There is no Planet B (iii)

Thursday 24th October 2019 09:54

As we sing in church the Psalmist says “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” and in Genesis we read “God put the man in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it”.

So I often put these two ideas together and say “the earth is the Lord’s and we are his caretakers”. So, if we were to give mankind marks out of ten for caring for the planet, how many marks out of ten would you give us? Globally I don’t think we are doing very well with either plastic pollution or carbon emissions and so I want to encourage us to think globally and act locally.

There are two ways to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere, one is to burn less fossil fuels, such as the fuel in our cars and the gas in our central heating and the other is carbon capture.  All green plants photosynthesise and photosynthesis removes CO2 from the atmosphere and emits O2 into the atmosphere which is the perfect method of reducing climate change.

So what we have done in our back garden is to plant 5 apple trees and 2 plum trees which we hope will both give us a good crop each year and also increase the green surface area in our garden. And in the church yard we have permission to plant another 7 trees  and we hope to create a small woodland area under planted with bluebells. And all being well in March 2020 the woodland trust have agreed to give us 420 trees for us to create a new woodland on a nearby farm.

We are doing what we can to reduce the effects of climate change and I would like to encourage everyone in Hungerford to plant a tree. If everyone in West Berkshire planted a tree that would be another 160,000! How many marks out of ten would you give yourself for caring for Gods planet? There is no Planet B!