I hope you find this Blog a resource for moral & environmental thoughts from a Christian viewpoint. "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in".
In the part of the US where keen environmentalists Andrea and Pete live, (Spokane, Washington) you can make some money by recycling cans. This young couple have decided to get married (great) but have agreed to pay for the wedding by earning money from recycling aluminium cans, now comes the problem.... they need to recycle 400,000 cans, about 5 tons....
Since in the US there are enough aluminum cans thrown away to build 8000 Boeing 747’s every year, this is a great idea and will focus peoples concept of waste in a way that is, so far, unique.
The time of cheap and easy access to water is ending, posing a potentially greater threat to businesses than the loss of any other natural resource, including fossil fuel resources. The collapse of the world’s financial system are our warning because we live in a water 'bubble' as unsustainable as the bubble that burst in the world’s financial markets.
The Earth does not have an infinite supply of water. There is exactly the same amount of it available as there has always been. We are now, with some 6.7 billion individuals, sharing this same amount as the 300 million did at the time of the Roman Empire. Water use has been increasing per individual, during the 20th century the world population increased fourfold, but the amount of freshwater that it used increased nine times over. Almost 97.5 per cent of all water on earth is salt water, leaving only 2.5 per cent as fresh water. Nearly 70 per cent of that fresh water is frozen in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland, less than one per cent of the world's fresh water is accessible for direct human use.
The Nile is the longest river on earth wandering for more than 4000 miles. Only two per cent of Egypt’s territory is arable along the Nile River and since the building of Aswan Dam, the discharge of the River into the Mediterranean has greatly reduced. The Tigris and Euphrates River system flowing through Syria and Iraq is being overused by the dams erected in Turkey and Iraq. The Kingdom of Jordan will need about 1.54 billion cubic meters of water to meet the needs of its population by the end of next year but will actually face a shortage of almost 319 million cubic meters. For the problems the Middle east faces, see HERE.
China’s Yellow River which flows some 4000 km’s through five provinces before it reaches the Yellow Sea, has been under mounting pressure for several decades. It first ran dry in 1972 and since 1985 it has often failed to reach the sea. China has built hundreds of water dams on the Yellow River during the last 50 years especially in the upper ranges. Thus record low water levels in the River have been witnessed in recent years.
The 2,900 km long Indus River, the lifeline of Pakistan’s economy is dying a slow death due to the shrinking Tibetan glaciers and construction of dams and barrages upstream. It also happens to be the main source of water supply to Pakistan’s major cities including Karachi. The drying up of Indus River has adversely effected the growth of mangrove forests as well as the fishing industry in Pakistan.
Friction between countries triggered by problems of water scarcity is on the rise. The regions of Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa are the most vulnerable in this regard. The armed conflict between Israel and Palestine over the Jordan river has been going on for more than 50 years and is getting worse by the day on account of increasing water shortage. Disagreements over water are also erupting along the Mekong River in Indo-China as well as around what remains of the Aral Sea in Eastern Europe. There have been longstanding disputes between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt over the control of Nile River.
Lake Chad of Central Africa which supports some 30 million people has, due to global warming, shrunk to one-tenth of its former size over the past three decades. The conflict in Darfur owes its origin to decreasing water supply and the consequent shortage of pastures. In Kenya in January 2005 thousand of people fled their homes due to clashes over water in Kenya’s Rift valley.
Few years back, clashes broke out between two southern Indian states, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over access to Cauvery River which flows from Karnataka to Tamil Nadu. Karnataka blamed Tamil Nadu of wasting water and expanding its irrigated land, while in the US, hydrologists have declared thirty-six states of the country as ‘water-stressed’ states.
There are some alternatives available for oil, but none whatsoever for water.
Overall, it may seem as a failure, because the big polluters US and China wanted a weak agreement. President Obama was heavily constrained by Congress captured by lobbyists from a front group for the largest corporations in the polluting lobby, including oil and coal companies like Exxon Mobil. They were major backers of President George W Bush, and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars blocking Obama's attempts at change.
People were out in force in Copenhagen while polluter lobbyists worked in the shadows, their voices loud only in our politicians' ears. US negotiator Todd Stern said that as far as the US was concerned the fact that climate change was happening as a result of emissions from rich countries had no relevance to the negotiations. You may have heard or read that the African countries walked out of the negotiations at one point, well this was due to the fact that the Danish hosts prevented discussion on the only legally binding agreement there is, the Kyoto Protocol.
"Copenhagen's failure was the inevitable result of rich countries refusing to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility for global warming" said Christian Aid's senior climate change advocacy officer, Nelson Muffuh.
So what good did come out of it?
There were world-wide demonstrations for climate justice, in London alone around 60,000 took part in a march, and I was one of them 100,000 marched in Copenhagen Archbishop Desmond Tutu delivered a staggering 512,894 Copenhagen pledges to the United Nations in front of a crowd of thousands. There were 3000 know climate vigils held in 140 countries. As I write this an Avaaz climate petition now has almost 15 million signatories. Faith groups combined under the Odyssey Network, these included Anglican, Buddhist, Hindu, Lutheran, Methodist, Muslim, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic.
As Edmund Burke was said to remark, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing” and in my books, as in the YouTube video above, good people have been doing and will continue doing much.
Odyssey Networks is a UK coalition of Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith groups promoting tolerance, peace, and social justice through media production. The video above is of a joint initiative for climate justice by two young people, one Christian and one Muslim.
So, just how far away is 'space'? The Federation Aeronautique Internationale has established this to be an altitude of 100 km or 62 miles, NASA considers people to be astronauts once they've travelled higher than 80 km (50 miles).
Oxygen in the atmosphere runs starts to run low at 12,000 feet, about 2 ¼ miles and Mount Everest, you have to be very fit to climb her, is ‘only’ 5.497 miles high and many have died there without oxygen.
The NASA image seen on the left shows just how thin the earth's atmosphere is relative to the earths's size, evident in its radius. This scene captures the silhouette of several thunderstorms with their cirrus anvil tops spreading out against the tropopause, the first dark blue line over the earth. The height of this varies according to where it in Lattitude, it can be between 6 and 8 miles high and temperatures can be as low as - 80c.
It is the thin area below this that needs our protection and the reason why pollution control is so important in maintaining God's creation for future generations.
There are times when I wonder if the environmental movement in general looks at the environmental problems and forgets about the environmental successes. These are usually seen at a local or small level and yet often have a huge impact for the environmental cause. The following is one such local level initiative.
Our village had an allotment field (community garden) which is owned by the parish council. This had fallen into disuse over the years and had not been used for at least 20 years except to graze horses. With the increased awareness of environmental concerns generally and local food production in particular, one of the parish councillors thought it would be a good idea to get the field back into use again as individual allotment gardens.
After managing to get a grant and getting the work organised to reinstate the field in order to provide new fencing, gates, a water supply, marking out and initial allotment rotivating, the individual in question then held their breath, concerned as to whether or not the 12 allotment gardens would be taken up.
Within two weeks they all were and now the area is a hive of activity with some chickens as well as vegetables on the allotments. Last week I passed one of the allotment holders walking back from the allotment with the vegetables he was about to cook for dinner, food miles had been reduced to food yards.
Some are sharing their allotments; a group of three have got together and have formed a hen and egg syndicate on one allotment, and a local community has sprung into life. One of the allotment holders said to me recently that she had spoken to more local people in the last 2 weeks that she had over the last 20 years.
There is so much that is going on in the environmental field by such as you and I and from Transition Towns to planting a single seed each and every initiative is a success and I sometimes think that we do, at times, overlook them.
Plastic bags used this year:
(Plastic bag counter from reusablebags.com)
Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used and disposed of worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year, in the sea, on the earth and in streams.
My Awards
With many thanks to the amazing Mrs.A for her award above. the very generous judges of The UK Christian Web Awards, for the award below and Margaret for hers.
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