As has been reported this week, we have twelve years to keep climate change below a 1.5 degrees increase. Twelve years to stop a climate catastrophe that will kill millions. Twelve years to turn things around.
This will require a "unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society" - in other words it will require the kind of sacrifice, massive effort, and pulling together we last saw in the Second World War. It will require a complete transformation.
So basically if every business, political party, faith community, government is not putting climate change as their number one priority, they are being irresponsible.
We have twelve years - what are you going to do in the next twelve years?
There are certain lifestyle things we can do, sure: vegetarianism, stop flying so much, all that stuff, but that's not enough. Indeed, as some have argued it is a deliberate con to make us think we can stop climate change through personal consumer choices. It is a deliberate con to reduce social action to consumer choice, as opposed to collective action that brings powerful interests to account and demands systematic change.
I once heard Bill McKibben, the climate change activist, say, "I thought I was in an argument about climate change. It took me thirty years to realise we're not in an argument, we're in a war. A war against the fossil fuel companies. And we're losing."
Climate change is driven by the most powerful and richest in the world, it is caused by a massive fossil fuel industry who put massive lobbying effort into preventing effective action.
In the next twelve years we need massive collective organising, to demand change. This has to happen on all levels: the personal, the political, the economic.
I have said previously that I view the ultimate context of my pioneer ministry as the climate change crisis. My ultimate context is not secularisation or the narrow agenda of one particular religion among all the other religions. My ultimate commitment is the spirituality that will allow us to do the work for the next twelve years. Anything less than this does not take climate change seriously enough. Anything less than this is irresponsible and narrow sectarianism. We don't have time for that kind of nonsense anymore.
This will require a "unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society" - in other words it will require the kind of sacrifice, massive effort, and pulling together we last saw in the Second World War. It will require a complete transformation.
So basically if every business, political party, faith community, government is not putting climate change as their number one priority, they are being irresponsible.
We have twelve years - what are you going to do in the next twelve years?
There are certain lifestyle things we can do, sure: vegetarianism, stop flying so much, all that stuff, but that's not enough. Indeed, as some have argued it is a deliberate con to make us think we can stop climate change through personal consumer choices. It is a deliberate con to reduce social action to consumer choice, as opposed to collective action that brings powerful interests to account and demands systematic change.
I once heard Bill McKibben, the climate change activist, say, "I thought I was in an argument about climate change. It took me thirty years to realise we're not in an argument, we're in a war. A war against the fossil fuel companies. And we're losing."
Climate change is driven by the most powerful and richest in the world, it is caused by a massive fossil fuel industry who put massive lobbying effort into preventing effective action.
In the next twelve years we need massive collective organising, to demand change. This has to happen on all levels: the personal, the political, the economic.
I have said previously that I view the ultimate context of my pioneer ministry as the climate change crisis. My ultimate context is not secularisation or the narrow agenda of one particular religion among all the other religions. My ultimate commitment is the spirituality that will allow us to do the work for the next twelve years. Anything less than this does not take climate change seriously enough. Anything less than this is irresponsible and narrow sectarianism. We don't have time for that kind of nonsense anymore.
Comments
A good article, but what's exercising me about this is the connection between environmentalism and social justice. The negative impacts of pollution fall heaviest on the poor; so too the regressive taxation being brought in to ration and reduce consumption. How do we avoid the poor being priced out, and fossil fuels, plastics etc becoming a luxury for the rich?
Julian.