TrewsNews

THE WORLD is on fire. Wildfires have raged from Athens to the Arctic. Heatwaves have broken records in Africa, Japan, North America and Europe. Sadly, the wildfires and heat have led to lives lost and property destroyed.
In Ireland, we suffered a very wet winter, and the wettest decade in 300 years. This has been followed by the worst drought in 40 years. Armagh broke its 175-year-old temperature record on 27th June with the heat reaching 30.4 celsius.

Climate change is hitting hard and farmers and vulnerable people are struggling. The Church of Ireland offered prayers for the farming community, but is that it?

Ireland has one of the worst environmental records in Europe (Irish Times 1st August), so where is the call from the House of Bishops for governments, both north and south, to accelerate the response to climate change, reduce pollution and prevent environmental degradation?

As Bishop N.T. Wright said, “God is the Creator God, he doesn’t want to say, ‘Okay, creation was very go…

The Catholic Bishops' Conference has announced that the Catholic Church is to divest from fossil fuels. This is the second major church in Ireland to announce full divestment following the decision by the Church of Ireland to divest at its General Synod in 2018.

The decisions by the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland put further pressure on the other mainline churches in Ireland to also divest from polluting fossil fuels.
The Bishops' Conference spokesperson said, “Today, on the eve of Pope Francis’ historic visit to Ireland, I wish to announce the decision of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference to divest from fossil fuels. The Bishops’ Conference has signed the global Catholic fossil free pledge and today begins the process of divesting its resources from all fossil fuels. In doing so, we are responding directly to Pope Francis’ call in his 2015 encyclical letter Laudato Sí (on care for our common home) by moving away from fossil fuels “without delay” (paragrap…

An excellent article on church divestment in the Financial Times today. The Church of Ireland's decision to divest at this year's general synod gets a mention.

"We have to do something about it when we have the evidence [that global warming is happening]. And our investment portfolios have to reflect that,"

New Wine Ireland is a Christian conference that takes place in Sligo each year. It aims to help local churches change nations.

I spoke at a seminar this year along with David Ritchie, the Chief Executive of the Church of Ireland's Representative Church Body. The seminar was on how local churches can help care for God's creation. The audio of the seminar is available from New Wine Ireland but I have put the text of my talk and a video of the slides below. The Church of Ireland also released a press article giving a summary of the seminar.


It's time to Care for Creation
Introduction Today David and I are going to give you two short and complementary perspectives on God’s creation and the actions we can take in response to environmental issues. Then we’ll take questions and hear what you have to say.

I’m going to cover three points:
A call to careA call to act, and Time to Take action So first,

[Slide 1] A call to care Conferences like New Wine are great at stirring us up an…

The Church of England got its act together at General Synod and voted to divest from oil and gas companies that do not align to the Paris Agreement goals. This is a significant step forward and a great success for the Operation Noah Bright Now campaign.

Some great coverage from the press, including this article from Bloomberg,

And an excellent comment piece in the Telegraph from Rowan Williams.

On Sunday 8 July 2018 the Church of England General Synod will vote on whether to divest from oil and gas companies not unequivocally aligned to the Paris Agreement goals of keeping global warming below 2C. This would be a historic vote and would echo the Church of Ireland commitment at its 2018 General Synod to divest from all fossil fuel producers by 2022.

The Church of England is a powerful voice in institutional investments. It has led strongly in collaborative engagement in recent years. A successful amendment vote on Sunday at General Synod would send one of the strongest signals to fossil fuel companies that the time for serious action has arrived.

Oil majors have been tripping over themselves with green announcements recently. Shell, ENI and Equinor have promised to reduce production emissions and to transform themselves into ‘energy companies’ rather than oil and gas companies. These announcements are welcome, but the Paris Agreement goals require a rapid reduction fossil fu…