Blog Action Day! Climate Change!

Well, I've not been so good at posting recently. However, I came on to post on my other blog and discovered it was Blog Action Day. So I decided to get involved, and then I decided the topic would fit better on here. I need to stick the link up or it won't recognise me (or something like that), so here you go http://www.blogactionday.org . Right, that's out the way.

Climate Change. This might not seem like the right place to talk about it--what does God have to do with climate change? Well, quite a lot actually. It's all down to the concept of stewardship. Can you tell we looked at this in RE when I was in Year 11? I know the fancy terms! Anyway, stewardship is basically the concept that God gave us the world, so we shouldn't screw it up. If someone gave you their favourite CD, no that's illegal, if someone gave you their favourite top to borrow, and you went out and ripped it, you wouldn't be being a very good steward of their property, would you? You should take care of it, because it isn't yours. Yeh? Well, it's like that with the earth. It was given to us, yes, but it's not really really ours.

There's another reason it's important to look after our planet. We have a duty to look after other people--Jesus said 'love your neighbour as you love yourself'. Often we in the 'developed' world don't see the results of what we do to the planet. The acid rain falls elsewhere, other countries are affected by the increasing severity of storms, other countries are nearer the rising seas than us. It's easy, in those cases, not to care. We're only fussed about rubbish when it's on our own doorstep--it makes it impossible to ignore. But what about our calling to care for others? How is letting them suffer from our mistakes, our idiocies, our greed, caring for them?

I don't know if you think Climate Change as espoused by scientists is real or not, but I'll be honest. I don't see how what we're doing to the planet can have absolutely no effect. It's gonna be harming someone, somewhere. The trouble is, what can we do?

Small things can make a difference, they add up. That's the starting point. If everybody used just the amount of water they needed to make the drink when they boiled the kettle, there'd be enough energy saved to power a street. Turn lights off, turn appliances off (at the plug if they only have a standby button), close the curtains when it goes dark to prevent heat loss, try and use energy saving lightbulbs (if you're in England, a lot of councils give them away on special days, South Ribble was the other week), that sort of thing. I know it sounds small, and it doesn't seem like you're doing much, but it's a definite start.

Culturally, it's very difficult for us to do anything about it. In order to make a huge difference, we need a total shift in attitudes and values. We need to realise that individualism is not going to help anybody, including yourself. We need to stop consuming constantly and learn how to produce efficiently and sustainably.