Climate Crisis and Climate Justice

Climate Crisis

2023 was Earth's hottest year ever recorded, beating the previous record set in 2016 by a huge margin. Last year was also the first in which the world was close to 1.5°C hotter than the pre-industrial average and the past nine years have been the warmest years since modern record keeping began in 1880. (Meteorological Office[1] and NASA[2]).

“To hurt the Earth is a sin” says Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Francis states: “we must respond to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor”. Archbishop Justin Welby believes "reducing the causes of climate change is essential to the life of faith. It is a way to love our neighbour and to steward the gift of creation."

Climate Justice:

Poorer communities and countries with high rates of poverty are more vulnerable to climate change. Countries with less resources do not have the same financial capacity as other countries with more wealth to mitigate against the impacts of climate change. These countries and communities have less power to influence decision making and are not always included meaningfully in the decision making processes at national or global levels[3].

What can we do?
The dire state of God’s Creation can make us wonder “what on earth can I do?” Churches Together in Milton Keynes believes that living in a way that respects what God has made is part of our joyful discipleship and, by inspiring others to join us, we can begin to change the world. We believe that responding to the climate crisis is an essential part of our responsibility to safeguard God's creation and achieve a just world. Climate change hits hardest the poorest countries and poorest people of the world. The widespread destruction of the natural world is a crisis for creation and all Christian’s must work for Climate Change and Justice.

Eco Church
Working for Climate Change and Justice involves changing many aspects of church life and lifestyle choices of Christians including: worship and teaching, use of our buildings, land and nature, community and global action and decisions about our lifestyles. All these issues are included in the comprehensive A Rocha Eco Church award scheme.

Eco Church is a free, online, reward scheme designed to equip churches to work towards environmentally friendly practices. The Eco Church scheme has a ‘Framework for Action’ to demonstrate that the Church is Good news for God’s Earth and it embodies ‘Flourish’ one of the practices of the Methodist’s ‘A Way of Life’. Eco Church is supported by the Church of England, Methodist and URC churches, Christian Aid & Tearfund, to help them achieve their net zero carbon targets.

Registration: To become an Eco Church churches must first register, which can be done on the A Rocha website here

Online Survey: After registering the next step is for churches complete an Online Survey: https://ecochurch.arocha.org.uk/how-eco-church-works/ .

Resources: A Rocha has many useful resources to guide churches take action on all five areas of Eco Church: https://ecochurch.arocha.org.uk/resources/