A View from the Pew – Will you take the 10:10 Challenge?

This article appeared in the May 2010 edition of Newslink, the diocesan magazine of the diocese of Limerick & Killaloe.

As I noted last month, the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming are a consequence of the personal choices and decisions of countless individuals around the world – particularly those of us in rich countries. Perhaps it is because world leaders doubt they can get their peoples to change those choices and decisions that they failed so dismally to agree in Copenhagen last December what to do about it. Let’s hope and pray they do agree effective and just action soon, before it is too late. We now know for certain that unless we act quickly to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases, our descendents will face terrible problems in years to come.

But their failure to agree shows it’s now time for ordinary people to step in to defend our children’s futures. And as Christians we have a particular responsibility to take the lead. As the bishops of our Anglican Communion reflected at the last Lambeth Conference:

‘If we say that “The earth is the Lord’s…”, we must be prepared to live as if that is true! We can not misuse a gift from the Lord. If we are to call ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ, we must be prepared for radical discipleship by “living simply, so that others may simply live.” Safeguarding creation is a spiritual issue.’

The first step is for each one of us to take personal responsibility – if we don’t, no one else will. Just suppose each one of us made a pledge to cut 10% of our greenhouse gas emissions in 2010? What if we got everyone we know to do the same? And what if all this made governments sit up and take notice? That could be the first step towards a brighter future for us all.

Cutting 10% in one year is a bold target, but for most of us it’s achievable – and would save us money too! Here are some ideas for what you and your family can do.

1 Save on heating – and bills Turn down your thermostat - 1°C less can save 10% by itself! Turn off radiators in hallways and rooms you don’t use. If you need them, more jumpers and warm underwear all round. Fix those draughts. Then apply for a grant to insulate your loft and walls. You’ll be warm & cosy!

2 Drive less – be healthier Think before you make that short drive. Walk, cycle or take public transport when you can. Leave your car at home one day a week. Share the school run and car-pool with a colleague or two to get to work. Eco-driving guidelines can save 5-15% of fuel: drive smoothly, control your speed and stick to the limits (driving at 70 uses 15% more fuel than driving at 50, and cruising at 80 uses 25% more than at 70), change gear up as early as you can, and turn off heated rear windscreens, demister blowers and headlights when you don’t need them.

3 Save on electricity – be bright Change over to low-wattage light bulbs. Turn off unnecessary lights, and turn off TVs, computers, battery chargers etc when not in use. Consider replacing old inefficient fridges and freezers, and always buy appliances with a good energy rating.

4 Fly less - holiday more Swap the plane for boat and train, when you can. Holiday nearer to home and take fewer but longer trips – same tanning time, dramatically less carbon emissions.

5 Eat better In-season fruit & veg produce the least emissions – and the less processed the better. Buy locally produced food when you can, to support your neighbour and save food miles. Grow your own – nothing tastes like it!

6 Buy good stuff Less stuff made = less emissions = less climate change. So buy high-quality things that last, repair if possible rather than chucking, buy and sell second hand. Ignore pointless changes in fashion. And borrow your neighbour’s mower!

7 Dump less Avoid excess packaging and buying pointless stuff that goes straight in the bin. Recycle everything possible. Compost your scraps – the garden will love you!

8 Don’t waste food… The average Irish family throws away loads of food every month. So don’t buy or cook more than you need. And eat up those tasty leftovers with a smile on your face!

9 …or water Your tap water uses lots of energy – and heating it uses loads more – so take showers rather than baths, be careful watering plants and only run full dishwashers & washing machines.

10 Pass on the word! Monitor your carbon footprint (Google ‘Power of One’ to find a calculator). Persuade family and friends to join you in saving 10% in 2010. Take the 10:10 pledge. And get your parish to do the same!

For more information and to take the 10:10 pledge see http://www.1010.ie/.

Here in Nenagh, the group that followed an ecumenical Lent course on climate change last year has formed Nenagh Carbon Watchers (see http://www.nenaghcarbonwatchers.blogspot.com/). We aim both to support each other in our personal efforts to reduce emissions, and to promote transition to a sustainable life style in our local communities. As part of this, I have been monitoring my own household’s carbon emissions, and after 11 months I am confident that we will have saved around 25% of emissions with insignificant capital expenditure (that excludes the flights we have not taken).

After a false start last year, I am determined this year to invest in better home insulation and heating controls. This will not only reduce our emissions further, but by reducing heating bills provide a much better return on my money than I could get in any bank, as well as give employment to local tradespeople. And for 2011 I have my eye on one of those electric cars we are hearing about… I’ll keep you posted on how we get on!

The long road to the kingdom

This article appeared in the April 2010 edition of Newslink, the diocesan magazine of the diocese of Limerick & Killaloe

The Penitents (Los Penitentes)

Ice melting at the foot of a glacier near the south wall of Aconcagua in the Argentine Andes, the highest mountain in the Americas - the Aconcagua glaciers have reduced in area by 20% since 1955 as a result of global warming. Photo by Lucas Hirschegger.

Bravo, Paddy Anglican!

Canon Stephen Neil hit the nail on the head in his article last month when he wrote, ‘The task we face is how to reintegrate (politics, economics, religion and environmental stewardship) and create a sustainable and healthy society for all Creation’. That is a vision of the kingdom of heaven. It’s a big ask, isn’t it? But Christ announces the kingdom is coming and calls us, his followers, to build it.

The four-fold crisis we are living through – political, economic, religious and environmental – is very deep. Building the kingdom will be neither quick nor easy. We the people are confused, demoralised and angry at what has happened to us. Our leaders remain for the most part deep in denial about their responsibility for landing us in the mess. I don’t think much will change until they move beyond denial. For recovery to take place, they will surely have to make way for fresh faces that are not compromised by past misdeeds and errors and can command the respect of the people. But we the people will have to change too, because all of us bear some responsibility.

The psychology is important, I think. Human beings must pass through distinct psychological stages in order to process guilt: initial denial is followed by shame, then penitence in which hearts change, before recovery is possible. How far down this road have we travelled so far?

The Golden Circle
The tent at the Galway races is long gone, but lives on in memory as the enduring symbol of the golden circle of venal politicians, megalomaniac developers and grasping bankers. Bankers anticipating bonuses borrowed short on international markets and lent long to fund developers’ ever more grandiose projects. Both greased the palms of politicians, who in turn obliged with light touch regulation and rezoning, and bought our votes with goodies paid for from windfall stamp duties. The greed of all three worked together to inflate an asset price bubble which was bound to burst. Similar cycles of greed were at work in other countries, but few were as intense as ours. As the rest of the world begins a faltering recovery after the global crash, Ireland remains stuck in recession. Incomes continue to fall, services are being cut further, young families struggle to pay the mortgage on homes worth a fraction of what they paid, youth unemployment balloons and another lost generation emigrates. As I see it, the golden circle is the main cause of our economic woes, though most of us colluded in it.

Many developers have gone bust and lost personal fortunes. Most senior bankers have been forced to resign and one has been questioned by the Gardai. I confess to a certain guilty pleasure, what the Germans call schadenfreude. Some show signs of shame, but most not – and certainly no penitence. They scrabble to keep as much as they can of the personal fortunes they made during the bubble they engineered, even as they look to the rest of us to recapitalise their banks and buy their bad debts through NAMA.

And what of the politicians? Fianna Fáil has led coalition governments since 1997. Brian Cowan was Minister of Finance from 2004 until he became Taoiseach in 2008, presiding over the golden circle at its most manic. He and his party must bear the lion’s share of political responsibility for what has happened. Yet they are in complete denial and shamelessly cling to office – I am lost for words! But let’s not forget who voted them there – we the people did. And they cling on in hope that we will do so again.

Time for a ‘Velvet Reformation’?
As we all know, the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has been in ever deepening crisis since the Murphy report was published last year. It was bad enough to learn over many years how some priests and religious abused children both sexually and physically. But the Murphy report revealed that this evil was compounded by a culture of secrecy and cover up at the highest level, which allowed the perpetrators to continue their abuse. Bishops criticised in the report tried at first to deny they had done anything wrong, though four have since resigned. In March it was revealed that Cardinal Sean Brady himself swore two abused children to secrecy 35 years ago.

Faithful Roman Catholic laity and priests are as shocked as the rest of us. They feel angry and betrayed by their leadership. Perhaps part of their anger is with themselves, because very many in their heart of hearts must know that they colluded in the evil by not shouting stop. Fr Enda McDonagh, former professor of Moral Theology at Maynooth, has proposed a 12-step recovery programme, involving laity in the process of healing the church. Pope Benedict has just issued his long awaited pastoral letter - in it he points to grave errors of judgment and failures of leadership by his brother bishops. Garry O’Sullivan the editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper has called for a ‘Velvet Reformation’ in which the entire hierarchy is replaced.

It is too early to know how all this will play out, but it does appear that the outrage of laity and lower clergy is forcing the hierarchy out of denial to admit shame for the damaging culture they presided over. It is a good sign, but time will tell whether they can move on to true penitence, a prerequisite for renewal, which will probably require wholesale changes in personnel and a shift of power from clergy to laity.

We Anglicans may feel tempted to thank God that we are not like them. But that would be to behave like the Pharisee who thanked God publicly that he was not like other men – Jesus you will remember preferred the private contrition of the humble publican. We should remember that there are skeletons in our cupboard too, and that many of us used the excuse that it was none of our business to keep silence when we heard rumours of what was happening. Rather we should show solidarity and come to the aid of faithful Roman Catholics in ecumenical prayer as they struggle to reform their church.

Who is responsible for Global Warming?
The fourth part of the crisis is the failure of environmental stewardship. Its most dangerous symptom is global warming, largely caused by increasing emissions of green house gases from burning fossil fuels, destroying forests, and intensifying farming. To reverse it will require coordinated action by people in every country.

Global leaders meeting in Copenhagen last December disappointingly failed to reach the international agreements that are necessary. Despite its fine words our government has also failed to hold back Irish emissions as it promised, among the highest in the world per capita.

Perhaps the main reason for these failures is that responsibility for emissions does not lie so much with governments as with the personal choices and decisions of countless individuals around the world, particularly those in rich countries – people like you and me. Very many of us remain in obstinate denial that there is a problem at all. Even those of us who admit that there is a problem do not yet feel real shame for our bad choices and decisions. Until we do we will be denied the gift of penitence, ‘to live simply that others may simply live’.

The road to the Kingdom will be long and we have barely started down it.

Nenagh churches day of prayer for climate change

If you are anywhere near Nenagh, Co Tipperary, on Saturday 3rd October, why don't you pop in to join us? You can also take in the Farmers' Market, and Nenagh's excellent shops and cafes!


A joint Day of Prayer
Nenagh Christians, including Catholic, Methodist and Church of Ireland, will join together on Saturday 3rd October in a day of prayer for climate change, to be held 11am – 3pm in Teach an Leinn, Kenyon St, Nenagh. They are inviting passers-by of all faiths and none to pop in for a few minutes, as long or short as they please, to hear prayers and readings, to share quiet time in reflection and meditation, and to find out more about the climate change crisis.

An unholy mess…
Church of Ireland lay reader Joc Sanders explains the background. "We are making an unholy mess of our planet, which we share with so many others of God’s creatures. The facts of global warming are clear and human beings are the main culprits. People have been putting excess greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, largely by burning coal, oil and gas, but also by cutting down forests and intensifying agriculture. Global temperatures are rising inexorably. As a result, sea levels are rising, extreme weather – storms, floods and droughts – are becoming more frequent, eco-systems world wide are being disrupted, and species extinction is accelerating.

"The poorest of the poor in the 3rd World are worst affected for now, but we will all suffer if global warming is not halted. People all around the world must urgently change the way they live and work to protect our fragile planet for our children and grandchildren. World governments have promised to agree to implement a workable and comprehensive package of measures at the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen this December. This may be the last chance to do so before the planet passes a point of no return and suffers run-away heating.

"News headlines may be dominated by financial meltdown and economic crash, but we must not lose sight of climate change as the most complex and serious problem we face in the 21st century. We are responding to a call by Churches Together in Britain and Ireland to pray that God’s will be done at this critical time for the planet. For churches to come together is a prayer in itself, and what better day for it than St Francis’ Eve?"

What the churches will pray for
So just what exactly will the Churches be praying for together on 3rd October?

• Church of Ireland Rector Rev Marie Rowley-Brooke says, "We will pray that God’s Holy Spirit will lead the Governments of the world to agree at Copenhagen to take action on climate change which is both effective and just."
  
• Cloughjordan Methodist lay minister John Armitage adds, "We will pray too for Awareness and Awakening – all of us need to become more aware of our carbon footprint and our personal responsibility in this gathering crisis, and each one of us must wake up and start to walk more lightly on God’s good earth."
  
• Agreeing with them, Sister Patricia Green of the Sisters of Mercy says, "We will also pray for God to forgive our human greed and selfishness that is driving global warming, and for God’s mercy on those who are suffering already."

Day of prayer team, left to right: John Armitage, Sr Patricia Greene,

Joc Sanders, Rev Marie Rowley-Brooke and James Armitage