earth watch
Shall we stand idly by?
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 4 Sep 2026
Is it just me, or is it getting hot in here? Up and down my street, blinds are down and curtains drawn against the midday heat. Overnight, from bedroom windows, strangely alien aircon flues dangle. Parks and lawns are Sahel-brown, hosepipes are banned across the South [of England], and with warm, dry weather forecast for August, we’re all beginning to hope for a spot of rain. Maybe by the time you read this we’ll have had some.
This year is shaping up to be a record-breaker. In May, we had the hottest day ever recorded for the month, and then in June, the same again. Globally, June was the second-hottest on record, just slightly below record-holding 2024. And there’s an intense El Niño brewing in the Pacific that looks like it’s going to set yet more unwelcome records. Phew, what a scorcher.
The false religion of climate alarmism
Paul Mills
Date posted: 4 Aug 2025
“Watch out for false prophets... By their fruit you will recognise them…every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.” (Matthew 7:15-17, NIV)
Climate alarmism [1] is often spoken of in religious terms. [2] The connection naturally springs to mind when considering the priestesses of Gaia at "climate" demonstrations, or the cult-like statements of protestors justifying their latest acts of cultural iconoclasm or infrastructure sabotage. Claire Coutinho, the former UK Energy Secretary, noted that the achievement of net zero carbon emissions has become “a religion” for such protest groups. [3] This way of thinking would appear to have become a sub-sect of full-blown Nature worship, or is certainly adjacent to it. Commentators often note that alarmist thinking has filled the religious vacuum in Western societies as adherence to Christianity has waned.
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’.
Wildfires: Climate change is ‘here & now’
en staff
Date posted: 23 Jan 2025
Leading climate scientist and evangelical Christian Katharine Hayhoe says the wildfires causing devastation in California are a stark reminder of the reality of climate change today.
Hayhoe, currently Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy, a non-profit international charitable organisation, says Los Angeles County was ‘tinder dry’ after receiving only 0.16 inches of rain since last May and experiencing ‘an unusually warm summer’.
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.
Innovative evangelism launched: Bible study and gardening
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 4 Jul 2025
By bringing God, Bible study and gardening together, Hazelnut Community Farm in East Bristol is pioneering an innovative approach to living out the Christian faith that reaches their neighbourhood with the gospel while combating the climate crisis.
Located in the grounds of St Anne’s Church, the farm is both a Christian community and a community garden, a space for outdoor worship and a thriving vegetable plot.
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+.
engaging with culture today
Environment: Are humans the number one problem?
Hadden Turner
Date posted: 1 May 2025
The environment (or creation) needs humans. While this claim is uncontroversial for Christians, in some environmentalist circles this assertion attracts scorn.
Surely, humans are the environment’s number-one problem, the cause of widespread degradation and damage?
How US evangelicals could affect the entire world
Martyn Whittock
Date posted: 1 Mar 2024
So, ‘Super Tuesday’ has happened – and Donald Trump looks on track for the Republican Party nomination in the US presidential elections.
A lot could happen between now and the actual vote, of course – but currently polls show Trump leading Biden, and so we could well be facing a second presidency from the businessman and former TV host. The role that US evangelicals play could affect the entire globe – and should be viewed, as I will explain below, with some concern.
After COP 29: evangelical scientist claims ‘history on our side’
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 22 Nov 2024
‘Gravity, history, and progress’ make the drive to clean and green energy unstoppable, says leading evangelical climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe as the COP 29 gathering concluded.
The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference began on 11 November in Baku, Azerbaijan and ended on 22 November.
UK Christian leaders challenge Paul Marshall over climate stance
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 20 Apr 2026
More than 100 church and Christian leaders from around the UK are signatories in an open letter to billionaire and media mogul Paul Marshall regarding his position on climate action.
Marshall, who co-owns GB News and identifies as a committed Church of England Christian, has said that the UK is infected by “climate derangement syndrome”, according to The Guardian.
earth watch
Thinking of our farmers
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 15 Jul 2026
As I write, England has recently sweltered under a record-smashing May heatwave, the culmination of a drier-than-usual spring.
Heather Oldfield, South Lincolnshire National Farmers Union County Chairman, showed Radio 4’s Farming Today her “stressed” winter wheat, and her “patchy” spring barley, and wonders whether she’ll even be planting a spring crop next year. Meanwhile, at Low Sizergh farm in Cumbria, panting cattle and sheep sought respite in the shade.
Hot Topic
Date posted: 1 Feb 2024
Dear Editor,
Stephen Carter’s letter, ‘Hot Topic’, en Oct, stated that ‘data from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) simply doesn’t support … climate alarmism’. On the contrary, IPCC’s Sixth Report, Part II, 28 February 2022, is headed: ‘Climate change: a threat to human wellbeing and health of the planet’ and states that: ‘This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction… (Hoesung Lee, Chair, IPCC).’ And, most ‘alarming’ of all: ‘Any further delay … will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.’
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.
Evangelicals look to Synod elections
en staff
Date posted: 24 Jan 2026
Evangelicals in the Church of England are gearing up for crucial elections to General Synod later this year.
CofE bishops recently confirmed they will not be proposing “stand-alone” blessing services for same-sex couples at the upcoming February gathering of the Synod, the denomination’s ruling body. They will also not be suggesting lifting the ban on clergy in same-sex civil marriages at that time.
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.