Climate change activist and Scottish priest Michael Northcott signs a copy of his book for minister Wes Howland at the March Presbytery and Synod Resourcing day.

'Climate change mitigation - essential Christian mission'

 - Jill Freear

Church members have been challenged to combat climate change as an essential part of Christian mission, by Professor Michael Northcott, a visiting activist, author and priest of the Episcopal Church of Scotland.

Michael was the keynote speaker at the Presbytery and Synod Resourcing Day at Maughan Church at the end of March.

He is a professor of Ethics at the University of Edinburgh and the author of several books including 'A Moral Climate, the ethics of global warming'.

Michael told church members that climate change is the major moral dilemma of our time because our civilisation is causing parts of the planet to be uninhabitable due to drought and rising sea levels.

"Climate change is the single biggest cause of malnutrition and premature death in parts of Africa. We have environmental refugees because of drought and also because of flooding."

Michael spoke of the worsening storms off the Indian Ocean which are flooding people out of their homes and killing thousands in India and South Asia.

He mentioned the people of Kiribati and Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean who are moving to New Zealand because of rising sea levels.

"Initially they only had problems when the annual high tides came, but now the rising sea level is poisoning their water systems and plants."

Combat climate change

Michael said climate change mitigation is essential Christian mission; otherwise we would be facing "horrendous, apocalyptical possibilities - but it is not too late".

He used the analogy of the Forestry Industry in Tasmania to illustrate larger global problems and warned of our inability to continue "business as usual".  

Michael slammed the Australian government for subsidising the Timber Industry which he labelled destructive vandalism.  "We are treating forests as if they are farms and they are not. They are an essential part of the microclimate. Deforestation leads to a significant decline in rainfall."

He also debunked carbon offsetting and trading schemes. "Old forests store more carbon. It takes 40 years for a new plantation to store as much carbon as a rainforest."

And later -"carbon trading is destroying the Kyoto Protocol. It allows us to pollute as long as we plant trees - yet one is not equivalent to another".

Michael said we face several possible scenarios; if we carry on our business as usual we may quadruple annual carbon dioxide emissions to three times the pre-industrial level. "This will lead to a six degree increase in temperatures".

He said CSIRO figures show that Sydney will be uninhabitable by 2070 if there we experience six degrees of warming. "Australia will go from spectacular to uninhabitable."

Michael said if we take dramatic measures in the next ten years to reduce fossil fuel emissions, we may minimalise global warming.

A moral obligation

He believes Australia has a moral obligation to act because we are one of the largest producers of carbon dioxide in the world, next to the United States.

"We are one of the biggest polluters, so we need to reduce our emissions by 90 per cent over the next fifty years," Michael said. "People in Africa and Asia should be allowed to increase their emissions so they may enjoy the same standard of living as we do. This seems to me to be the only moral position we can take.

"McKinsey Australia says it will only cost $290 per annum per household to reduce CO2 emissions to 30 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 - a likely target under the Kyoto II."

Michael said the Australian Government needs to introduce radical reforms and regulations.

"Part of the problem is the tremendous state and Federal Government subsidies to the coal, oil and gas industries. Governments need to change their priorities to subsidise clean fuels."

Michael referred to Scripture and the Old Testament prophets throughout his presentation.  He said the Israelites lived through a period of climate change brought about by deforestation and this is portrayed in Isaiah 24. He also pointed to Jeremiah 9: 10 -14 which has similar references about what will happen when people are greedy and take more than nature can provide.

Michael ended his presentation by encouraging church members to view the world as "relational".

"Economics is the big stumbling block in the world. We are not thinking in relational terms, but purely in terms of our own individual interests. Our present moral climate drives individualism and hedonism, so that greed becomes a virtue. Yet we are all inter-connected. One will have to give. We know that the neoliberal vision is wrong."

Michael is teaching and preaching at Pilgrim Church for seven weeks until early May. His visit has been funded by Pilgrim and Uniting Church SA's Uniting Foundation.

Footnotes: Verses quoted by Michael Northcott.

Isaiah 5: 8-10

Woe to those who join house to house;

They add field to field,

Till there is no place

Where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land!

In my hearing the LORD of hosts said,

"Truly, many houses shall be desolate,

Great and beautiful ones, without inhabitant.

For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath,

And a homer of seed shall yield one ephah."

Isaiah 24: 4-6.

The earth mourns and fades away,

The world languishes and fades away;

The haughty people of the earth languish.

The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants,

Because they have transgressed the laws,

Changed the ordinance,

Broken the everlasting covenant.

Therefore the curse has devoured the earth,

And those who dwell in it are desolate.

Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned,

And few men are left.