within the Next couple of weeks in Paris ... our world leaders will be meeting to try and hopefully make some decisions about our worlds use of our carbon resources.
We at the very least need to stop using resources at the rate we're using them, we need to stop exploiting the poor and need to find ways to help our brothers and sisters.
This year in particular I'm extremely conscious of this as I prepare to bring another team out from Ireland to Zambia which is suffering drought ... This plea goes beyond individuals ... it needs to but it needs to start at grass roots ... doesn't it?
Take a look at this video ... it shows the real effects of Climate Change on the people of Zambia and what potentially could happen with changes to our weather patterns. As with poverty there's a huge complex matrix of problems. But in terms of helping we need to be strategic in what we do to help our fellow world citizens.
When we head out next summer one of the major things we'll discover is that development and life generally is being hampered by the lack of water in the hydro station at kafue dam which at the moment at its lowest levels for years
Heres what the Archbishop of Canterbury said recently in a speech...
"I want to pick out four particular areas very quickly
"The first has already been mentioned by [Second Church Estates Commissioner] Caroline Spelman in her maiden speech, that of education and networking. We have unrivalled access to networks around the world. How are we going to use them and look beyond our own boundaries as the Church of England to draw in the resources of the whole Communion? This is a moment not for just looking inwards.
"It is still too big an issue for most people to get their minds round, including most of us here. And it is above all a classic issue for the whole people of God, not just for the clergy and the bishops and the ordinands. Part 5 of the Anglican Communion’s marks of mission says that we are “to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth”. That has been in our objectives as a Communion for many years; we have to come back to that and say what are we doing as part of our educational work and networking that will demonstrate that we take it seriously.
"Secondly, we have to come back to the basic social teaching principle of the dignity of the whole human person and the breaking down of the barriers between us achieved in Christ. In other words, as Duncan Dormor said, this has to be holistic. There are many questions that stop us facing climate change. We need to be deeply engaged in the development, as we are through the Anglican Alliance, of the new SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals. If climate change is to have the place that it needs in international policy, conflict is one of those areas that destroys any attempt to manage issues around climate change. Climate change is both a driver of conflict and a victim of conflict, and we must face that reality and use our networks to address that issue.
"Thirdly, co-creativity. We need an imaginative commitment to new ways of approaching the subject of climate change that does not accept a deterministic or selfish nationalistic policy. We cannot simply look at ourselves and say, ‘we must do better’, and kick the ladder away from the vast majority of humankind that is struggling to find the prosperity that we enjoy so richly. That requires a huge investment in new ideas. If you look up Leo Johnson’s work in this area, it is quite fascinating.
"And lastly, it must be incarnational. Alexandra Podd and Caroline Spelman spoke of this. We are to be exemplary in what we do ourselves. That comes down to some very basic things about faculty legislation; about use of our buildings and imaginative work there; about how use our heritage; about how we use and invest our finances, of which more later today; and around how we heat and light things. Symbolic action such as use of paper at General Synod, the amount we travel, and disinvestment or the tackling and engagement with companies in certain areas, such as arctic drilling, are equally important.
"This is not a standalone issue. It cuts across all we do. Thank you."
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