Climate Change is currently the major campaign of Christain Aid in the UK. One of the key elements of this is a nationwide march. The Cut the Carbon march. Four of the participents in this venture stopped off at the Camp for Climate Action to give the presentation bellow.

The Cut the Carbon march aims to raise awareness all over the UK of the fact that climate change is not just a forecast. It is happening now and millions of poor people are suffering.

The march started in Bangor, N Ireland on 14 July, and will eventually snake its way to the London Stock Exchange by 2 October. There will also be several major rallies and smaller local events along the way.

Faith groups are increasingly playing a part in preventing climate change. Weather through the concept of ‘creation care‘ or in terms of the more anthropocentric concept of climate justice.

A recent article on Trehugger finds that Muslims and Christians are already working on climate change and in fact this is a truly grass roots movement.

“Muslim and Christian youth living in the US have found common interest in protecting the environment. According to Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, a non-profit dedicated to building a pluralistic society through cooperation between people of all religious backgrounds, as he recently traveled the country visiting college campuses on behalf of his organization after meeting and speaking with the Rev. Richard Cizik, vice-president of the National Association of Evangelicals and a well-known proponent of creation-care, he found that often there were groups of students already organizing Earth Day events with both Muslims and Evangelical youth working side by side to lead the way.”

Jews are also participating in the fight, under the rubric of climate justice.

” Justice for poor people who will be most severely impacted by changing weather and rising seas and who have the least capacity to adapt.

Justice for future generations who will inherit an unstable climate and potentially catastrophic rises in sea level, migration of tropical diseases, and disrupted agricultural production.

Justice for all of creation that is threatened by climate change.”

Christian Aid is establising itself as a very active member of the Stop Climate Chaos coallition. I beleive that it may also be in attendance at the upcomming Global Climate Campaign meeting in Brussels and that it’s international networks could prove very useful in this capacity.

Christian Aid frames it’s role in fighting climate change thus:

Having established beyond doubt that climate change is also an issue of poverty and injustice, Christian Aid believes that the best way to fulfil its remit to tackle the scandal of poverty throughout the world is twofold: to find ways of stopping the greenhouse gases that are causing the climate to change, and to help poor people in dealing with the ravages of climate change on their doorstep.

In it’s latest report Christian Aid asks ‘how much carbon are british companies actually responsible for?’.

While the actual size of our footprint as a nation is not known, one estimate suggests that emissions associated with the worldwide consumption of FTSE 100 company products amount to 12 to 15 per cent of the global total. In this case, the UK’s influence, if not its direct impact, is revealed as not only statistically significant, but also critical to the future of the planet and its people.

Christian Aid launches it’s new climate change campaign.

Climate changed. Let’s get started We’ve launched a major new campaign to get the UK to cut its carbon emissions by 5% a year. From changing what you do at home and in the workplace to lobbying the government and companies, find out what you can do to make a difference. If we don’t, it’s the world’s poor who
will pay the price.

They are also carrying out a march through britain starting July 14th. It’s great to see them getting well and truly on board. And there ambitious targets for a 90% cut in emissions by 2050 are most welcome, from such a conservative yet powerful organisation.

The world’s poor need you: chance to volunteer for historic climate march

Christian Aid is looking for volunteers to join the longest ever protest march in UK history. The charity is scouring churches and communities throughout the UK to look for people who will put their best foot forward for the first ever mass march for climate justice this summer.

Hundreds of marchers are needed to join parts of the eleven-week, 1000-mile ‘Cut the Carbon’ march, including 10 core marchers who will walk the whole route. They will join campaigners from the developing world to protest against the scandalous injustice that poor peoples’ lives are being wrecked by dangerous greenhouse gas emissions pumped into the atmosphere by the rich world.

Letters of recruitment have already been sent to the Anglican, Baptist, Methodist and URC churches and Christian Aid is also talking with leaders of many Black Majority Churches.Cut the Carbon will be in the tradition of marching against injustice that informed both the Jarrow March for jobs in 1936 and the Nelson Mandela freedom march in 1988.Beginning in Northern Ireland on the 14 July 2007, it will pass through Scotland, England and Wales and arrive in London via Bournemouth and the Labour Party conference eleven weeks later.‘Climate change is the most serious threat to the future of all of us, but the shocking truth is that it’s poor people in the developing world who are already on the frontline of climate chaos,’ said Paul Brannen, head of campaigns at Christian Aid. ‘We have a moral duty to stop this now and where better to start than at home?’

The essential messages of the march will be:

• The world’s poorest are already suffering due to climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions from the rich world
• The UK government must take action to reduce UK carbon emissions immediately and dramatically – by 5% year on year
• The UK government must also take the lead on negotiating a fair international agreement that will deliver a 90% cut in carbon emissions by 2050

Christian Aid is reducing its own carbon emissions and has just published its carbon footprint.

In addition, the charity has switched to an energy supplier that sources from – and funds the building of – renewable energy installations, is reducing staff travel, especially air travel and is taking all feasible energy-efficiency measures.

Christian Aid is committed to reducing its emissions by 5% a year by saving energy, purchasing voluntary offsets to account for those carbon emissions we cannot eliminate and cutting the amount of printed resources that we produce.In addition, Christian Aid will work with its field offices and partner organisations in poor countries to monitor the environmental sustainability of projects across all our programmes.

Paul Brannen is available for interview. Please contact Claire Shelley on 020 7523 2419, 07961 303481 or cshelley@christian-aid.org

I mentioned recently that US Christians where starting to recognies the need to care for creation. Same thing happening here in the UK, a perticular note of thanks to the Bishop of London who has just signed a pledge not to fly this year, after declaring it sinful.

The section of this video where the Bishop is addressing a crowd was Nov 4th outside the US Embassy in London as part of the Campaign against Climate Change march, an part of the global climate campaign day of action. More on last year, and pland for this years international actions here.

Climate change, a christian perspective, an argument for action on climate change based on our common humanity. The Great Warming is a facinating fresh perspective on the problem of climate change.

We don’t have the flash graphics and the head on approach of An Inconvenient Truth; we have a very nicely put together documentary about the impacts of climate change, focusing on human health, agriculture and personal stories.

This angle, along with the neutral term Great Warming, does well to move past the negative association that many US christians have with environmentalism. It seems obvious to many that climate change is a moral issue, perhaps to obvious for the comfort of those of us involved in this issue within a secular society. The involvement of the chirstian community therefore makes perfect sense, but how to get this ‘creation protection’ started? The great warming is a superb start, it’s suitability for church groups and it’s solutions based approach are most wellcome!

“In a couple of hundred years people will look back at us as we look back at the Bronze Age and the Stone Age, and we’ll be called the Fossil Fuel Age.”

“We are living at the dawn of a new age – an era of changing climate, erratic weather, and social calamities that could change our way of life forever.”

If you wan’t to make the case for conservation, for low impact living, in your community and the thought of somone as strongly associated with the Democrats as Al Gore dosent seem appealing then The Great Warming could be for you!

Clip from the film…

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