10:10 – everyone’s at it

This is a re-blog of the latest e-shot from the campaign 10:10

To kick off a summer of 10:10 festivalling, we’re giving away five pairs of tickets to the Isle of Wight Festival, headlined by Jay-Z, The Strokes, and Paul McCartney. Visit our festivals page to enter and find out more.

Recommended reads

This week, we’ve been spreading the 10:10 word at the Hay Literary Festival. Here are some of the climate-flavoured books that kept us occupied on the train to Wales.

How bad are bananas? – Mike Berners-Lee
Discover the carbon footprint of everything from a text message to a car crash.

Reporting live from the end of the world – David Shukman
New memoir from a BBC environment correspondent and star of last week’s 10:10 seminar.

How to live a low-carbon life – Chris Goodall
Goodall’s book is the most detailed guide to low-carbon living, helping you get to 10% and beyond.

The Rough Guide to green living – Duncan Clark
A user-friendly fact-filled guide to every aspect of green living.

Dear 10:10ers,

There’s been plenty of good news in the last few weeks, but the best thing has been seeing thousands of you getting more involved with the campaign. Photos, stories, ideas and experiences have been coming in from all over the country, and it’s really exciting to see what you’re up to. Here’s a quick update on a couple of our most recent call-outs.

Dear Chris…

The new coalition government’s recent 10:10 commitment is a huge victory, but if we play our cards right it could be just the beginning. After our day out in Whitehall last month, we asked you for ideas to take to our next meeting with new climate and energy minister Chris Huhne.

Judging by the astonishing response we’ve had so far (over 800 suggestions), he’ll need to put a few hours aside. You can read the whole lot here.

36 million postmarks

Over the last couple of weeks, Royal Mail have been busy stamping special 10:10 postmarks on over 36 million letters. We asked for pictures of yours. You obliged.

Filed under: Environment

Earth Hour

8.30pm (2030) Saturday 27 March is Earth Hour – an opportunity to express your solidarity with the environment. No matter that Copenhagen was not what so many had hoped for, no matter that no everyone has been as open as they should have been… the climate IS changing.

Earth Hour gives us all the chance to send a message and spread the word – we are concerned, we will do our bit, and we want others to join in.

Just turning the lights out for an hour just might be fun, as well as sending the message. Have a candle-lit party, involve your friends and family. And sign up.

If your church if flood-lit, this is a good opportunity to turn it off for an hour – and to consider reducing the time it is on throughout the year.

The UK link is http://www.wwf.org.uk/earthhour.

Filed under: Environment

Grow Zones event in Cambridge

A new Christian community known as EarthAbbey has been piloting a project called Grow Zones, where people work in teams to turn each other’s gardens over to growing fruit and veg. It has proved enormous fun, a great way to make new friends and strangely enriching in a spiritual sense.

You can read more of the story here.

As a result Grow Zones is about to become a national project and an event is to be held in Cambridge to launch it here.

The event in Cambridge will be at 7.30pm on Wednesday March 3rd at the URC Church Hall, Cherry Hinton Rd, Cambridge CB1 7AJ

We are particularly keen to make sure that all environmentally concerned people hear about this and hope to form several Grow Zones teams across the city region. Please circulate this notice widely to your friends and through churches and invite them to come.

from Chris Sunderland – for the Grow Zones team.
For more about Grow Zones visit www.earthabbey.com/growzones

Filed under: Environment

Faith Climate Connect

A new global coalition of faith groups concerned about climate change and the environment was launched in the Barn room of the Initiatives of Change centre in London on 14 January. Faith Climate Connect is a free global resource and network, bringing together an interactive forum of videos, faith and climate news, scriptural references, video conferencing, instant messaging, photographs and blogs.

It is the brainchild of the Bible Society in association with Odyssey Networks, the New York based non-profit coalition of Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith groups.

Each of the launch participants quoted their favourite scriptural reference, several choosing the opening words of Psalm 24: ‘The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.’

Simon Cohen of the PR company Global Tolerance, which organised the launch event, thanked Initiatives of Change for hosting the event. The challenge now, said Mark Dowd afterwards, was to grow the Faith Climate Connect coalition to have the same impact on public policy as the Jubilee 2000 campaign had on reducing international debt.

See article on The Times’ website here >>

Filed under: Environment, faith

Bishop of London quotes Thatcher

The Rt Revd Richard Chartres Lord Bishop of London asked a supplementary question yesterday during the debate on the Copenhagen Conference on climate change. The Bishop highlighted the substantial potential of the religious communities around the world and the summit of religious leaders organised by the UN Secretary General and the Duke of Edinburgh at Windsor Castle. During the summit each community was encourage to develop a seven year plan to reduce their carbon emissions. The Church of England has developed its own plan entitled ‘Church and Earth’ which can be viewed at the following link. http://www.shrinkingthefootprint.cofe.anglican.org/misc_lib/cofe_7yp_full.pdf

Here is the text from the Lord’s Hansard. Thatcher comes at the end!

The Lord Bishop of London: My Lords, I, too, am grateful for the constructive way in which the noble Lord, Lord Stone, introduced this significant debate. Clearly, post-Copenhagen we need to find ways of making progress that will lift spirits. A recent Brookings Institution paper by Alex Evans and David Steven, entitled Hitting Reboot, is the best analysis that I have read, recommending 12 specific ways forward.

There are many other people in your Lordships’ House much better qualified to speak about the specifics. We have already heard the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, talk about the necessary work in transforming our global institutions and we have heard something about the confidence in the scientific consensus, which, if opinion polls are to be believed, is under threat. I look forward to hearing the noble Lord, Lord Rees, in particular, reflecting on that.

The climate challenge starts with science but the action needed to deal with it depends on politics and, as we all know, politics revolves around the electoral cycles. Ed Miliband called for civil society to exert pressure, but the challenge is so complex and the canvas so vast that uncorking the kind of constructive passion that made a success of the Jubilee Debt Campaign on debt relief and the Make Poverty History campaign has been difficult to do. As we have heard, NGOs have been active, but what we need are mass civil society movements that are not afraid of messages about ethics and justice, sacrifice and solidarity-movements that have legitimacy and social influence around the world.

Religious organisations and communities are in touch with more than 85 per cent of the population of the globe. Even in Greater London, 650,000 Christians are at worship every week in more than 4,000 churches, not to mention substantial communities of believers from other faith traditions. Recognition of the potential of such communities lay behind the joint effort mounted by the UN and the Alliance of Religions and Conservation to organise an event in November as a preparation for Copenhagen. Under the aegis of the UN Secretary-General and the Duke of Edinburgh, a cross-section of world religious leaders unveiled their seven-year plans for their own communities. The plan for the Church of England is called Church and Earth.

The Grand Mufti of Egypt was another participant. He outlined a programme of teaching about climate change in Islamic schools. We heard earlier about the extraordinary importance of making profound common cause with the Islamic community, and he has been planning for climate change lessons in Islamic schools, using renewable energy in mosques and the inculcation of green habits in places of pilgrimage. The message is spreading. The Pope, in his New Year message, took as his theme, "If you want to cultivate peace, protect the creation".

Ed Miliband has pointed out that, if Martin Luther King had said "I’ve got a nightmare", rather than a dream, nobody would have taken much notice or followed him. The task now is to build a global movement that goes beyond G20 territory and embraces Africa and the poorest communities in the world, on which the burden of adapting to climate change is already being felt most acutely.

Polling evidence reveals a dispiriting picture of the growing numbers of people feeling bored, paralysed and disempowered by talk of climate change. Copenhagen was a demonstration of the limits of the global reach and capacity of our present institutions. The experience of the conference should challenge us all to find the wisdom and care for the common good capable of unlocking the vast resources of altruism and the resources of the knowledge that we have acquired through the progress of science.

It was in a speech to the UN 20 years ago, in 1989, that the challenge was most clearly expressed, by someone who is today a member of your Lordships’ House. These words continue to have enormous resonance for us. It was said then that,

"another of the beliefs of Darwin’s era should help to see us through",

this crisis-

"the belief in reason and the scientific method … Now we must use our reason to find a way in which we can live with nature, and not dominate nature. We need our reason to teach us today … that we must not try to be … the lords of all we survey. We are not the lords, we are the Lord’s creatures, the trustees of this planet, charged today with preserving life itself-preserving life with all its mystery and all its wonder. May we all be equal to that task".

The words were, of course, those of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher.

Filed under: Christianity, Current affairs, Environment

Keep on ringing

Geoff Grayton tells me that the Bellringers of St Mary’s Church, Over and St Andrew’s Church, Histon were pleased to ring quarter peals of 1350 to support the call for Climate Justice at Copenhagen. Good for them!

Filed under: Environment

Bells ring out to call for Climate Justice

All Saints Church, Little Shelford was just one of our local churches ringing in a new world order with 350 changes of Grandsire Doubles last Sunday afternoon. Thanks and congratulations to everyone who took part, and keep up those prayers.

World Council of Churches – News Release
As a wave of ringing bells embraced the globe, churches sent a strong message to world leaders gathered at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen: There is only one world and in order to preserve it, bold action needs to be taken now.
"We have only one world, this world, if we destroy it, we have nothing else", said Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speaking at a press conference after an ecumenical celebration for climate justice in the Copenhagen Cathedral on 13 December.
Tutu summarized the churches’ message to negotiators and politicians attending the UN summit: "For the sake of your children, of your grandchildren, care for this one world we have […] Let us have a legally enforceable deal, not a political deal."
Such an agreement would entail developed nations committing to reduce their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 40 percent by 2020 and by 80 percent by 2050 in regard to their 1990 emission levels. They should also contribute 150 billion US dollars per year to assist developing nations to reduce their own CO2 emissions and adapt to the consequences of climate change.
The ecumenical celebration, attended by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, members of the Danish government, participants at the UN climate change summit and a plethora of religious leaders, was hosted by the National Council of Churches in Denmark in collaboration with DanChurchAid and the World Council of Churches (WCC).
In his sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams spoke about fear as the root of excuses to avoid the difficult and costly decisions that the climate change crisis requires – "decisions that will mean real change".
"We meet as people of faith in the context of this critical moment in human history [to say] do not be afraid", Williams said. As "love casts out fear", it also helps to take "the right decisions for our global future".
In order to ensure that the earth is a safe home for future generations, some questions need to be asked today, said Williams. Amongst them: "What would be a healthy and sustainable relationship with this world?" and "How shall we build international institutions that make sure the resources get where they are needed?"
Bells ring a wake-up call
At the end of the celebration, the Dean of the Cathedral Anders Gadegaard introduced the ringing of the bells. At that time, 3 p.m., throughout Denmark, Scandinavia and Central Europe, thousands of church bells rang 350 times to symbolize the 350 parts per million that, according to many scientists, is the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere.
Around the world churches joined in a global chain of prayers and bell-ringing for climate justice. Starting in Fiji, in the South Pacific, it sounded throughout the world’s time zones to Copenhagen, on to Greenland, right around the earth and back to the Pacific.
Church leaders from the Pacific and Greenland spoke at the press conference in Copenhagen about the consequences climate change is already having in their regions.
The Bishop of Greenland Sofie Petersen, from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark, spoke of the impact of climate change on the lives of fishermen and hunters. "Because of the lack of ice on the sea, hunters cannot go hunting like in the earlier days and because of that people cannot get their food", she said.
The president of the Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, Rev. Tofiga Falani, explained that in his country, a Polynesian island nation made up of eight coral atolls, there is no place higher than four feet (1.2 metres) above sea level. He pleaded to rich countries to be heedful of the consequences of their development for thousands of people living on those low-lying atolls. "We want to survive!" Falani said.
Half a million people for climate justice
Earlier in the day, Desmond Tutu handed over to Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a clock representing over half a million signatures for climate justice.
Climate change effects are being felt most "by those who did not cause it, the poor and the vulnerable", Tutu said, speaking before a crowd at Copenhagen’s City Hall Square. This is the "injustice of climate change", that poor countries are the ones "that have to pay for something they didn’t cause".
The signatures were collected in more than 20 countries by the Countdown to Copenhagen campaign, a coalition of ecumenical development and humanitarian aid organizations.
The 512,894 signatories committed to reducing their personal contribution to CO2 emissions through recycling, reusing and reducing consumption, and to press political leaders for a climate change agreement that is fair to poor countries.
In receiving the campaign’s clock, Yvo de Boer said that in spite of world leaders’ concerns about financial, economic and industrial crises, "it is a moral crisis that is standing in the way of us addressing an environmental crisis".
"Let your voices be heard", concluded de Boer, "because Copenhagen is the one chance we have to get this right".

Filed under: Current affairs, Environment

Operation Noah

Operation Noah’s new website is now up and running. A good place to look for Copenhagen commentary.

Filed under: Christianity, Current affairs, Environment

Saving London, and the World

‘If any one man won the Battle of Britain, Park did. I do not believe it is realised what one man, with his leadership, his calm judgment and his skill, did to save, not only this country, but the world.’

So Lord Tedder of Sir Keith Park, who led Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain. The photo is of the temporary statue of him now standing on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square – the Saviour of London.

I saw Andrew Marr’s programme on the Second World War this week and had the strange experience, for someone of my post-war generation, of getting goosebumps as I felt – despite all the awfulness of war and our own actions in it – that here was indeed a nation’s Finest Hour, when it more or less literally laid down its own imperial and economic greatness to prevent a greater tyranny that faced the world.

I wonder if we can find the same sort of courage and sense of destiny to face up to the challenges that will be confronting us at Copenhagen over the next few day. Once again perhaps we can as a people be prepared to have less, give more, so that the whole world can have a free future. And Save London too.

Filed under: Current affairs, Environment

Miliband praises faiths voice as Copenhagen talks begin

Ed Miliband has asked for this article to be circulated following the recent Faiths and Climate meeting hosted by Archbishop Rowan at Lambeth Palace.

Filed under: Current affairs, Environment