Eco-prisy

A number of teenagers walked out of their schools two weeks ago to demonstrate their commitment to environmentalism. Their ‘striking’ from school must have been a painful sacrifice. Unable to receive homework for the weekend or have to dress in their uniform was a terrible price to pay. A trendy vicar on Facebook made a video explaining why he was keeping his children away from school: climate catastrophe is just around the corner. Hope Church in Lancaster held a ‘carbon neutral service’; off went the heating, lights and electronically projected words. This sounds like a typical service at Martin Top, so perhaps we’re trendier than we think. Incidentally, the average human emits 1.04kg of CO2 each day- so the most carbon-friendly churches are those that have shut down. Whereas I’m sure this was genuine concern rather than ecological virtue-signalling, we do have a long history of misinterpreting climate data. Ecologist Kenneth Watt warned in the 1970s “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years…If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” In the 80s and 90s, we were told the global temperatures would actually increase because of holes in the Ozone layer. From the 2000s we were told the climate was merely ‘changing’. Doubtless, over the next ten years, new terms will enter popular parlance which describe contemporary doom predictions.  

Despite all of this, I do not deny the climate is changing nor than human activity is responsible. I believe this world is going to be destroyed, but it won’t be caused by our over-manufacturing but the coming of the Judge. The horrid fumes we pump out just make our standard of living worse in the meantime and kill off the very creatures and landscapes we were tasked with safeguarding. So those concerned about climate change are right to spot the destruction we cause and the selfishness by which we live. Judging by the mess made at some climate protests and those same protesters’ love for overseas travel and mobile /communication technology, our race is evidently ill-equipped to put matters right. We can see the problem but we just can’t fix it.

I would urge us all to live well, touching the earth only lightly and minimising the damage each one of us can cause. But a bigger priority is to get right with the Creator, whose return will dispose of this sin-scarred planet, replacing it with a new heavens and earth:

But the heavens and the earth…are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

1 Peter 3:7 

Image by Flore W from Pixabay