Tending to our recycling gnat and carbon camel

The lights flicker briefly. Then complete darkness. A few seconds later, the drone of back-up generators all across the neighbourhood, the part-muffled roar of our own, and with bleeping electronics, everything’s back on.

Living in Dar es Salaam 20 years ago, we soon got used to the blackouts. It happened so often, it barely made the news. Here in the UK though, even a short interruption is big news and a few days, especially in winter, a state of emergency. That’s perhaps as it should be.

It also shows us how intrinsic energy-at-the-touch-of-a-button is to how we live. I have spent most of my working life developing, financing, building and operating power stations in Africa. There we saw clearly the difference clean, reliable, affordable electricity made to businesses, the economy and the lives of tens of millions of people. It was good work. And today in the UK nearly three quarters of a million people – 2% of the workforce – are doing good work making sure our factories produce, trains run, and kettles boil. Our economic prosperity is built on reliable energy, and our way of life dependent on it.

Electricity is one of those wonders of God’s creation, and to live in a time of its discovery a privilege. But there’s a dark side too. For all its wonderful benefits, energy use produces three quarters of all the pollution that’s heating our world, the world God has given us to work and care for. What then is a disciple to do?

For energy, as for almost all that damages God’s world, there are two levels to think about: things that we can do in our personal lives, in our homes and in our work; and things that to be effective we really need to do as a society. Personal choices and systemic issues – they often go hand in hand. In this case, seeing the systemic picture helps us make individual choices for good.

And here at the systemic level, at least in the UK, there’s some good news. In simple terms, the goal is to electrify everything – homes, offices, factories, public buildings and transport – and get all our electricity from low carbon – wind, solar and nuclear – sources. And the good news is: over half our electricity today is low carbon. And there’s a reasonably credible plan to get the whole grid there within ten years. It won’t be without its controversies and challenges – transmission lines, solar farms, wind turbines, new nuclear, you can see the headlines already – but I’d give us a more than 50:50 chance of getting there or thereabouts. And that means if you’re running everything on electricity – heating, hot water, cooker, car – your plume of polluting emissions will soon be gone.

For energy, with decades of sensible policy behind us, the systemic stuff in the UK is on the right track. It’s mostly now about our individual practices. Each of us making the switch from petrol, diesel and gas to electricity. It doesn’t feel like discipleship, does it, to put in a heat pump or make your next car an electric one? But it’s how – in this complex, interconnected society, and with the wonders of creation in our hands – we work for the good of our neighbours’ crops, our children’s peace and the flourishing of all creation. When we see it that way, it does seem a bit more like discipleship doesn’t it? And doesn’t it resonate too with the mission of God to restore and renew all things? Prefiguring today, how one day it will be.

Jesus castigated the leaders of God’s people for carefully practising the minutiae of personal piety but neglecting the weightier matters of justice, mercy and faithfulness (Matt. 23v23-24). Let us then be those who, in deep gratitude to the one who has saved us, tend both to our recycling gnat and, in love for God and neighbour, our carbon camel.