Just 2 of the slogans we marched with at the Climate March in Bristol on Saturday 6th November
There were many more:
Rich Nations- Pay Up Now!
No more Blah Blah Blah!
System Change- not Climate Change
Don’t be a fool- make the earth cool
Parents For Climate
Many - young, old, rich and poor alongside each other in the crowd, with a common purpose- to speak out for our world….
It sometimes feels as if we are shouting into a howling gale. It’s tempting to scream, but pointless.
I wince every time I see a tree cut down. It feels as if a part of me has been cut off. In a real sense that is true. Each tree is part of our oxygen supply. A 200 hundred-year-old tree will take 200 years to replace. And we really don’t have time to wait. 2030 is only 9 years away and I will be 71 years old. 2050 is only 29 years away and if I get that far I would be 91 years old! Not very old for an oak tree that can live well over 500 years, but very old for a human like me - or you. The baby oak trees I have planted will still just be children by the time I die. But surely we all have hopes and aspirations for our children and grand children – even those we only know now by proxy so to speak- other people’s children and those yet to come.
So why am I going on about trees? Not just because they are my passion, but because without them, and other plants and all the wildlife they sustain, we humans will not survive on this planet. We need nature. Nature needs us- but less than we need it.
But all is not gloom and doom. We humans are very intelligent and we do have the capacity to change the course of history, as we have done before. We have waged wars, we have declared peace, we have invented and manufactured and we can do so much more for good if we choose to. There are many wonderful ideas and aspirations from COP26, but not enough in the way of real pledges from governments and those with vested short-term interests. However there is now real momentum for change. So we pray that more momentum and genuine change will emerge in the coming months. Many big companies now realise that they can make more money by being genuinely sustainable- what a revelation! …(seems like a no brainer to me). And shareholders are now putting on more pressure… not just the children and young people who have so often led the way in the last 2 years or so. Many others have been speaking out for 60 years or more and not heeded…..
We also have a God who cares for humanity. A God who showed us His humanity and love in Jesus - who has promised to make all things new. This is not an excuse to go on destroying what God has made in the hope that he will just repair it. He has given us responsibility as stewards, as carers, as protectors of our world.
Lord have mercy. Save our world from us and open our eyes to see as you see, to hear as you hear, to love as you love. Amen