Imagine if I told you that a perpetrator of mass injustice was roaming freely across the globe – forcing people to flee their homes, taking food from the tables of starving families, spreading infectious diseases.
We wouldn't stand for it - as human beings, we’re programmed to hate injustice. Petitions would be drafted, MPs bombarded with emails, Will Young would write a campaign song (he’s been looking to make a comeback): every effort would be made to stop this shady character impacting upon innocent victims.
Now imagine if I told you that this imaginary offender is actually something real, causing havoc right now as you read this – even worse, it’s something we control. Climate change.
Global warming is one of the biggest causes of injustice for people in the developing world, but the problem is so commonly associated with melting ice caps and anxious polar bears that it’s easy to forget the human faces behind the issue - Magalita, the single mother in Malawai who can only grow enough food to feed her children one meal a day, due to unpredictable weather trends. Or Bernard, the resident of Papua New Guinea, who was forced to evacuate his home before it became completely submerged. We wouldn't accept this level of injustice ordinarily, and this should be no different.
Yet still, it’s all too easy to see climate change as an injustice which is an unfortunate, but inevitable, part of life. It’s natural – just nature running its course – no point trying to fight it. If we put ourselves and the all-powerful Mother Nature in the ring, we’re destined to come out on bottom…. right?
Wrong. The world’s temperature isn't rising so rapidly of its own accord – it’s our contribution, our industry and agriculture, which is causing it to rocket. But this shouldn’t send us spiralling into a pit of guilt and despair; on the contrary, it should give us hope – if our actions are exacerbating the problem, changing those actions can help to reduce it! Fortunately, the issue is not mankind conquering an uncontrollable natural world (impossible); it is mankind conquering human greed.
The climate situation is bleak, but it’s not over yet – there’s still time to make a difference. The Bible calls us to ‘defend the cause of the poor and needy’ (Jeremiah 22:16), and so we need to be relentlessly shouting about climate change until the world has no choice but to face the issue. For this reason, the One Planet project is running a petition, calling on the UK government to commit to its promises to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 (http://rhythms.org/action/one-planet-join-campaign/). We can be the voice for the developing world, if only we shout loud enough.
