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A Christian approach to a topical question.
At one level the climate
change we are now beginning to experience is the result of increased
concentrations of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere. At another
level it is the result of human activity, mainly through burning fossil
fuels like coal, gas and oil. So
carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by one third since 1750,
the start of the Industrial Revolution, and the United Kingdom has
provided 15 per cent of this.
If no action were to be taken to reduce this, temperatures could rise
by up to six degrees centigrade, with disastrous effects on the
environment, the climate and the population. In the light of the Christian faith, what does this mean? At the heart of Christian belief is the idea that God has provided abundantly for all his people. But there are limits to the way God's gifts are to be used. As Ann Pettifor reminds us in her book The Coming First World Debt Crisis, "The strict rules of the Sabbath prohibit the exploitation of land and labour every seventh day". So
the Sabbath, by providing limits to consumption and exploitation,
offered an almost automatic mechanism for correcting injustices and
imbalances. Not just a correction every week, but every seventh year
and in every fiftieth year at Jubilee.
Because for so long we have lost this sense of God's generosity and
humanity's need for constraint, we now need to take drastic measures to
put things right again. Abating the causes of climate change will take far more than simply refraining from Sunday trading. Some of the adjustments will be painful and costly, but in the process, we may come nearer to the God whom we worship.
The Coming First World Debt Crisis, by Ann Pettifor, is published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, £12.55.
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