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A Christian response to the climate crisis

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Why does God’s Creation matter to us?

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“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it”

Psalm 24:1

“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good”

Genesis 1:31

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We are commanded to love our neighbour

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This is what we are already doing to creation

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We are creating a climate and ecological crisis of cataclysmic proportions

And this

And on top of that, we are also destroying the environment through things like deforestation, extraction and pollution.

75% of the Earth’s land has now been severely altered by human actions such as industry and farming. Only 13% of the world’s oceans remain as wilderness, free from human influence and exploitation. Today, approximately 60 billion tonnes of renewable and non-renewable resources are extracted globally each year from our ecosystems, nearly twice the figure from 1980. According to some studies we are producing waste and using the Earth’s resources 70% more quickly than they can be absorbed or replenished, effectively using up our annual ecological budget by August each year.

We do not respect the Earth and we don’t live within its natural limits.

As a result the ecological crisis that humans have created is another crisis of epic proportions.

As António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, reminds us “This is senseless and suicidal..”

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Carbon emissions continue to rise

We are in an ecological crisis caused by the way we use land, which is directly connected to overconsumption by the relatively rich nations.

We are in a climate crisis caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which produces carbon dioxide.

This chart shows how global average temperatures have been rising in tandem with atmospheric carbon dioxide.

It shows atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide over the past 2000 years (red line), and then the average annual temperature from 1880 to 2019 (blue squiggly line). Before the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide pretty much stayed somewhere around 280 parts per million. After the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide emissions, and therefore concentrations in the atmosphere, began to skyrocket.

Carbon dioxide concentrations are now over 414 parts per million (January 2021) and rising, an increase of over 45% on pre-industrial levels. That’s the highest level seen in at least the last 3 million years. Increased CO2 causes an accompanying temperature rise.

We’ve reached 1.2oC of warming above pre-industrial levels – and currently we are heading for around 3oC by the end of the century.

To halt global heating we have to stop putting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

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The science has been clear for decades: The impacts are already desperately serious.

And yet since the formation of the IPCC in 1988, we have emitted more CO2, knowingly, than ALL of our emissions previously.

We have had warm words from politicians, expensive talking shops, thousands of legal cases, 50 years of environmental campaigning, and none of it has worked in reducing or even levelling off the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

Governments had a chance to take meaningful action at COP26 last November, and they failed to do so.

The average estimate of temperature increases that the newest round of pledges would bring us to is 2.4°C. That’s nowhere near good enough. But what is even more frightening is the gulf between promises and actual policies to implement these promises. It’s terrifying, because current policies take us to a central estimate of 2.9°C warming, with a worst case of nearly 4°C.

Even at the low end of the range, the world faces apocalyptic and irreversible damage.

And this is the actual trajectory we are on.

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We face numerous tipping points in the years to come which would lead to runaway climate change

It’s really important to acknowledge that there are climate tipping points.

Research now shows that there is a higher risk that “abrupt and irreversible changes” to the climate system could be triggered at smaller global temperature increases than we thought just a few years ago. There are also indications that exceeding tipping points in one system, such as the loss of Arctic sea ice, can increase the risk of crossing tipping points in others.

What we’re talking about is a point of no return, when we might actually lose control of this system, and there is a significant risk that we’re going to do this if we don’t make rapid changes.

One example of this is the forest in the south-east of the Amazon which has been very badly hit by deforestation and climate change. A study last year, showed that as a result the rainforest has begun to release CO2 into the atmosphere instead of being a carbon sink. This is really scary stuff.

If the world warms beyond 2 degrees, then there is a good chance it will reach a point at which it will be impossible to avoid runaway global heating.

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Uninhabitable areas of the World at 4 degrees of global warming

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The human impacts of the climate and ecological emergency are already apparent in human suffering and the accelerating erosion of life on Earth.

And even at 2 degrees increase the suffering is almost unimaginable.

Let’s look at some statistics and you can use your imagination to try to think what this might be like:

~ 6 billion people will be exposed to severe heatwaves with impacts on health and wellbeing. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone.

~ Higher temperatures, extreme weather, drought, desertification, increasing levels of carbon dioxide and sea level rise will lead to breadbasket failures (major food producing regions are known as ‘breadbaskets’) and millions more will starve to death.

~ Up to 5 billion people, particularly in Africa and South Asia, are likely to face shortages of food and clean water. You might think of glaciers as a nice to have, which are sad to lose but life will go on. Well, hundreds of millions of people rely on Himalayan glacial melt for their drinking water. If the glaciers melt, there will be massive water shortages.

~ But at the same time, 340 million or more people living in coastal areas, as well as major cities worldwide (Dhaka, Tokyo, New York, Miami, Amsterdam) will be flooded out, disaster movie style.

~ There will be mass displacement of somewhere between 200m and 1bn people, estimates vary, leading to conflict over resources (war, civil war, riots)

And potential societal collapse.

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Within our lifetime

And that’s not all.

We critically depend on the Earth’s natural systems.

Yet biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, and the pressures driving this decline are intensifying.

[You might want to choose just a couple of these facts if time is tight]

Today, biomass, the mammals of the world are represented like this: 60% livestock; 36% humans; 4% wild.

Over 80% of the human diet is provided by plants but meat, aquaculture, eggs, and dairy use over 80% of the world’s farmland, despite providing only 18% of our calories. �Meat production for human consumption has TRIPLED over the last 50 years.

The global Living Planet Index shows, on average, a decrease of over 2/3 in populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish between 1970 and 2016.

Three-quarters of the more than 35,000 species threatened with extinction and so are included on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, are threatened by our agriculture and over-harvesting.

A million species are at risk of extinction. Crucially 41% of insects are threatened with extinction and they are vital for pollination.

The seas are also at grave risk. 60 percent of world fish stocks are being fished at their maximum sustainable level. 30 percent are being overfished (unsustainable levels).

At 2oC of warming, around 2050, 99% of our coral reefs will be dead.

It’s not just how many species we are losing; it’s how fast we are losing them.

Species are being destroyed at around 1000 times more than the ‘background’ extinction rate typical of the earth’s past.

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You may be feeling…

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The good news…

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Business as usual is not working…

Change needs to happen now but politicians can’t bring themselves to make difficult decisions.

It’s partly the way in which the system works. Politicians always promise things will get better under their leadership. Then, when elected, they look for short-term solutions to justify their sunny promises. Difficult decisions get pushed to the next electoral cycle, so the time of making hard choices is always postponed.

And it’s obvious that endless growth on a finite planet will lead to collapse.

A constant demand for economic growth assumes the environment is an endless source of raw materials (clean water and air and fertile soil) and an endless sink to dispose of waste and pollution. It assumes that these resources are free, forever, and that waste has no consequences, forever. But we are now using 1 and three-quarter planets, and we only have one. It’s a recipe for disaster.

Even though people all over the world are saying they want change, big oil and big money, big corporate interests and press billionaires are actively lobbying against it.

The top five oil producers alone are spending $200 million a year just on lobbying to delay carbon reduction.

Lending to fossil fuel companies from banks is on the rise - $736 billion in 2019 up from $700 billion the year before.

The UK government spends £10.5 billion a year supporting fossil fuel companies in the UK, much more than the £7.3 billion a year it spends supporting renewable energy.

The UK government is also thinking about approving new fossil fuel projects including new oil fields in The North Sea.

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We need to move from a world that is dependent on fossil fuels to a world where all can flourish as god intended

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Tackling the climate and ecological emergency

Speaking Truth

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It isn’t going to be easy…

“Human progress is neither automatic or inevitable…

Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concerns of dedicated individuals.”

Martin Luther King

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But we ask ourselves - What would Jesus do in this Emergency?

So the question is what are we called to do. What would Jesus do?

The synoptic Gospels tell us that Jesus radically empowered the poor and disenfranchised in Galilee.

Then he set his face to the central authorities in Jerusalem, and started a walking campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience right into the Temple, where he engaged in a disruptive act of non violent direct action in protest at injustice and exploitation.

For this resistance he was arrested, tried and executed.

What would Jesus want us to do today in the face of a crisis that unleashes vast suffering on the poor and vulnerable, that is destroying the future of his children?

I think Jesus calls us to go to our own Jerusalems, to turn over the tables of injustice, and to speak out for justice and peace.

He would not expect us just to be people of contemplative prayer, he would insist that we should also be people of action and effort in our resistance to injustice and our seeking a world where all can flourish.

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Christian Climate Action

is part of a

* That doesn’t mean you have to take part in civil disobedience but you need to be comfortable with the fact that others in the movement will

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Some are called to confront power by being arrested for disruptive action but there is also so much else to do

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Prayer protest

Action support

Outreach

Admin

Social media

Arrest support

Street theatre

Theology

Local issues

Meetings

Trainings

Being present

We need everyone

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We are inviting you to join a community

of like-minded people who act with love and faith

to protect God’s creation

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Direct Action is working

We’ve taken direct action over a couple of years now to encourage the Church of England to divest from fossil fuels.

In June 2023 - the Church of England Pensions Board and the Church Commissions did just that.

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Praying together is at the heart of everything we do

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We will not be bystanders

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What now?

Join us! We’d love to have you!

Receive our monthly newsletter:

https://christianclimateaction.org/newsletter/

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Find out more: christianclimateaction.org/events

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Please consider making a donation to CCA

christianclimateaction.org/donations

Christian Climate Action is a movement of people who have been moved in this climate crisis to take meaningful action around our 9-5s and other life commitments. Taking non-violent direct action is not easy, but we do it because we believe that the wellbeing and lives of countless human beings and other species depends on an urgent call for radical change being heard by governments and organisations around the world.

We are primarily volunteer-led, but, currently, five freelancers spend a total of six paid days per week between them doing some of the behind-the-scenes jobs that have to be done to keep us going.
For some of our actions we spend money on equipment.
We aim to be inclusive, so when travel and accommodation costs are a barrier to taking part in our actions we help cover those costs whenever we can.
Our online meetings are held on a paid-for Zoom account and we now have so many subscribers to our newsletter that we need to use a paid-for service to send it.

These are the kinds of things donation support. If you want to support the work that we are doing and help it continue, please do consider making a financial contribution. We feel passionately that the Church should be paving the way in this climate emergency and your donation will help us make that happen.

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“Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future,”

Press release

IPCC 6th Annual report: Climate Change 2022

Find out more about us

christianclimateaction.org