Lifestyle as stewards
Let’s start with prayer.
Loving God, may I speak with your words. Please do with them as you will, in the hearts of each one of us. Amen.
Hugh asked me to start today by saying why I care about climate change.
There are three reasons.
The first is simply the Science.
We’re currently on track to get to 4.3 degrees of global warming by the end of this century, that’s within some of our children’s lifetimes.
And we’re on track to get to 2 degrees, in just 30 years, by 2050.
At 2 degrees of warming UN Scientists predict many small island nations will be inundated by sea level rises, and we’ll have lost 98% of coral reefs.
Scientists estimate around a million climate refugees will arrive in Europe every year - that’s as many as came during the Syrian Crisis of 2015 - every single year.
And at 2 degrees of warming, extreme temperatures will make some places on Earth unliveable.
We can see these changes happening already. We’re currently at just 1 degree of warming above pre-industrial levels, and 2019 saw 33 records broken around the world for the highest ever temperatures. Port Augusta in Australia recorded a temperature of 50 degrees Celsius this year.
And by the end of the Century, in 80 years time, if we continue along the current trajectory, here’s what the Scientists are predicting:
At 4 degrees of global warming, half of all known species would be extinct. There would be drought over 40% of inhabited land, and hundreds millions of climate refugees. As Professor Kevin Anderson at Manchester University has said “A 4 degrees C. Future is incompatible with an organised global community.”
So the first reason I care about this, is simply because the Scientists are telling us - and 95% of Scientists agree about this - how bad the situation really is.
The second reason I care, is because I, you, and probably everyone you know, is responsible.
Everyone who lives a Western lifestyle.
Our pet dogs have a bigger carbon footprint than the average Ethiopian, because of how much meat they consume.
Let me say that again.
Our beloved, innocent pets, are damaging the Earth more than a person in Africa.
That’s how responsible we all are.
And the third reason I care, and this is the one I really can’t bear, is that none of us mean to do this. We all want to be good people, and to do the right thing, but we are all destroying the planet.
Us.
Our daughter Ruth, who sadly can’t be here to laugh at me this morning, is learning to drive at the moment. I’m the kind of parent no learner driver wants on their passenger seat. Heart beating, hands clenched, trying to remember to breath.
I have to hold myself from googling ‘how many learner drivers kill themselves/their parents/other people while learning to drive?”
But I wonder if when it comes to climate change … we’re all more like this guy?
When it comes to climate change, we’re like the guy driving the wrong way up the motorway, oblivious to everyone and everything around them, including the blue flashing emergency lights coming up right behind us.
So the third thing, the thing that bothers me most, is that we’re all responsible, but none of us intend or want to harm others.
I can’t bear it that people are fighting in water queues in India, as Jack from Tearfund told us about three weeks ago, because of my way of life. I never meant to harm anyone. None of us did. It breaks my heart.
So what to do?
Well there’s a clue in our reading from Micah today.
What does the Lord ask of us, in relation to the contribution we’re all making to climate change?
It’s both simple, and incredibly challenging. Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk humbly with God.
My topic in this sermon series is lifestyle change.
I know it’s easy to think, ah what’s the point? If I cut out meat, I know for sure my brother will be eating enough steaks for two. And what’s the point of me cutting out flying, when there are a billion Chinese people on the planet, all of them hoping to visit London?
Well the answer is our choices do matter, for two reasons. Firstly they matter because we make them together.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said: climate change is the apartheid of our times.
He means two things by this. First that it’s a fundamental injustice. We get to live as we do, and it’s the poorest of the Earth who take the consequences.
And the second thing he means is that as with apartheid, where boycotts of South African products in the West had an economic impact, which helped bring change to South Africa, it’s our individual choices about how and what we consume, taken together, that will bring down this even greater evil.
We don’t eat, or fly, or drive, or buy on our own. Together, our choices can make a difference.
But also as Christians, our lifestyle matters because as we just heard from Micah, this is what the Lord asks of us. We’re called to live our lives with integrity. God cares as much about what we buy, and eat, and wear, as what we do on a Sunday morning. Our choice at the checkout is our worship, as much as our choice to be here in Church.
So I’m going to say a bit today about what we can all do to cut down our own carbon footprint.
To make this really simple, I’m going to give you one really easy thing, two medium difficult things, and three harder things you can do - and usually, but not always, it’s the hardest ones that have the biggest impact.
Here’s the really easy one:
You can switch to an 100% renewables Energy Supplier, there’s a whole range of them now. Go online to USwitch and tick the box - circled on the slide here - to only compare “Green plans”.
Please if you do just one thing - and haven’t already done it - do this.
It’s really easy, it will take you about ten minutes online, and renewables are now the same price as any other energy source.
And - despite being the easiest thing you can do - just ten minutes of your time, with no financial cost at all - this is one thing we can all do that has a really big impact on your carbon footprint.
Here are the two medium difficult ones:
You can carbon offset any flights and your car travel.
I put this in the medium difficult category, because it does cost something, but it’s really easy, and so much cheaper than you’d think.
Climate Stewards is a Christian organisation. They plant trees around the world, enough trees to offset whatever carbon emissions you pay them to offset.
It’s way cheaper than you might think.
It costs £10 to carbon offset a return flight to Rome, and £36 to carbon offset a return flight to New York.
If you drive from Goudhurst to Marden and back five days a week, 47 weeks a year, that’s 2,491 miles. If you want to carbon offset your commute that will cost you just £19.60 for the entire year. That’s probably less than you pay to get to London each day.
This is something we can all do. It’s so cheap, and so much easier than giving things up.
Have a think about which parts of your life have the biggest carbon impact? If you can’t cut them out straight away, or don’t want to, do have a look at Climate Stewards website, and see if you can offset these carbon emissions instead.
And the second medium difficult thing we can do is cut down on meat and dairy.
Georgie got me to watch this documentary, Cowspiracy, a few months ago, and it really, really shocked me. I learned that eating one hamburger creates the same level of carbon emissions as running your shower for two whole weeks.
One hamburger - the same impact as a two week long shower. That’s how big the impact of meat and dairy production is on carbon emissions. And because it’s really uncomfortable, no one has talked about this until now.
So anything you can do to cut down on meat and dairy will be good for reducing your carbon footprint. You could eat vegetarian one night a week, or switch to oat milk on your cereal (it’s genuinely delicious by the way, no sacrifice involved there!).
You could do like me. I’m vegan at home, but if I go to Henrietta’s and she offers me a delicious salad with cheese in, I’ll have two helpings.
Apparently this makes me a ‘flegan’, a flexi-vegan - not just a hypocrite ….
And now here lets talk about the three really hard ones … the ones none of us want to do, but that really have the biggest impact
This slide from GreenFaith is divided into low, medium and high impact, so you can see at the bottom of the slide, here the things that will really have the biggest impact:
Switching to a plant based diet - in other words - going vegan
Switching to an electric car
Changing energy supplier - (we’ve talked about the one already - easy peasy)
Cutting out flying (on this slide it’s showing us the saving if you cut out just one transatlantic flight.
Living car free is the thing GreenFaith have included here with the biggest impact (because it’s compared with cutting a single transatlantic flight) but I think living round here, either carbon offsetting our driving, or the electric car option, are much more realistic for most of us.
There are many other things we can do like cutting our plastic use, using a reusable coffee cup, taking reusable bags to the checkout, re-cycling, and only buying second hand clothes.
Thank you Connect clothing and Lydia Taurins for this lovely jacket. Lydia please do keep on growing, your hand me downs are making me way more stylish.
All of these cut down our carbon footprint.
But what I’ve wanted to highlight for us all today are just the ‘big ticket’ items.
Energy supply. Diet. Carbon offsetting what you can’t change. Switching to an electric car. Cutting down or cutting out flying.
I’m going to mention two other things that will have you swooning, if what I’ve already said hasn’t. They aren’t even included on this slide because they’re so difficult, but they have an equally big or even bigger impact.
The other key things we can do are have fewer children and not have a dog.
I’m really not one to talk about this as you all know ... Hugh says we can have a rabbit when Guinness dies
So let’s come back to the Why? question.
None of this is easy.
None of us want to give up flying, or our beautiful, beloved dogs, or delicious meaty meals.
But it’s a question of what’s at stake if we don’t:
What kind of world do we want our children, and our grandchildren, to live in? What do we want for the poorest people on this Earth?
Beauty. Biodiversity. Safety. Freedom from hunger. Freedom from fear …
If we want all these good things for them … it’s us who have to change.
We can and we must campaign and advocate for action by Government - but we also need to live our own lives as Micah calls us to, for justice, with mercy, and walking humbly with our God.
As Hugh said two weeks ago - it’s a journey - we don’t have to change everything overnight, but we can each commit to taking a step.
As Jack from Tearfund said to us three weeks ago, this is our worship, this is how we are called, and how we choose, to honour God.
So I want to close today with our second reading from Joshua.
“As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord”
This reminds us so powerfully - we none of us live, or act, or serve God on our own.
We live in relationships, in families, as part of the Church family, within our wider society.
And within those relationships we make choices for our homes, about how we live together, and how we as families and as Church, will serve the Lord.
How can we help one another make these really difficult choices, both within our individual families, and together, as Church family?
“As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord”.
How will you and your family serve the Lord, in the light of the climate emergency?
Amen.