earth watch
Why aren't Christians leading on climate change?
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 27 Jan 2025
Donald Trump is now President of the most economically powerful nation on the planet and – the President-elect is self-avowedly no friend of God’s creation.
He has signed an order to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change and has pledged to roll back Biden’s clean energy law, the Inflation Reduction Act. And he’s doubling down on oil and gas: ‘Drill, baby, drill’.
earth watch
A flourishing earth is possible - and promised
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 10 Nov 2025
It’s COP season again. COP30 – or to give it its full title, the 30th Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – gets underway imminently.
Dimly we might recall COP26 hitting headlines in the UK four years ago when Glasgow hosted it. Boris Johnson’s one minute to midnight speech, perhaps? Maybe “keeping 1.5 alive”? Or Alok Sharma’s tears when India pulled the rug on his deal to phase out coal?
earth watch
Is real change possible in stewarding God’s earth?
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 2 Aug 2025
Is real change possible? That, for those who watch closely our heating world, is the crucial question. If we’re to avoid the worst effects of climate breakdown, we need actual real change.
Or to bring it into the Biblical narrative, if we’re to fulfil our first calling to rule and care for all creation as God’s agents, we’ll need actual real change. It sounds obvious but it’s not always easy to see.
earth watch
The 7th Carbon Budget: love your neighbour?
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 7 May 2025
The Seventh Carbon Budget is out now. It won’t make it to our news feeds, but it’s an important document.
Published by the UK government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC), it’s a well-articulated pathway to (trigger alert) net zero. It’s their best effort at how we in the UK can live more or less as we do now, but without ruining the world around us. For us evangelicals though, there’s something about it that really stands out. Something quite amazing. Though lacking the poetry of Isaiah 65, its themes of prospering humanity, long life, well-being, justice, peace and a flourishing earth could come right out of the prophets.
earth watch
Attenborough's Ocean asks: What are we doing here?
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 3 Jul 2025
Ocean. David Attenborough’s latest made-for-the-big-screen documentary. Perhaps you’ve seen it. If not, please do – I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Barrow-rolling seal, sun-dappled kelp forest, coral garden reef, phytoplankton and whale, the astonishing beauty of it all. You’ll experience joy, wonder, horror, anger, hope and much else besides, all in the space of 90 minutes. It’s impossible not to be stirred, maybe shaken. Available in cinemas and, by the time you’re reading this, on Disney+.
earth watch
The beginning of the end of the polycrisis
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 23 Dec 2025
We will have been thinking about the coming of the true King. Through the Advent season, we’re sure to have looked back with joy to the announcement of His birth. We’ve likely looked, also, to the future with longing for the day of the return of the King, when all things will be put right. And perhaps we’ve had the space, held between joy and longing, to lament the darkness.
Advent and Christmas are annual reminders that we are uniquely placed as Christians to see both the beauty of creation and its brokenness. Celebrating the One who came to redeem and who will come again to restore all creation, we share both the Creator’s joy and His lament, in the sure expectation of a world-made-right.
earth watch
Energy, emissions, and the choice of Boaz
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 8 Jun 2025
Energy, and how we produce it, is the key to a stable climate. Three quarters of emissions come from energy production. Get energy right, and we’ve broken the back of it. So, the latest Global Energy Review report from the highly regarded International Energy Agency is a vital health check. What’s happening to energy demand? How are we producing it? Does the arc of emissions bend toward zero?
According to the report, the answers to those questions are: one, it’s going up; two, increasingly from renewables; and three, either no or only slowly. Now, I know it’s hard to engage with numbers and percentages. So, here are just two headlines. In 2024, global energy demand rose by 2.2%. And carbon emissions rose by 0.8%. Behind those headlines is a mixed story. On the plus side, most of the growth came from wind and solar energy. In fact, 40% of all energy now comes from low carbon renewables and nuclear. But on the minus side, use of gas, oil and coal also rose, and carbon emissions are still going up, when we need them to be going down (fast).
Setting the record straight on climate 'alarmism'
"Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace. [1]
"Don’t worry, everything’s fine, carry on as you are" – even a cursory reading of the Biblical prophets reveals this to be the very epitome of false prophecy. Yet this is precisely the counsel Paul Mills’ article, published earlier this year, offers us.