In September 2019, in the light of the climate and loss of biodiversity crises, Christ Church launched an “Eco -Group”, with the aim of examining our own responsibilities in this area. By working towards the A Rocha Eco-Church awards, we are looking at all aspects of church life, from the way we use our buildings and grounds to the worship and teaching and our individual lifestyles. Through regular input into Church meeting and items in our monthly magazine, Comment, these issues are kept in the foreground of our thinking. The most recent four articles in Comment can be found below.
Stop Press - JUNE 2023 - We have now been awarded the A Rocha Bronze Award - Certificate here
Item from December 2024
It is difficult to know where to begin this month, with climate events and news coming thick and fast.
COP 29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, while over-running by a couple of days, has just concluded. One of the main aims was to produce an agreement on finance to be committed by the richer countries of the world to the poorest to help them develop their own green economies and adapt to the climate change caused by our emissions. Some agreement was finally achieved, but the sums involved are far from what is considered adequate by developing countries, who have branded the deal a “betrayal”. The conference has been difficult, with controversies over, for instance, the significant participation by oil and gas producing companies and attempts by Saudi Arabia and other fossil fuel producing countries to even pull back from last year’s modest resolution to “transition away from fossil fuels.”
Just to explain, COP stands for “Conference of the Parties” and "Parties" refers to the countries that have ratified a treaty called the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). That document was signed back in 1992 by almost 200 countries and is generally known as the Paris agreement. Representatives of these countries meet every year to negotiate the best approaches to tackling the root causes of climate change. But, even when modest commitments are agreed, they have not always been achieved.
With extreme and damaging weather events becoming increasingly common, the flash floods in Spain and severe hurricanes in the Southern United States being just two of the latest examples, it becomes ever more urgent that the world tackles the issue with speed and determination. 2024 is set to become the warmest on record while planet-heating emissions are not going down but actually increasing to their highest level ever this year. In stark contrast, emissions have to fall by 43% by 2030 for the world to have any chance of keeping the temperature increase down to the 1.5 degrees target. Some experts think we are already too late for this. The election of a climate change denier as the next president of the US - who calls the climate crisis “a big hoax” and has announced his intention to leave the Paris agreement - is scarcely encouraging.
A piece of news I have found sad is discovering the words that have been removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary and those that have replaced them. Of course, the job of a dictionary is not to dictate but to reflect the reality of language used today, but I wonder what it says about the experience of today’s children that words that have gone include acorn, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar and newt. The words taking their places include blog, broadband, bullet-point, celebrity, chatroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player and voice-mail.
We do pray that God will lead the leaders of nations and industries at this critical time, and all of us to do whatever we can, in our small ways, to care for the natural world of which we are a part.
Item from October 2024
“The central geopolitical challenge of our age”?
On 17th September an important speech about the impact of human induced climate change was made by a Cabinet minister. The interesting thing is that this was not a minister with a special responsibility for climate change, but David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary.
Mr Lammy described the climate and nature emergency as “the most profound and universal source of global disorder” and “the central geopolitical challenge of our age.” There has been a tendency for climate and nature policy to be seen as separate from other issues, but, he argued, the threats to global stability and prosperity are so great that climate policy has to be integral to foreign policy.
“Let’s take migration.” he said. “We are already seeing that climate change is uprooting communities across the world. And by 2050, the World Bank’s worst-case estimate is that climate change could drive 200 million people to leave their homes.” It will take global cooperation to deal with the implications of this. “Or we could take health. The World Health Organisation says climate change is now the biggest threat to human health.”
We are well aware of the inequalities between those countries who have contributed most to global warming and those who have contributed least but suffer some of the worst effects. “Time and time and again,” Mr Lammy said, “it is the most vulnerable who bear the brunt of this crisis.” The BBC’s Climate Editor, Justin Rowlatt, in the same week, demonstrated this starkly in a report from Somalia, which has recently suffered from both drought and flooding, exacerbating the problems of conflict and poverty already faced by the country. While no single weather event can be attributed precisely to climate change, their increasing frequency and severity is exactly what climate scientists have been predicting. Somalia, he pointed out, has produced the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions since the 1950s as the USA produces in just 3 days. An astonishing statistic.
Organisations such as Christian Aid have campaigned for some time on the issue of climate justice. This means richer nations accepting the part they have played in causing the climate emergency and their responsibility to support poorer nations, not only in dealing with its effects but also with their own developments towards sustainable energy. This is in our interests as well as theirs. Mr Lammy argued “There will be no global stability without climate stability. And there will be no climate stability without a more equal partnership between the Global North and the Global South.”
With the potential of climate change to affect migration, conflict and economies world-wide, it is encouraging to see it being considered, not as a side issue, but in the mainstream of our foreign policy.
Item from September 2024
Many of us have spent time marvelling at the spectacle that was the Paris Olympic Games and the phenomenal achievements of so many athletes and we applaud the ideals of the Olympic movement. But what is the environmental impact of such a huge event?
- The International Olympic Committee has had impressive aims for the Paris games, intending to “set new sustainability standards for global sporting events. Reducing the environmental impact while maximising social and economic benefit”. Organisers have been focused on reducing emissions, planning to cut the footprint by 50 per cent compared to the London 2012 and Rio 2016 average and aligning with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
So what measures have they taken to achieve this? Too often in previous games expensive venues have been specially built and not used to their full potential again, but a key aspect of Paris 2024’s sustainability and carbon reduction strategy has been to use existing or temporary venues, which account for 95 per cent of the total venues. Only 2 completely new venues were built, the Aquatics Centre and an arena for badminton and rhythmic gymnastics. In both of these the seats were made from 100% recycled plastic! Other measures have included doubling the amount of plant-based food for spectators, to halve the carbon footprint of meals, and embracing the idea of a circular economy, reducing, renting and re-using materials wherever possible. In the building of the Olympic village 94 per cent of materials were recovered from deconstruction.
Ironically, it was fairly extreme weather, which Olympic organisers have attributed to climate change, which provided some of the biggest challenges of the first few days. Severe rainfall in the first couple of days led to the postponement of events as outflows into the Seine led to the water quality being unsafe for swimming. This was quickly followed by heatwave temperatures. The Paris 2024 organisers had hoped their innovative self-cooling Olympic Village apartments would make air conditioning redundant, but in these conditions, athletes had to be offered the opportunity to rent portable air-conditioning units.
So there are clearly challenges to really reducing the environmental impact of such huge sporting events. The Paris games will still produce 1.5 million tonnes of carbon - roughly comparable to Fiji's entire annual emissions. Around half of that comes from international travel by competitors and spectators.
Meanwhile we note that the world temperature reached the hottest levels ever measured on Monday 22nd July, beating the record that was set just one day before, according to provisional data published by the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The director of Copernicus, Carlo Buontempo, has said that the world is now in “truly uncharted territory”, adding that he expects global temperature records to continue being broken in future months and years as the climate continues to warm.
Item from July/August 2024
As we continue with our efforts to make our church grounds more wildlife-friendly, an update as to what we have achieved so far and what we are planning might be helpful.
Last year we trialled a “Pictorial Meadow Mix” in the front garden beds, which looked good and gave us flowers good for pollinating insects throughout the summer and into November. It was nice to receive a number of appreciative comments during the summer from passers-by. This year we have extended two of the beds slightly, while leaving the central bed for spring bulbs, the roses and some summer planting. The germination of the meadow mix seeds has been slow and disappointingly patchy this year – presumably something to do with the weather – but the beds are now beginning to flower so we hope for a good show as the season progresses.
We observed No Mow May and have been pleased to see butterflies amongst the flowers that some might think of as weeds! We are making sure that the grass is never cut too short, allowing it to provide a habitat for small invertebrates and some low-growing plants. There are a number of bird boxes. The new crab apple tree that was sadly vandalised last year is producing some regrowth, but we will have to wait and see if it can flourish. Unfortunately a couple of bird feeders installed on the trees in the front garden quickly just disappeared. Do we try again?
Anyone passing along Tacket Street will have heard the swift calls intended to encourage migrating swifts – a species on the “red list” as their numbers are threatened - to make use of the swift boxes installed on the schoolrooms building, but it doesn’t seem as if any swifts have yet taken up the invitation.
In the back garden the rear section is being left wild, to allow nature some space. We are following advice from the Suffolk Wildlife Trust on the management of this wild area and it will be cut back in August, once any flowers have set seed.
A major step forward on our progress towards being an “Eco-Church” has been the installation of PV panels on the roof of the schoolrooms building. Even in a less than sunny early summer they are generating electricity well. If the church is not using electricity generated during the day it will be stored in the battery and used later as we need it. A win for the church and the planet.