From the Principal of Edwardes College, University of Peshawar
Sir, — I was deeply disappointed with the climate-change debate at the General Synod, as reported in the Church Times (Synod, 11 July). One member dismissed as “lamentable”, without any attempt at justification, the only solid piece of research on the subject to have been produced in Britain in the past 15 years — the Stern review. Another feared mass migrations into Britain; and there was lukewarm talk about keeping “feasting and fasting . . . in balance”.
More positively, there was belated recognition of the fact that at the global level the environment cannot be improved under conditions of poverty. But that was first recognised by the United Nations at their Stockholm Conference as early as 1972; so where has the Church of England been in the intervening years?
Those of us who live in countries at the sharp end of the environmental profligacy of the West are beginning to see signs of hope in the very crises that have forced environmental issues into the public domain. Rising oil prices and the fall in value of traditionally strong currencies will have catastrophic consequences for the unsustainable lifestyles that governments have failed to check, and which Churches have gone along with as integral to their belief that they are a consequence of “God’s bounty”.
It is this kind of collective self-indulgence, and the arrogant individualism that accompanies it, which the Churches could and should have challenged; but this they have miserably failed to achieve. Will the Lambeth Conference do any better?
DAVID L. GOSLING
Edwardes College
University of Peshawar, The Mall
Peshwawar Cantt., NWFP, Pakistan |
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