The Oxford Diocesan Synod motion, "Responding to the Climate Emergency", has been overwhelmingly supported by the General Synod of the Church of England. Setting out the challenges we face, Bishop Olivia, said "The signs from Westminster, friends, are not at all good:
Lord Deben, the outgoing Committee Chair called the decision to approve the UK’s first new deep coal mine in 30 years ‘total nonsense’, and he was damning about plans to approve the Rosebank oilfield off the coast of Scotland. How, he asked, can we ask countries in Africa not to develop oil; how can we ask other nations not expand their fossil fuel production if we start doing it ourselves?
Alok Sharma, who was Chair of the COP26 has said that the UK is at risk of losing its ‘international reputation and influence on climate’, that we risk falling behind without a response like the US’s vast subsidies for green industries.
Zac Goldsmith, resigned two weeks ago, citing government apathy and the Prime Minister’s apparent disinterest in climate change as the cause.
Just a few days beforehand, it was reported that our government is drawing up plans to drop the UK’s flagship £11.6bn climate and nature funding pledge. And on Sunday, it was claimed that Sir Keir Starmer ‘hates the tree huggers’
As our politicians row back to appease extreme elements on the back benches, there are ever more solid and compelling evidences of the extreme dangers we are in. Last week the UN secretary general said that “climate change is out of control”, as an unofficial analysis of world temperatures showed the hottest week on record.
As our planet heats up, as tipping points are passed and interact with each other, as species go extinct, as water resources become scarcer, as increasingly large parts of the planet become simply uninhabitable for human beings… mass movements of people will begin. There could be as many as 1.2 billion climate refugees by the end of this century.
We should be very, very concerned about instability that will be created by intense heat, water shortages and crop failures. We all want to know that our grandchildren will grow up in a stable and habitable world, but this climate crisis reaches well beyond self interest.
This is, self-evidently, an issue which has injustice and inequality at its core, intersecting with every other part of our mission as Christian disciples, affecting first and catastrophically the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.
This is a bleak picture, my friends. And I paint it not to be alarmist, but to concentrate our minds. The Bible has much to say on God’s love for this world; on the responsibility God gives to human beings to care for nature; and on nature’s provision for human beings. And right now God’s people have a heck of a lot of work to do."
A full transcript of the speech is available at oxford.anglican.org/news
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