Bishop: Climate Change Bill must be strong and effective

The Bishop of Chelmsford, Rt Revd John Gladwin, has called on Christians of all traditions to speak up and ensure that the 2008 Climate Change Bill is as strong and effective as possible.

The Bishop was speaking at a Service in St Paul’s Cathedral to mark the culmination of Christian Aid’s ‘cut the carbon’ march. He is the Chair of Christian Aid.

The march, which began in mid-July in Northern Ireland, lasted 80 days and covered 1,000 miles.

The full text is as follows:

He is the image of the invisible God; the first born of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created….all things have been created through him and for him. He is himself before all things and in him all things hold together.
Colossians 1:15ff

In the great march across these islands your feet have blessed our land.  The print of your feet upon our soil is good news.  With the Apostle Paul you bear witness to the truth.  Our world was brought to life in love, it is sustained in love and it is held together in love.  Paul knew that love in the human face of Jesus.

Your feet bring to us a message of hope.  They call us to embrace the world in love, to seek to sustain it to be a blessing for all and to challenge our sisters and brothers and the structures of power to do the same.  That is the vision we carry in our hearts today.  It is the truth that brought energy to you who have walked together across these islands to call us all to work for that vision.

In contrast to your feet, our footprint is bad news. Thankfully, increasing numbers are waking up to the damage we are doing to this world and its most vulnerable people.  The carbon on our footprint is dealing in death for millions least able to bear the cost. The selfish plundering of the world’s resources is driving the poorest and most vulnerable deeper into poverty and injustice.

I love those visionary words of R.S. Thomas which I heard again last week – they open the windows of our heart to a different vision.  It is called ‘The Kingdom’

The Kingdom
It’s a long way off but inside it
there are quite different things going on:
festivals at which the poor man
is King and the consumptive is
healed; mirrors in which the blind look
at themselves and love looks at them
back; and industry is for mending
the bent bones and minds fractured
by life. It’s a long way off, but to get
there takes no time and admission
is free, if you will purge yourself
of desire, and present yourself with
your need only and the simple offering
of your faith, green as a leaf.

The Secretary General of the UN has said this past week that the reality of Climate Change must now be taken as given truth.  Our carbon polluted feet are a basic cause of global warming. We must stop thinking this is a novel thesis up for debate and treat it as a reality we have to face and challenge.

The risen Christ’s love embraces the whole.  

• that vibrant love in whom all things are brought into being.  
• suffering love that aches to see its wounds healed.  
• redeeming love which opens in us the vision of a new and complete future.

Why else would a group of people walk across our land and give so much of themselves on the way if there is no vision of the future burning in their hearts?

Every time I have the privilege of visiting sisters and brothers in the developing world I am always stirred by how young are the people and how, in spite of the appalling and death dealing challenges being faced, they look in hope towards a new and better future.  Whether it is among the villages of the Samburu in Kenya surrounded by fields where the harvest has failed again – and today almost certainly washed away – or in the hills where farmers struggle to know what to do in the face of the ever warmer climate – people have not lost hope.  But they call upon us to act.  Our dirty feet are hurting them.

The only question for us is whether we are going to play our part in making their dreams possible.  No longer are we free to do what we wish as if our actions played no part in the lives of the poorest.  When we plunder the earth’s resources and abuse the rhythms of nature we deepen the poverty of others.  We encourage death and despair and undermine life and hope.  The challenge is personal to reform our lifestyle.  The challenge is corporate and social demanding new values, cultures and policies in which we roll back the damage we are doing to the creation held in the love of Jesus and to the people made in God’s image.  It is the classic Christian movement of repentance, faith and obedience.

In 2008, our Parliament will be working on the Climate Change Bill.  We must welcome this opportunity.  The voice of Christians of all traditions needs to raise itself to ensure that this new Bill is as strong and effective as we can make it.  The seriousness of our commitment will be tested by the need to raise the cut in emissions by 2050 to 80% in the Bill.

Thus we commit ourselves to change our habits, to change our social patterns of behaviour and to do all that lies in our power to turn the patterns of creation into patterns of life for the poorest people in our world.  This will be a profound moral test for our society and an opportunity to join our feet to those of the marchers whose witness we celebrate today.