Epilogue

As we prepared the resource, we remembered a video that we included in the prayer resource for COP27 back in 2022. With the title ‘Can YOU fix Climate Change?’, it addresses, in slightly less than sixteen minutes, some of the conflicting issues bound up in climate change that make it such a difficult thing to resolve. And it ends by suggesting that, for systemic changes of the magnitude required, we need to be influencing ‘the people at the levers’.

“When governments and local politicians are reluctant to change laws that affect their biggest tax contributors or campaign donors, we need to vote them out and vote in people who respect science. We need to hold them accountable for implementing the most effective climate change strategies.”

“When industries fight against changing their ways, for fear of losses or in an honest attempt to protect their own, we need politicians to change the laws and incentivize the deployment of existing technologies and massively invest in innovation for the fields where we don't have great solutions yet.”

In other words, we must speak up. And regarding the individual actions we can make:

“...you can eat less meat, fly less or get an electric car. Not because you should feel guilty if you don't or because you naively believe that you alone can stop rapid climate change, but to do your tiny, tiny part for the systemic change we need.”

And as Christians, we have another reason for making lifestyle changes, because as part of humanity we have been called to a caring and loving relationship with God’s creation and that means living lives that don't diminish it.

Here’s the video, linked to from YouTube: The Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell ‘Can YOU fix Climate Change?’ It's well worth watching.