People have to “think and act ‘green’ in everything we do”, the head of the World Council of Churches has said in comments responding to a UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released last week.
In a statement, Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC, said described the report – which showed that even a 1.5 degree Celsius rise in temperature would significantly impact the world – as a “wake up call”.
“It is an alarm bell of a disaster going on,” he said. “Our home, the Earth, God’s gift of creation, is endangered by the unlimited extraction of natural resources that is clearly disrupting the life-giving systems of our planet. Use of fossil fuels, unsustainable production of food, and deforestation, among other human economic activities, have raised greenhouse gases to a level that already has an unambiguous impact on the climate.”
Tveit said that as people of faith, “we must always have the impoverished and vulnerable in the midst of our prayers and actions”.
“We cannot be silent and stay passive,” he said. “We all need to do what we can do. And we can do much more than what we are currently doing. Governments must stand up and take brave decisions to break up with a growth-obsessed development model that relies on an extraction. Businesses must radically transform their investment, production and distribution processes. And you and I have to do what we can to hold governments and businesses accountable and to significantly reduce our carbon footprints in our daily life. We have to think and act “green” in everything we do”.
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He said that rather than be driven to “despair and immobility” by the findings of the report, people should remember the Gospel account of a child who brought a few loaves and fish to Jesus, a story told in John, chapter six.
“It was dismissed as too little to do anything. But this small act was the start of the feeding of many. What you and I do in response to perhaps the biggest global challenge humanity has ever confronted may be seen as a mere drop in the ocean. But this can turn into a wave of change.”
Tveit pointed to a global interfaith initiative, known as the ‘Living the Change‘, which he said provides practical steps “towards co-creating a more just and sustainable world”.
“We do this together with people of good will and from many faiths to manifest that we are one humanity living in one world and that our common values and teachings impel us to work for climate justice.”
