COP26: Christians demand action

Evangelicals are prominent among church leaders demanding change in the run-up to the COP26 climate change conference. This will take place in Glasgow from 31 October to 12 November and will be attended by 190 world leaders.

At COP21 in Paris in 2015, for the first time, every country agreed to work together to limit global warming to, ideally, 1.5 degrees; to adapt to the impacts of a changing climate and to make money available to do so. Under this Paris Agreement they were mandated to present how they would achieve this at COP26.

Katharine Hayhoe, a Canadian climate scientist and evangelical Christian, was raised in Toronto among the Plymouth Brethren. Her parents were missionaries in South America. She is now the climate ambassador to the World Evangelical Alliance and adviser to the Evangelical Environmental Network.

‘The window of time to alter our current pathway is closing fast,’ Hayhoe said, urging that we change our trajectory. ‘That’s all repentance means,’ she said, ‘to turn.’

President of COP26 and British MP Alok Sharma has trumpeted the progress made in the UK to combat climate change, saying that: ‘In 2012, 40% of our electricity came from coal. That figure is now less than 2%’. He also insisted that ‘as countries begin to recover from the Coronavirus pandemic, we must take the historic opportunity to tackle climate change at the same time – to build back better, and greener’.

Many Christians believe that the church needs to be at the heart of this movement. Dr Ruth Valerio, Director of Global Advocacy at Tearfund, says it needs to be more alert to the challenges presented by climate change.

At an event exploring the interface between race, faith and climate justice hosted by the Evangelical Alliance (as part of Black History Month) she called on Christians to wake up: ‘The church is like a sleeping giant and it feels like it’s beginning to wake up; if we could really wake up, what a powerful movement we would be.’

Speaking at the same event, David Muir, of the University of Roehampton, said the world was in ‘pretty dire times’, and that it is wrong for some Christians to refuse to care about climate change. Instead ‘it raises fundamental questions about our stewardship of the environment that God has actually given us.

‘And we want to ask ourselves the fundamental question: how can we live simply that others might simply live? And that’s going to mean thinking seriously about the nature of our consumption.’

Nature expert and en writer Simon Marsh echoed those remarks. He wants to see two key results from COP26: ‘Firstly, an outcome which is ambitious enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Getting major economies such as China on board will be critical. Secondly, this must be fair to the Global South, which has contributed least to the problem, but feels the worst of the consequences and does not have the resources to cope with it. This will mean significant investment by rich economies which have polluted most’.

Amanda Khozi Mukwashi, CEO of Christian Aid, has challenged the theology of Christian climate-deniers, to ‘those who say the world is going to come to an end anyway – I don’t want to help the world to come to an end.’