To gain insights into insightful political commentary, you often can’t go past comedians. John Clarke and Bryan Dawe have been doing it for years. In this one they expose the hypocrisy and folly of the Rudd Government’s total backflip on emissions trading. Not that I think the ETS was a good idea in the first place, but the Government has shot itself in the foot by giving the impression that it was the be-all and end-all of climate change mitigation. Now that they have deferred it, people will think they have abandoned the fight against climate change. What this sketch highlights though is their failure to provide enough incentive for renewable energies. The reason, according to John ‘Kevin Rudd’ Clarke – “because we have coal!” Check out the video here.

The International Day of Climate Action has finally arrived. Join with millions around the world to show our leaders, particularly in the lead up to Copenhagen, that now is the time to put a serious deal in place that will protect our children. check out the following video for some inspiration:

As we count down to Copenhagen, we have recently been told here in Australia that climate change has slipped down a few rungs in terms of priorities for us. I find that quite frightening. Whilst it is understandable that people are still concerned about the global financial crisis and the recent rise in interest rates, we face an inevitable, much larger, financial crisis if we do not become serious about what Kevin Rudd has called the great moral challenge of our time.

Unfortunately, as is often the case in issues of justice and human actions, it is the world’s poor who will be overwhelmingly affected by the changes to the planet’s climate over the next 50 – 100 years. As my colleague, Brett Parris, says,

“They are least able to protect themselves from its effects and they are least able to recover from climatic disasters. They tend to live in the most vulnerable areas, such as low-lying land prone to flooding, or marginal agricultural land prone to drought. They are the most vulnerable to the spread of tropical diseases. They are more likely to have to leave their homes in search of water or to escape flooding. They are the most vulnerable to the effects of the conflicts likely to arise from international tensions over water, energy and displaced people. Climate change will exacerbate poverty and the solutions proposed to help mitigate and adapt to climate change will affect the trajectory of every country’s future development.”

Fortunately though, there are plenty of ordinary people like you and me who are taking serious action in their local communities and online, in actions like Blog Action Day, to deal with this great moral challenge. Join them today and ensure you can look your grandkids in the eye when they ask you what you did to combat the major threat to our planet in the early years of this century.

Further to my previous post, Crikey have written an excellent detailed response to Steve Fielding’s concerns that, while the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been skyrocketing over the last 15 years, air temperatures seemingly have stayed steady.

The graph that has Steve Fielding up in arms

I’m sure that others have pointed these arguments out to Senator Fielding and if he remains steadfast in his stance, one of the conclusions we can make is that he is not sincere in his desire to see the truth. The fact that he comes across as so dogmatic in his stance on his website suggests that he seems like he does not have much of a desire to budge. To his credit though, he has asked for an appointment with Al Gore while he is in Melbourne.

As well as this, we cannot judge him if, after seeing evidence such as Crikey’s, he remains convinced that climate change is not being caused by human activity. After all, the same evidences that convince some people of the claims of Christ are the very same evidences that cause others to remain unconvinced of the same claims. An honest position is to pray for Steve Fielding, and for ourselves, that the Spirit of God will pierce our hearts with His truth.

Have you noticed recently that articles treating climate scepticism as one side of a level debate on climate change are becoming more numerous? There is now even a political party in Australia called The Climate Sceptics. Of course they were outside protesting in Melbourne today as Al Gore did his bit to convince more people of the deep peril that we are in.

The media in this country have a heck of a lot to answer for as they continue to portray the illusion that this is a balanced debate. Checking out some of the websites in my ‘climate change’ list on the right will show you that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists the world over are convinced that the climate is not only changing but that it is being caused by human activity.

Much of the recent flurry of articles showing sympathy for the deniers has been sparked no doubt by the actions of Senator Steve Fielding and his scepticism over anthropogenic global warming, after he attended a climate sceptics conference in Washington (funded mainly by The Heartland Institute – a group that was instrumental in denying that tobacco causes cancer).

When the ABC showed The Great Global Warming Swindle last year I called taklback radio and asked whether or not the ABC would be willing to show a documentary (if one exists) denying the Holocaust, in the name of balance. Of course there are those around who deny the Holocaust but they are not taken seriously by the vast majority of the population. Or take the moon landnig, which we will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of next week. Many people are convinced that it never happened (as a brilliant headline – The Eagle has landed – in Studio 4, announced some years ago!), but, again, these people are not taken seriously by most thinking people.

In years to come the climate deniers will be seen in the same light.

More to come…

Back in 2007 I wrote an article on the decay of western culture, in which I mentioned the New Economics Foundation’s Happy Planet Index. This is an index that addresses the relative success or failure of countries in supporting a good life for their citizens, while respecting the environmental resource limits upon which all our lives depend. Australia was ranked 139th out of 178, which suggested that Jesus was right when he said that life does not consist in the abundance of one’s possessions.

Well, the NEF has published its latest version of the Index, and it is indeed quite prophetic in its call for a new way of living in a world in which the earth’s resources are being depleted at a simply alarming rate. The report begins by stating that,

“In an age of uncertainty, society globally needs a new compass to set it on a path of real progress. The Happy Planet Index (HPI) provides that compass by measuring what truly matters to us – our well-being in terms of long, happy and meaningful lives – and what matters to the planet – our rate of resource consumption.”

It goes on to say that “we are still far from achieving sustainable well-being, and puts forward a vision of what we need to do to get there.”

Some of the interesting results to come out of the study we as follows:

• The highest HPI score is that of Costa Rica (76.1 out of 100). As well as reporting the highest life satisfaction in the world, Costa Ricans also have the second-highest average life expectancy of the New World (second only to Canada). All this with a footprint of 2.3 global hectares. Whilst this success is indeed impressive, Costa Rica narrowly fails to achieve the goal of ‘one-planet living’: consuming its fair share of natural resources (indicated by a footprint of 2.1 global hectares or less).
• Of the following ten countries, all but one is in Latin America.
• The bottom ten HPI scores were all suffered by sub-Saharan African countries, with Zimbabwe bottom of the table with an HPI score of 16.6 out of 100.
• Rich developed nations fall somewhere in the middle. The highest-placed Western nation is the Netherlands – 43rd out of 143. The USA comes a long way back in 114th place. Australia comes 102nd, a slight improvement on its 139th in the original study.
• Many of the countries that do well are composed of small islands (including the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba and the Philippines).
• No country successfully achieves the three goals of high life satisfaction, high life expectancy and one-planet living.
• It is possible to live long, happy lives witha much smaller ecological footprint than found in the highest-consuming nations. For example, people in the Netherlands live on average over a year longer than people in the USA, and have similar levels of life satisfaction – and yet their per capitaecological footprint is less than half the size (4.4 global hectares compared with 9.4 global hectares). This means that the Netherlands is over twice as ecologically efficient at achieving good lives.
• More dramatic is the difference between Costa Rica and the USA. Costa Ricans also live slightly longer than Americans, and report much higher levels of life satisfaction, and yet have a footprint which is less than a quarter the size.

What this study clearly shows is that our way of living in the (still) affluent west is unsustainable, as if we needed reminding. Brian McLaren calls our way of living the ‘suicide machine’, because it is a way of living that is literally killing us and the rest of the planet. His brilliant book, Everything Must Change, explains this in more detail.

The study also highlights what many people have been saying for a long time now. Consider this quote from Thomas Friedman, a long-time advocate of growth and globalisation:

“Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall – when Mother Nature and the market both said: ‘No more’”

Jesus was indeed right when he warned of greed which is idolatry. Our whole way of living is based on greed and it is not just a doom-and-gloom killjoy remark to say that it is killing us. It is an undeniable fact. T. Jackson, in a NEF publication called ‘Chasing Progress’ has said that “every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth.” The Happy Planet report has an excellent section on this myth in which it discusses the history of the philosophy behind economic growth and how it came to prominence.

Many respected social thinkers have long put forward the argument that a religious outlook on life is beneficial to a peaceful and harmonious society. A society that places ethical values and a positive outlook for the future, often based on a religious faith, is a society that is based on a solid foundation. The Happy Planet report echoes this by saying that even a magazine such as The Economist says that 

“attempting to explain why well-being does not keep rising in line with consumption, [The Economist] suggests that ‘there are factors associated with modernisation that, in part, offset its positive impact.’ Specifically, it argues that alongside consumption growth, [a] concomitant breakdown of traditional institutions is manifested in the decline of religiosity and of trade unions; a marked rise in various social pathologies (crime, and drug and alcohol addiction); a decline in political participation and of trust in public authority; and the erosion of the institutions of family and marriage.”

An article in The Age a few years ago showed that, if all people in the world lived like Australians, we would need 4 planets to maintain our lifestyle. And of all the states in Australia, my home state of Victoria was the worst of the lot. That is mainly due to our  reliance on brown coal to create electricity. We have a lot to change, but happily, there are signs that change is happening. The Happy Planet report tells of incidences such as a community in Scotland sharing ownership of a new windfarm with developers, a ‘Big Lunch’ being arranged on streets across Britain to bring neighbours together, a community in a council estate in Luton partnering up with tea-growers in Southern India to ensure trade that is even fairer than fair trade. Things are happening. As Gandhi famously said, we must be the change we want to see in the world.

Jesus said the kingdom of God is among you. Through Jesus, the kingdom is invading history, and the good news is that all are invited to be a part of it. Heaven on earth will only happen when the resurrected Jesus returns to put the world to rights. But in the meantime, we have the absolute privilege of laying the building blocks. That is why everything we do matters. Every act of kindness, every act of justice. It all matters because when we do it in the name of Jesus, it has cosmic and eternal implications. As Ross Langmead sings,

“the kingdom is coming, a kingdom of peace. Beat swords into ploughs for fighting will cease. Justice will prosper, love will be king. Peacemakers will be able to sing that this is God’s earth and it has been worth all the pain.”

The Happy Planet report is a huge step in showing us how our current way of living is not of the kingdom, but it also shows some of the things we can do to help fulfil Jesus’ wish that the kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Brian McLaren, in his book Everything Must Change, talks about our framing story – the ultimate story we tell ourselves about how the world works. For example, if our framing story tells us that the purpose of life is to have as much stuff as possible and to have the greatest pleasure possible in our short lives, then we will have little reason to manage our consumption. Our framing story determines how we live. Call it our worldview if you like.

Postmodernism says there is no framing story. What is right for you may not be right for me. Truth is relative. The problem with that ideology is that, as the global village becomes ever smaller and we all realise how much our lives are interlinked, what is right for me also becomes right for you. Take climate change as an example. Climate change is a challenge to postmodernism because more and more people are realising that, if we are to ultimately survive as a species, we have no choice but to have a framing story that says we have to manage our resources better and look after the planet. A philosophy of ‘what is right for you may not be right for me’ just won’t cut it in the real world of climate change. In my post on our addiction to growth I said the following:

“As long as the world remains fixated on the idea that we must grow our economies, we will inevitably fall into the same trap, and probably worse than we are in now.

In the mid-1980s, our planet passed a tipping point. It was then that we started going into debt in terms of the available resources that we have to survive. It was then that we started to consume more than we could reproduce. So while we remain addicted to economic growth, we continue the slide into debt. Our way of living is unsustainable.”

Truth can no longer be relative in a world where we have the choice of continuing our current way of life or making serious changes that will save the lives of untold millions. We can no longer hide behind the warm and fuzzy - but ultimately fatal - idea that there are no universal standards to live by.

Everything on this planet is interlinked. That is the beauty of how God made it. It all works together. David Suzuki, the Canadian environmentalist, describes how, if all of humanity disappeared off the face of the earth, then the rest of life would benefit enormously. The forests would gradually grow back, and relative stability would return to the ecosystems that control global temperature and the atmosphere. The fish in the oceans would recover and most endangered species would slowly come back. On the other hand, for example, if all species of ants disappeared, the results would be close to catastrophic. There would be major extinctions of other species and probably partial collapse of some ecosystems. The functions of the creatures living in the air we breathe, and beneath our feet, all work together to keep us alive. We need to, like our indigenous brothers and sisters did for 40,000 years, pay respect to the land we live on.

Our framing story needs to be one in which we all work together to bring in the kingdom of God – a kingdom of love, of justice, and of beautiful butterflies fluttering majestically over summer flowers. A kingdom where love finally reigns and where all of God’s children, in the words of Martin Luther King, will be able to shout ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’.

It has become noticeable that the tone of recent reports, articles and books on climate change is becoming increasingly urgent. This book by 2006 Australian of the Year, Tim Flannery, continues the theme of urgency, with its desperate sounding title, and it’s picture of a clock showing just a couple of minutes to midnight on the cover.

This volume, which first appeared in Quarterly Essay in September 2008, outlines the desperate situation the earth now finds itself in, and Flannery’s solutions to the crisis. It is then followed up by a series of replies by others in the field of climate science or research (the one exception being Richard Branson who, through his Virgin group of companies, is making his own attempt at limiting his carbon footprint). One of the responses is from Ian Lowe, current President of the Australian Conservation Foundation. As Lowe points out, “the fundamental message of Flannery’s essay is that we need to recognise the limits of ecological systems and build that recognition into our planning”.

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No, it’s not today, but today is a great day to spread the word on this global movement that will culminate in millions of people the world over gathering to wake up the world on action to prevent dangerous climate change.

As you would probably be aware, today is World Environment Day. And the way time flies these day due to the busyness of our lives, the International Day of Climate Action on 24 October will soon be upon us.

An organisation called 350 have put this campaign together. The name has been given as a result of, as the 350 website states,

“NASA’s James Hansen and a team of other scientists recently published a series of papers showing that we need to cut the amount of carbon in the atmosphere from its current 387 parts per million to 350 or less if we wish to “maintain a planet similar to that on which civilization developed.”"

The folks at 350 have put together a cool clip that seeks to explain the science of climate change along with how to deal with it, in today’s universal language of visual media. Check it out:

As the science becomes clearer, the sceptics are getting more desperate. The recent Washington conference of climate sceptics seemed like just another rehash of the same old tired, worn out arguments that our own journalists like Andrew Bolt can’t let go of. The message that action is needed more than ever needs to be screamed from the mountain tops. And thankfully, it is people like those at 350 who are doing it.

The website for the International Day of Climate Action has plenty of information on how to organise to get together on the day and make your own show of solidarity with others on the planet in calling for urgent action.

For those of you with a Christian faith interest in the importance of dealing with climate change, can I direct you to this article I wrote a few years ago on why care for the earth is such a crucial aspect of following Jesus.

Great to see The Australian giving air to a thoughtful and considered response to Ian Plimer’s recently released book, Heaven and Earth. Plimer, a noted climate change sceptic, tries to make the assertion that human emissions of CO2 have not changed the climate. As usual though, his arguments are the same old, tired, worn out arguments that have been refuted again and again by the vast majority of climate scientists.

I really wonder what people such as Plimer are trying to achieve with their assertions. I can only think that there is a another agenda at play. Like Andrew Bolt, Plimer implies, as Ashley says, that “the work of literally thousands of oceanographers, solar physicists, biologists, atmospheric scientists, geologists, and snow and ice researchers during the past 100 years is fundamentally flawed.”

A colleague of mine, Brett Parris, has laid out some useful references, in addition to Ashley’s, that debunk, yet again, the points that Plimer makes. Here they are:

Kurt Lambeck president of the Australian Academy of Science and professor of Geophysics at ANU:
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/bst_20090427_0752.mp3

Read Prof Barry Brook’s blog review:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/23/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/

Read Ian Enting from Melbourne Uni’s point refutation:
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/plimer1a1.pdf

Read Tim Lambert’s debunking at Deltoid:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia.php

In debunking the sceptics, it is crucial that we listen with respect to them as they lay out their claims. As St Peter says, let us respond with gentleness and respect to the allegations of people we disagree with.