There is no Planet B

Dr Mike Morecroft is a member of our congregation and Natural England’s climate change scientist. The other Monday evening he gave a talk about climate change and 80 people spent an evening thinking about what we can do to save the planet. What was fascinating was another 893 people tuned in to the live webcast.

Extinction Rebellion seem to have met their objective of putting climate change at the top of the agenda. Richard Benyon, our MP has said that climate change is more important than Brexit and it seems to me the more I hear the more serious the situation seems to be.

We recently went on a tour of Wytham woods with Nigel Fisher and he told us that on average a person in the UK emits 7.5 tonnes of carbon a year from all sources. We also learnt that the worst damage to the environment is caused by flying and that a return trip to New York emits 3 tonnes of carbon. And these numbers were given a sense of scale by his suggestion that 1000 trees probably absorb 1.5 tons of carbon a year.

So we asked “What can we do to address this problem?” and his answer was “The best thing we can do is to buy local produce and to refuse to buy goods which have been flown around the world”.

Christians have always said that God is the landlord and we are the tenants and as such it is part of our role to protect God’s handiwork. At last, this seems to be on the agenda, so let’s do all that we can to grow our own fruit and veg. Let’s co-operate with the forces of nature and seek to restore God’s original design.  And now is the time for action.