Last night, I had a really good evening with some friends from our church, mostly from the environment group called "Earth Matters". We watched Al Gore's "slideshow": An Inconvenient Truth. It was a fascinating documentary, mostly of Gore showing evidence of climate change, interspersed with snippets of him talking about his own life.
What came across most strongly to me was the lack of doubt in the scientific community that climate change is a reality - and a dangerous one at that. Every timeline he showed had a sudden change, starting around 1970 and shooting off the scale. Whether it's air temperature, sea temperature, CO2 levels - all increasing exponentially. This is not "natural variation".
The effects of this could be catastrophic. Areas of the world that will disappear under the sea - like Holland for example, and other areas where there once was fresh water - Lake Chad once sustained many people with water & fish. Now it's just not there any more.
However, the bottom line was that IT'S NOT TOO LATE. We have a chance (maybe a last chance) to reverse it by reducing our emissions now. We have the technology, it's just the will to do what's difficult.
I am conscious that I haven't brought much of this into the blog so far. However, I hope to change that & bring you, over the next few months, some join the dots (I.e. why this is part of my worship to my Father God) and some wee things to help reverse a terrible trend. Stay tuned - please - I promise not to rant any more!
I know - when we saw it in the cinema we were gobsmacked (i had known a lot of the science since i was at Uni in 88-92 - that is what gobsmacked me, that it was just coming into the public arena!
Personally I think it is the role of the church to combat this - we should be carig for God's amazing creation, not spoiling it.
Posted by: susan | June 08, 2007 at 10:55 PM
Thanks Susan - well said!
I didn't know all this science till about 5 yrs ago, so imagine how gobsmacked I was to find out people had known this since the 1960's!
I agree this is a core remit of the church - caring for creation & for the poor (who are the first to be affected by our destroying creation). I've had an uphill struggle at some times convincing other Christians of this, but I'm really blessed to have met so many like-minded people lately. We are really encouraging each other to keep going against the tide in our lifestyles, and loving our neighbours all over the world.
Posted by: Guacamole Girl | June 10, 2007 at 06:02 PM