Biofools

Yesterday saw the inception of the new rules about petrol in the UK. They now have to contain 2.5% biofuels. But the problem is that biofuels are already causing massive environmental and people damage across the world. Diverse and wonderful rain forests are being cut down at a prodigious rate and replaced with monoculture oil-bearing crops, while there are currently 37 countries on the brink of social unrest due to rising food prices.

Meanwhile the Telegraph leader yesterday advised that the problem was with fixing markets. If only they would be left to themselves all would be well, it said. Far from that, I am afraid. It is demonstrably true that the present bias toward biofuels is a disaster, but unregulation is also likely to be a disaster. If the markets were left to themselves then it is very likely that in the coming days of oil scarcity, climate change and economic recession that the rich countries would protect their interests to drive cars etc while people all across the planet starved. Our economic system cannot factor in the finite nature of resources on the earth.

There are so many schemes around today to help you ‘go carbon neutral’ but many of them are actually just a sop to the conscience. Why does it help to buy ‘green’ electricity for example if it is only meaning that ‘your bit’ comes from their renewables, when actually the challenge is to increase the real proportion of renewables supplied. Why does it help to put in a woodchip boiler if that option is only open to a few?

Surely the real challenge is to try to live in a way that everyone on the earth can live and that includes cars and everything else. You could summarise the principle there with ‘love your neighbour as you love yourself’. I am miles away from achieving that.

give us this day our daily bread

As one of the children of the 1950s, us babyboomers in the UK have never had to seriously worry about our bread supply. Through most of my life I have found that praying ‘give us this day our daily bread’ has been an exercise in imagining the plight of others but of little serious personal concern. Maybe all that is about to change.

This week the world news has begun to make the link between oil and food. Most of the world’s oil fields are in decline. We are using much more than we are discovering and more and more countries are industrialising. The inevitable result is what is being called Peak Oil. We are reaching the point where oil demand outstrips supply. At that point oil prices rise considerably. Oil has just reached an oil time high at 106$ a barrel. This may only be the beginning.

At the same time world food prices are rising. Some staples have doubled or trebled over the last few years. The causes are complex.They include the rising world population, the increasing numbers of ‘middle class consumer types’ who eat meat and drive cars , the impact of climate change on world food availability and the use of land for biofuel production instead of food. 

People are saying that this combination of oil and food price rise is certain to produce world recession and political instability in the near future.

It is like a tidal wave which you can just see rising. It is time to change the way that we are living. I suspect that many more people will soon be praying ‘give us this day our daily bread’ … and its accompanying statement ‘do not bring us to the time of trial’…

A 15 gallon tank filled with biofuel contains the equivalent of seven months food for a person.

For a summary of the breaking news see http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/03/food.climatechange

For in depth discussion see www.theoildrum.com which is an astonishingly well researched and influential website – especially Stuart Staniford http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3690 

overemphasising ecology?

I had an interesting response to an event last weekend which went as follows:

‘I agree with much that was said but there is a danger of overemphasising the importance of ecology in scripture. The Bible is primarily a message to humans, in fact solely. Christ came because of humans, the creation groans since Genesis 3 because of humans, its redemption is at Christ’s second coming. There is no need to challenge these key principles to speak against the materialism and unbridled greed of our generation’

I am grateful for this, because it is a common response to the sort of work that I am doing. I feel I have to emphasise God’s concern for the whole creation at this time and not just God’s concern for humans. The church has developed a way of talking about the good news that scarcely mentions the natural world. The Bible is addressed to humans but it is not about humans only, it is about the whole creation. I very much share my correspondents views about materialism and greed.

the forests are still falling

You will not have heard of Kelesau Naan. He spent most of his life trying to stop the logging companies from destroying the Sarawak rainforest that his people have hunted for thousands of years. As a leading figure in one of the last hunter gatherer tribes in Asia, Mr Naan had organised  roadblocks on logging roads, taken part in many campaigns, and argued for land rights for his people since 1998. The State of Sarawak continually denied their claim saying that because they hunt rather than work the land they have no claim on it. This has to be the ongoing influence of John Locke and the sort of judgement about property rights that dispossessed the American Indians.

 Anyway the battle is over for Kelesau Naan. They found his body in the forest last month. Local people suspect agents of the logging companies. The battle is almost over for the forest too. The rainforest in Sarawak has been reduced by more than 90% in area over the last 45 years. Soon it will be gone.

This story was told by Richard Lloyd Parry in The Times (Jan 4th 2008). For me it is compelling further evidence that our ideas about land and property are failing the earth, its creatures and its people.

The weirdest story from 2007

January the first is one of those round up moments. The tele is full of reviews of the past year. For me the weirdest story of 2007 was the one about the Russian submarine that planted a flag in the Arctic ocean 14,000 feet below the North Pole (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6927395.stm). The Arctic is thought to contain oil, gas and mineral reserves and the Russians were claiming these for themselves. This behaviour was made more bizarre by the fact that their ability to do this was dependent on a massive retreat of Arctic sea ice this summer, far greater than has ever been recorded before, and due, of course, to global warming http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/us/01climate.html . So here are these people diving into these newly accessible waters so that they can help us burn more oil and devastate the climate even further.

What is going on here? At root we probably have a wrong-headed idea about property and property rights. The actions of Russia in the Arctic are all too similar in principle to the staking out of claims by immigrants to North America and the dispossession of the indigenous Indians. And the thinking that lies behind both is traceable to John Locke. It was Locke who gave us a philosophical justfication of property rights in terms of rights being accorded to a person who worked a particular piece of land. So stake it out and work it and it is yours. ( http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1056550072  )

It is now so obvious that we cannot go on like this. We have to have a more responsible view of the natural resources of the earth. As our oil resources diminish we are going to have to actively manage these stocks. The same goes for all the other resources of the earth that are currently threatened by humanity’s rapacious behaviour. ( see http://globalpublicmedia.com )

It is very difficult to see how we will make this transition toward active management of the earth’s resources. One key factor in the whole process will be how we see the earth itself and our relationship to it. Can we recover a proper humility toward the earth and a proper sense of responsiblity? Can faith in a creator help us to do this? Perhaps it can if it is tied into a vision for Shalom?

We need to explore this further.

Reaping what we sow

I thought that some people might like to listen to a talk I gave at a Harvest service this year at St Mary’s Church in Stoke Bishop. It gives the big picture as a I see it about climate change and the call to the church to respond. It came after a little piece with me in a polar bear suit – hence the reference at the beginning. Click on the link to listen.

 talk on climate change and our response

the challenge to Christian community

Living in a prophetic age is making new things possible for the church. As the traditional patterns of church behaviour grow tired, perhaps we need to return to the teachings of Christ and find a new way to live. The page I have just posted called ‘The challenge’ takes a fresh look at what it means to follow Jesus in an age where climate change threatens the destruction of so many of the earth’s living systems.

living in a prophetic age

• A prophetic age is marked by an impending crisis.
• It is a time when the old stories, that have so far made sense of life, no longer work.
• It is a time when the necessary truth will be heard from the margins and not from the establishment.
• And it is a time when lifestyle becomes a political issue.

Past prophetic ages included the time of the exile in the Old Testament. As many of the people were carried off into a foreign land the old stories about God’s protection failed and a great theological ferment ensued. Prophets from the margins, like Jeremiah, pointed to the failures of the society and called them to ‘amend their ways and their actions’.

Similarly in Jesus’ time there was an impending crisis. A major conflict with the occupying Roman forces was brewing. Jesus recognised the need for a new theological understanding and called people to follow him , adopting a radical lifestyle.

Today we are threatened by an impending crisis, which is the deliberate wounding of the earth and its creatures through human-induced climate change.  Animals, plants and the world’s poorest peoples are all certain to be hurt or destroyed if we continue our wanton folly. As Matthew Taylor notes this is also a day when the old ideologies have failed, when ‘the market’ is more the problem than the solution and we need a whole new type of politics based around living well. He says that lifestyle is the new terrain of politics. I suspect that lifestyle is also the new terrain of spiritual renewal. As Christians come to recognise the call to seek the Great Peace or Shalom. so it is going to be increasingly diffcult to call yourself a Christian and participate uncritically in an earth-destructive lifestyle.

We need to go on a journey to a new kind of life – and for that we need vision.

Why use Shalom to describe this vision?

The theological background to each of these prophetic ages was a dream. It was called variously the good news, the Kingdom of God, or simply Shalom, meaning peace. In Isaiah 52 v 7 we find all three of these ideas in the same verse and they are also all found in Jesus ministry. Each of these words or phrases carries vision for every sphere of life - the personal, social, political and environmental and they tend to denote a similar set of hopes and dreams.

Yet in different ages one or another rises to the foreground.

In Jesus day, the primary crisis was political and in order to address this constructively Jesus called people to imagine a new social and polical reality, a ‘kingdom of God’.  

In our day the primary crisis is environmental. All the other spheres are involved as well of course, but the vital presenting issue to be addressed is climate change. For this reason I suggest that the lead word should be ‘Shalom’ because it carries with it a clear creation concern.

former government policy advisor admits the need for a new big idea

Matthew Taylor, former head of the IPPR think tank and former government policy advisor, was in a conversation on ’The World this weekend’ (Radio 4). They were discussing the absence of any sort of big picture from today’s politics, how all the politicians are just ‘camping on each other’s ground’ and dealing in the nitty griity of particular policies.

Matthew Taylor said,

People get completely lost when politics becomes all about tactics…this is the death throes of a particular type of politics which is no longer tenable…

He was then asked ‘So what is the big idea that no one is talking about’.

Matthew Taylor replied:

The big idea is about how we live our lives in a sustainable way, not just sustainable in terms of the environment, but sustainable in terms of our own sense of well-being and the things that we care about, our families and communities. The big paradox of modern society is that we are more and more affluent, but we do not seem contented or at ease in our modern world. Politicians have not found a way of talking about that. Sooner or later some people or groups will find a way of talking about it and that will be the new terrain of politics.

I listened to this with great interest.  Here was someone right at the heart of government and public policy thinking for many years both acknowledging the ideological vacuum that we are experiencing and pointing to a solution that could be a description of Shalom.

reaching beyond a human-centred gospel

For several years now I have been seeking a new way of understanding what Christ achieved through his death and resurrection. I am deeply aware that Christian proclamation as it stands today is almost entirely human-centred. We are told that Christ came to offer us forgiveness, that he died in our place, that our calling is to join this human community and live a life of sharing the good news. This is all very well but I have come to see that it is very ‘thin’. It is not so much wrong as inadequate, because it fails to make any significant connections with the creation or with what it means to live well outside of ‘church’.

I want to try to put forward a constructive suggestion that might at least lie alongside the current understandings. It concerns ‘the seed that fell into the earth’. You will find the full text listed as a page on this blog. I would very much like to hear your comments.