BISHOP'S Letter.

Byline: Bishop Martin Wharton 

Very few people now seriously dispute the scientific evidence that suggests that climate change is a serious global threat, which demands our urgent response. In other words climate change is not just a green issue, it is also a major security concern.

The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina to the city of New Orleans two years ago, underlined how, in a country as wealthy and resilient as the United States, the social and economic dislocation was immense. It placed huge strains on the American government's ability to care and provide for its citizens.

The consequences of extreme climatic events in the more vulnerable regions of our world - Africa, Asia, the Middle East - will be even more dramatic. Food, health, water, energy as well as the society's infrastructure will be very severely affected. And given the nature of our interdependent world, the impact of extreme climatic events will be felt not just in the areas directly affected but right across the world.

It is hard to escape the view that climate change is already acting disproportionately on many of the world's poorest communities. It is a developed world problem for which the developing world will be paying the price. The President of Uganda has already claimed that climate change is an act of aggression by the rich against the poor. He will not be the last.

The real danger is that climate change will push many communities still further into poverty. As Bishop Desmond Tutu has commented "Droughts and floods not only destroy lives. They also destroy schools, economies and opportunities". In recent times Christians have responded magnificently to the scandal of poverty by pressing for international action on debt, trade and aid. The Churches played a hugely active and effective role in the Jubilee 2000 campaign, the Trade Justice Movement and the campaign to Make Poverty History.

The problem is that climate change threatens to undermine many of the achievements of the last decade. Poverty will increase. Food supplies will be seriously affected. Conflicts will multiply. As Nazmul Chowdhury of Practical Action puts it bluntly, "Forget about making poverty history. Climate change will make poverty permanent." What poorer countries need most is for global carbon emissions to be drastically reduced. Christian Aid's "Cut the Carbon Campaign" and the march which walked through the Diocese in August made this point strongly. Please visit the Christian Aid website for more details.

We have much to do. Christians need not only to reconsider our own life styles, but we also need to connect climate change with other wider issues.

The Church's calling is to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth." Its mission is to seek to transform unjust structures of society.

The Church is in a unique position to make a timely contribution, to make the inter-connectedness of climate change, human development and human activity more obvious and apparent, and to recognise the real and lasting concerns of many of the world's poorest and most vulnerable communities.