstood as a hook on which to hang our petitions: the things we ask from God. Actually it is a prayer which points back to the worshipper: help us to be content with exactly what we need this day: “Help us to be thankful just for what we need to stay alive”.  The Lord’s Prayer is the most powerful antidote to greed and consumerism the world has ever known.

Third the faith communities are global communities.  We are conscious in the Christian Church of our sisters and brothers across the world.

I am looking forward to visiting South Africa in September with our link Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman.  Many local churches and dioceses have these international relationships.  In one of our sessions we will be studying climate change.  When we listen to the news about the disproportionate effect of climate change on the poorest in the world, these are our sisters and brothers.

Fourth, our feet are are dancing to a different song (or they should be).  There is a close connection between the global economic system and climate change.  The planet cannot sustain continuous expansion in energy consumption.

Increasingly the world of politics and economics dances to a single tune: continuous economic growth and expansion.  We need alternative ideologies to support a more sustainable world.  The faith communities have an alternative ideologies – a different authority: in the case of Christians, the Scriptures and the person of Jesus Christ.

That ideology understands the connection between our inner and outer life.  Pope Francis is one of the few contemporary figures able to write a letter to the entire world – his great encyclical Laudato’ Si.  One of the most telling quotations in his letter is from Benedict his predecessor: “The external deserts in the world are growing because the internal deserts are so vast”.

Our external ecology is connected to our internal ecology.  Faith communities nurture that inner life and offer a different song and strength to resist.

And fifth, faith communities know how to take action for change.  Christians are called to be disciples: always learning.  We understand the world is imperfect.  We are committed to making a difference.  We know or we can learn how to mobilise others to achieve common goals.

I am the patron of a small campaigning organisation, Hope for the Future.  Hope was founded in 2013 by a small group of churches in Yorkshire and specialises in equipping local churches and other faith groups to lobby their MP’s on climate change issues.  Last year Hope for the Future trained over 1,000 people in our lobbying approach.

Through our training and one to one support, we have impacted over 100 climate conversations between MPs and their constituents this year.  We know from feedback from local churches and from MP’s that Hope makes a difference.

The anthropologist Margaret Mead said this.  “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed it is the only thing that ever has”.  I suspect that most of us will know that quotation more from the West Wing that from Mead herself.

Faith communities are places where those small groups of thoughtful and committed citizens are found.  We are not perfect.  We are not uniform.  But we are communities of hope whose values lead us to work for change, not against the findings of science but in tandem to bring about a more sustainable world.

For more on Hope for the Future see http://www.hftf.org.uk

For more on combatting climate change in the Diocese of Oxford see https://www.oxford.anglican.org/mission-ministry/environment/

[1] As reported by Jo Ware in the Church Times, 11th August, 2017.

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

Caring for the earth – a new carol

This is a key week for the future of the earth.  The Climate Change talks in Paris are seeking a global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions and prevent global warming above 2 degrees.  Many experts believe our target should be more ambitious still: to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees only.

The weather, rather than the climate, was making the news last weekend with the dreadful floods in North West England and South West Scotland.  Extreme weather events are just one symptom of global climate change.

Most years in this season I try and write a new hymn or song as the verse for my Christmas card.  Writing the verse helps me to begin thinking about the great themes of the Christmas season.  This year I have tried to focus on the gift of creation and the earth, our fragile common home.

The first chapter of John’s gospel is always read in Church at Christmas.  John 1 speaks of the creation of the world through God’s Word (or reason) and of God’s Word taking flesh to live among us in Jesus Christ.  John 1 echoes the beautiful words of Genesis 1 where God creates the heavens and the earth, separating sky from land and sea (“In the beginning….”).

The new carol in turn echoes both of these Bible passages.  I’ve also used a couple of phrases taken from the recent letter of Pope Francis on climate change, Laudato Si, which is subtitled: “On care for our common home”.  The letter speaks powerfully about discipleship and care for the created world.

Finally, I’ve set the hymn to the well known tune: “The King of Love my shepherd is” – music many people link with God’s love and care for all the world.

You’re very welcome to use the words as a prayer, as a song you sing by yourself or one you use in Church.   As you pray, remember those caught up in the dreadful floods this past weekend and those working hard in Paris to prevent the warming of our world.

Creator of our common home
And maker of such wonder
You crafted fire and sky and stone
Dividing seas asunder
In love you set the earth in space
In joy ordained its pathway
Filled earth and sea and sky with grace
That we might praise you always
We turned away your gift of life
Polluted all you gave us
The land was spoiled, we favoured strife
Lives turned away from goodness
In Bethlehem you gave your Son
Creator in creation
To win us back and call us home
Revealing your salvation
The Word of God took human form
Eternity in person
Reason and love came to transform
God’s gift for our conversion
Creator of our common home
Redeemer of such mercy
Sustainer of all life on earth
To you always be glory.

+Steven

/2 Comments/by
Steven Croft

The Sustainable Development Goals

As churches across the Diocese prepare to celebrate Harvest it’s worth pausing to think about a momentous event in world history which took place last week at the United Nations.

World leaders gathered from every continent at the United Nations in New York.  The purpose of the meeting was to agree the new Global Goals, or the sustainable development goals for the next 15 years.goals

The media didn’t give the occasion that much attention.  ITN led that night with Pope Francis’ visit to the 9/11 memorial rather than his time at the United Nations.

But it was a really significant moment.  Fifteen years ago, the United Nations agreed the Millennium Development Goals.  They were shorter, simpler and very effective. The MDG’s have had a huge impact in helping to reduce extreme poverty, improving health and education and in helping women and girls across the world.

The new Global Goals have emerged from an international three year process of listening.  The UK government, led by the Prime Minister, played a really key role.

There is huge ambition here.  According to the UN document: “Never before have world leaders pledged common action and endeavour across such a broad and universal policy agenda”.  And again, “We can be the first generation to succeed in ending poverty just as we may be the last to have a chance of saving the planet”.

The goals are more comprehensive this time.  There are 17 goals and 169 targets.  They are therefore less catchy but much more realistic.  They recognize that all kinds of things are interconnected in tackling poverty.  They are also goals for every country not simply for the developing world.  The British government has promised to implement them alongside governments in Africa and Asia.  There is a much stronger emphasis on building strong, honest, robust governments and institutions as well as on aid and generosity.  There is a strong slogan which focuses on helping the weakest so that no-one is left behind.

There is now a massive challenge ahead in bringing the new Global Goals to the attention of the whole world.  I hope parishes and schools across the Diocese will play their part in that process.

As we celebrate Harvest together as Christians, we give thanks to God for the good things of the earth.  We will focus on sharing what we have and on the care of creation.  It is a good moment to remind each other of the new Global Goals and this common vision to end poverty once and for all.

For more information see https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org

+Steven

/1 Comment/by
Steven Croft

General Synod Debate : Climate Change

Combatting Climate Change: the Paris Summit and the Mission of the Church

I am very grateful for this debate, for the work done by the Environmental Working Group and the lead given by Her Majesty’s Government that we heard about earlier.  I wholeheartedly support all parts of this motion.  Together with other northern dioceses, Sheffield has supported the Hope for the Future Campaign, which has been one of the campaigns encouraging lobbying of MPs and candidates which continues its work.  I want to address my remarks especially to what used to be clauses (d) and (e) and are now (e) and (f).

As Chair of the Ministry Council I wholeheartedly support the call of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network for programmes of ministerial formation and in service training which address this issue, and I will willingly ensure there is an audit of the way ordinands and others engage with these issues in the coming year, and I expect to find a great deal of good practice already in our Colleges and courses.

Pope Francis, in Laudato Si’, calls for nothing less than an ecological conversion of individuals and communities, and I love that phrase ‘ecological conversion’.  He quotes Pope Benedict: “The external deserts in the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast” and he writes “a healthy relationship with creation is one dimension of overall personal conversion.”

The strength of Laudato Si’ is the deep rooting of the environmental crisis not in some esoteric branch of theology but in the centre of the Christian vision of God and the earth, the centre of what it means to be human and the centre of a theology of hope.  Limiting carbon emissions is absolutely vital but will not in itself address the whole problem.  The environmental crisis, as we have heard, is also a social crisis and a spiritual crisis and the roots of this crisis lie, according to Pope Francis, in what he calls the omnipresent technocratic paradigm, in the cult of unlimited human power and in the rise of a relativism which sees everything as irrelevant unless it serves one’s immediate interests.

So I am cautious about a new branch of theology called eco theology and a new branch of ethics called eco justice.  We simply need to rediscover the ecological imperatives at the heart of all Christian theology and all Christian ethics, and set these perspectives at the heart of all Christian formation in catechesis, in schools, in local churches and in all forms of ministerial education.

One of the pieces of work I have done over the last few years is on the Lord’s Prayer and I have become more and more convinced that the petition ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ is not a petition for God to give us things but it is a petition to learn contentment in all our lives and in every day that we ask each day only for enough for that day.  Thank you.

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

A letter from Pope Francis

I received a letter last week from Pope Francis.  So did you.  The letter is addressed to the whole of humankind, not only Roman Catholics and not simply Christians.  Francis writes “I wish to address every living person on the planet” (2).

The letter addresses the profound danger the world faces from environmental deterioration: the destruction of Sister Earth, our common home.  The title of the letter is taken from Saint Francis’ beautiful canticle, Laudato Si’, Praise be to you my Lord – best known now through the English hymn, “All creatures of our God and King”.

Francis plea is for the whole human family to come together at this key moment in our history to seek sustainable development across the earth.  The letter describes what is happening to our common home: an accelerating process of decay.  He draws attention to pollution on a massive scale; to climate change which threatens to change life on earth for ever, to acute water shortages, to the loss of biodiversity.  The letter draws out the clear consequences for human life and the breakdown of human society.  All of these developments heighten and increase inequality across the earth and disproportionately affect the poorest nations.  The poor should be at the heart of our concern for the environment and the two cannot be separated.

The world faces immense problems rooted in the misuse of the earth: “never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years” (53).  And yet: “it is remarkable how weak international political responses have been” (54).  The letter is a wake up call to a complacent world.

Chapter Two of the letter set out a clear and detailed basis for Christians (and others) to renew their commitment to the earth rooted in Scripture and the doctrine of creation:

“The entire material universe speaks to us of God’s love, his boundless affection for us.  Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God” (84).

Chapter Three explores the human roots of the ecological crisis.  This is where the letter becomes far more than a call to recycle or reduce our carbon footprint.  The abuse of Sister Earth is linked in a profound way to our way of understanding human life and activity.  Our technical prowess has brought us to a crossroads.  We have placed ourselves at the centre of the universe, as masters of creation and failed to understand in a profound way what life is for.

A better and more profound understanding is needed.  At its heart is the concept of the interconnectedness of life caught by the phrase an integral ecology.  We are not isolated individuals but part of the larger universe and in a particular place within it.  In Chapter Four, Francis explores environmental, economic and social ecology, cultural ecology and the ecology of daily life.  These three central chapters on the theology of the environment, on the roots of the crisis in our misunderstanding of what it means to be human and on a better vision are immensely rich and creative.  The quotation which best sums up these chapters is from Benedict XVI:

“The external deserts in the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast” (152).

Evironmental degradation is a consequence of the human condition, not an accident of it.

In Chapter Five, Francis turns to lines of approach and action.  These are to be rooted in Christian hope and the expectation that things can change.  He highlights, as expected, the importance of dialogue on the environment in the international community and the forthcoming Climate Change conference in Paris.  But Francis highlights as well the importance of more local dialogues and local politics and the call to bring economics politics, science and religions into the conversation at every level.

In the sixth and final chapter, the letter turns to what we ourselves can do.  “A great cultural, spiritual and educational challenge stands before us and it will demand that we set out on the long path of renewal” (202).  We are to be partners not observers in this conversation.

Lifestyle is key as we each learn to live sustainable lives.  Education is vital in schools, homes and seminaries.  Francis coins and uses the term “ecological conversion”: part of our discipleship is recovering our responsibility to the earth:

“Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to the life of virtue; it is not an optional or secondary aspect of our Christian experience” (217).

But individual action is not enough.  Love must lead us to political action as well, to act in hope to renew the mindset of the world and reform our stewardship of the earth.

Laudato Si’ is a profound and helpful document and I commend it to you.  Last week our Archbishops and other Faith Leaders signed a renewed Lambeth Declaration calling for all people of faith to recommit themselves to the care of the earth and action on climate change.  On 17th June, 10,000 people took part in a mass lobby of Parliament organized by the Climate Change Coalition (which includes our own Hope for the Future campaign).

Next month one of the key debates at General Synod will be on combatting climate change, the Paris Summit and the question of climate change and investment.

Each of us needs to take seriously this aspect of our discipleship: our ecological conversion.  Care for the environment is one of the major issues of our age.  How will you engage with all that it means and help your church, your parish, your school, your local council and your government do the same?

Some links and resources:

The Encyclical Letter, LAUDATO SI’ can be found here.

The Church of England General Synod document on Combatting Climate Change and the Lambeth Declaration is here.

The Christian Aid report of the mass lobby of Parliament is here.

Hope for the Future’s website and campaign details are here.

/2 Comments/by
Steven Croft

The Good Samaritan and Climate Change

blog-steven-croft-1How should a Christian think and speak about climate change?

Climate change is a present reality not a future threat.  It’s a present reality for millions of the poorest people in the world who are affected today by rising sea levels, by changing weather patterns, by water shortages and violent storms.

On Saturday, Hope for the Future offered a training day in Sheffield for Climate Change ambassadors.  It was a privilege to be there.  Hope for the Future is an ecumenical, nationwide campaign to encourage and equip individuals, churches and groups to lobby their MP on climate change.  Further details are here:  http://www.hftf.org.uk

2015 is a key year for Climate Change campaigners.  Action to prevent climate change has to be global to make a difference.  This year, there are a series of key international conferences and meetings.  The UK has the potential to play a leading role in all of these, whatever government is in power.  Now is the time for the churches to speak out.

The different aid agencies and charities have formed the Climate Coalition (http://www.theclimatecoalition.org).  Big things are planned for Valentine’s Day in a couple of weeks time.  Pope Francis is to issue a major encyclical later in the year.  Christian Aid, Tear Fund, CAFOD and others are all mobilizing their supporters.

But what will move us to take action?  One of the most helpful stories to reflect on the Good Samaritan (Luke 10).  Almost everyone knows it.  A man is travelling down from Jerusalem to Jericho.  He is set upon by robbers and left for dead.  Over 66% of the people who travel down the Jericho Road that day see the problem but they do nothing about it.  They pass by on the other side.

meetingThe Samaritan is different.  He sees and is moved with compassion.  Compassion moves him to action.  That is exactly the journey many of us need to take in respect of climate change.  We need to see what is happening and its consequences.  We need to be moved with compassion.  We need to take action: in campaigning for change, in changing our habits and in encouraging others to do the same.

What helps people to make that change?  Jesus tells the parable to answer a lawyer’s question: who is my neighbour?

Think about it.  People in the Philippines, in Bangladesh, in Bolivia, in Malawi, affected by climate change today are my neighbours.  The generation now being born, who will live through enormous climate trauma if we do nothing are my neighbours.  To love them means to take action, to do something.

My full reflection on the Good Samaritan is available here.

For ideas on what action to take please go to one of the websites above.

Hope for the Future have partnered with Operation Noah to deliver a second training day in London on March 14th exploring our Christian call to climate action. This will include contributions from Bishop Richard Cheetham, Our Voices and CAFOD.  More details on the website.

 

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

Hope for the Future: fighting the giant of climate change

Hope for the Future A Presidential Address to the Sheffield Diocesan Synod 8th March, 2014

In the 1940’s, William Beveridge and William Temple spoke of five giants.  They were referring to the evils which would have to be fought by the generation which led the reconstruction of Europe following the Second World War.  They named the giants: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease.  It’s a graphic picture.  Temple and Beveridge were issuing a clear call to a new kind of battle.  That fight led to the construction of the National Health Service, the welfare state, a massive expansion of education and the building of much that remains good and strong in British society.  Much of that rebuilding was on solid Christian principles.

What giants would we name today in summoning the world to battle in the next generation?  Beveridge’s five giants are still with us on a global scale.  Want, ignorance, disease, squalor and idleness remain the enemies of human flourishing.  There are disturbing cracks now in that post war settlement in British life and much that needs to be defended.

But there is sixth giant to be named and to be fought: the giant of climate change which threatens the stability of life on this beautiful earth for our children and for our grandchildren.  The damage this sixth Goliath will do to this beautiful earth if unchecked is beyond our imagination.

This giant of climate change is stealthy and invisible.  It’s power rests on the accumulation of a gas in the atmosphere which cannot be seen but can be measured, a gas which is increasing year by year. It’s strength is manifested through the slow but steady rise of global temperature;in rising sea levels, through alterations in the atmosphere and loading the dice towards new weather extremes.  This giant wreaks havoc through immense power of our weather systems.  Whilst those weather systems are unpredictable in terms of detail, the effect of climate change in to the future is all too apparent and clear long into the future.  The giant’s power to change the future of our world grows ever stronger.

The science behind climate change is at the same time both very simple and very complex. Life on earth depends on a hospitable and stable climate.  Our climate is determined by the composition of different gases in the atmosphere.  The atmosphere wraps the earth like a blanket, welcoming energy from the sun and  [1] emitting back exactly the right amount to produce that stable climate.

But for the last one hundred years the global temperature has been rising.  It has become increasingly clear that the cause is man made: more and more greenhouse gases are being pumped into the atmosphere, changing the delicate balance and causing global temperatures to rise.

Ecologists have demonstrated that the systems of the earth are interdependent.  More carbon emissions leads to global warming.  Global warming leads to the melting of the arctic ice.  The ice melting leads to rising sea levels. Rising sea levels leads to a shift in the oceans currents and greater rainfall.  These shifts in turn lead to different and more extreme weather patterns. Deforestation leads to less carbon dioxide being taken from the atmosphere.  Species of plants and animals and fish migrate or become extinct. The earth begins to change.

The science is clear and accepted by the overwhelming majority of scientists Global temperatures have risen and are rising.  According to the International Panel on Climate Change Report of September 2013, depending on whether we take action, the global average temperature seems likely to rise by from as little as 0.9 degrees centigrade to as much as 5.4 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century – probably within the lifetime of my children and certainly within the lifetime of my grandchildren.  That does not sound much to you and I. However, the IPCC estimates the effect of a 2 degree change to be really major.  A 3 or 4 degree change would be catastrophic for life on earth.

The reason for this wide temperature range is not uncertainty in the science.  The uncertainty represents the range of scenarios before us.  How much fossil fuel will we choose to burn?  How much greenhouse gas will be released?  What choices will we make.  The scientists have shown that if we take immediate action we might be able to keep the temperature below 2C, if we keep with business as usual we are headed for 4C or more by 2100.

A few degrees change in temperature make a huge difference.  The scientists tell us that in the depths of the last ice age when there where kilometer thick ice sheets over much of Europe the average temperature of the globe was only approx. 5 degrees C cooler then the preindustrial level.

The consequences of global warming are significant for human life on the planet but, of course, they fall disproportionately on the some of the poorest people on the earth: Pacific Islanders whose homes will literally disappear as sea levels rise; African farmers near to the equator who face ever more devastating and frequent droughts; those who live in the coastal regions of Bangladesh subject to still greater flooding; those who cannot afford flood defenses; those at risk of tropical storms and tsunamis.  There is increased risk of infectious disease, water and food shortages, and mass migration with the consequent threat to international security.

What does of all this have to do with us, in this Synod, in this Diocese, in our parish churches across South and East Yorkshire?

Christians have a responsibility to speak out and take action on climate change along with everyone else on the planet.  Christians have a unique contribution to make because of our faith.

We believe in a creator God who has entrusted to humankind the care and stewardship of the earth (Genesis 1.28).  We are committed to justice and the effects of climate change will fall unfairly on the poorest nations.  We are committed to wisdom: to thoughtful reflection and careful action on the evidence before us.  We believe in restraint: that sacrifice today is worth making for a better future.  We are committed to safeguarding the integrity of creation and to sustain and renew the life of the earth, in the words of the five marks of mission of the Anglican Communion.  We are committed to our brothers and sisters in Christ across this Communion and the worldwide church, many of whom stand to lose their homes or livelihoods or secure environment.

Above all we are committed to the precious theological virtue of hope, without which no lasting change in this world is possible.  We are committed to daring to believe that the world can take action together on matters of great importance, that ignorance and selfishness can be overcome, that ordinary people acting in good faith can make a difference and change the world, that it is possible, even now, to halt the growth of this great demon which threatens to wreak havoc across our beautiful world.   Our grandchildren will reap what we sow in this generation.  If we sow blindness and greed and apathy, they will reap the whirlwind of enormous climate change, beyond our imagining. If we sow good science and hope, restraint and the right investment, they will reap peace and prosperity.

Can climate change be stopped?  Is there still time?  Dr. Anna Thomas Betts reminded the General Synod a few weeks ago, that the world has already taken action together when our climate is threatened with significant effect.  In the 1980’s the world was alerted to the effects of both lead in petrol and to the threat to the ozone layer of chorofluocarbons or CFC’s commonly found in aerosols the world over.  Action was taken on both counts on the basis of scientific research.  In 1987, the world agreed the Montreal protocol, banning the use of CFC gases.  Twenty-five years later the damage to the ozone layer has leveled off.  The IPCC expect the ozone layer to be rebuilt in the next decades[1].  Concerted, global action makes a difference.

What then should we do?  Clearly personal choice and reducing our carbon footprint is important.  Wise investment is important.  That was the primary focus of the recent General Synod debate.  Prayer should undergird all we do.

However at this key moment in time, I want to focus on the importance of Christians and others taking action to raise this agenda once again in the political life of this country.  Here is a mystery.  The world grows warmer.  Yet climate change has disappeared from the political agenda since 2010 in this country and around the world.  The longer term threats to the earth have been drowned out by the more imminent pressures of the global economic downturn.

This is in contrast to two earlier periods in British political life.  According to a recent article in the New Statesman, from 1988-1992 under a Conservative government and from 2006-7 under Labour, concern for the environment as the number one issue for the United Kingdom rose dramatically[2].  On both occasions, leadership provided by British politicians and by Britain led to significant international movement on climate change at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and in the world’s first Climate Change Act.  Heightened public awareness and public debate led to real leadership and clear international progress.

We know there will be a General Election in this country in 2015.  This is therefore a key moment in the electoral cycle of our nation to raise the profile of climate change in public debate, in the manifestos of the main parties and in the national and international policies which will follow.  It is a kairos moment.

Last July this Synod watched a short film made by the Diocesan Environmental Officers in Yorkshire and the North East.  The same group of officers, led by our own DEO Michael Bayley have now developed a specific campaign, Hope for the Future (www.hftf.org.uk).

The aim of Hope for the Future is very simple.  It is to encourage as many people as possible to write to their MP and prospective parliamentary candidates asking them to raise the issue of climate change as part of their manifesto commitment for 2015, for the sake of the earth and for our children and grandchildren.  The campaign is based very straightforwardly on hope not despair.

We are asking for each party to be committed in their manifesto to the recommendations already agreed by the Committee on Climate change for an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050.  We are asking for recognition that this is an issue which is much bigger than party politics. We need a cross party consensus, an alliance between industry, investors and entrepreneurs and a cast iron determination that Britain should lead globally on this issue.

Hope for the Future has attracted very significant national support: from the Church of England nationally, from other churches, from Christian Aid and Tear Fund, from Operation Noah and other significant climate change groups.  The Diocese of Sheffield has been asked to lead on this issue on behalf of this coalition of other agencies.

In a few moments time, as the final act of this Synod, I will be commissioning Climate Ambassadors for churches across this Diocese.  Their task will be to go wherever they are invited to meet with clergy and PCC’s and congregations and with other groups to discuss how they can become involved in this campaign and to ask as many people as possible write to their MP’s over the next six months, before the party conference season begins. We have full details of the campaign for every member of the Synod today.

I hope you will feel able to support the campaign by writing letters yourself and by encouraging others to do so.  Please invite one of these Climate Ambassadors to your church.  I hope some here will volunteer to be Ambassadors themselves and spread the word about the campaign within this Diocese and beyond this Diocese.  Please contact Michael Bayley for further details.  We are aiming for every MP to receive at least ten letters on this subject by the end of July.  You will all be aware that two of the three party leaders represent constituencies in this Diocese.

There is a sense of catching the moment here.  Last week a You Gov Poll found that 23% of those questioned named the environment as the number one issue for the country currently after the recent floods[3].  This was up dramatically from the six percent who chose it the previous week and ahead of health, crime and education.  Party leaders and other significant figures are speaking out on the issue.  We may find we are pushing at an open door in the next few months.

But action is needed.  We need to be very clear.  Left unchecked, global warming will wreak havoc in the earth.  If we take action together, climate change can be reduced and, God willing, reversed for the sake of future generations.

We are committed as a diocese to growing a sustainable network of Christ like communities in every place.  We pray that those communities will be effective in making disciples and in seeking to transform our society and God’s world.

Hope for the Future is part of that desire to transform God’s world so that it remains good and safe and beautiful for future generations.

All real change in this world begins with just a handful of like minded people taking action together.  Will you join us, will you work with us, will you raise this issue and fight this giant together.

For further reading:

Robert Henson, The Rough Guide to Climate Change, Rough Guides, 2011 Mark Maslin, Global Warming, A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, 2009 John Houghton, Global Warming, The Complete Briefing, 4th Edition, Cambridge, 2009.

The Hope for the Future Campaign:  www.hftf.org.uk

[1] For a detailed exposition see the Rough Guide to Climate Change, p.32

[2] Guy Shrubshole, New Statesman, 19th February, 2014: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/02/climate-change-has-finally-returned-mainstream-issue

[3] See the New Statesman article cited above

/1 Comment/by