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Here is a short speech I gave at Church of Ireland General Synod 2019. I'll write up a longer blog post on my impressions of Synod and what happened at the Climate of Hope fringe event soon. -- I believe that the church needs to raise its voice in response to the climate crisis.  You have seen the protests in the news – in March this year 1.5 million children took to the streets in the School Strike movement crying out for change. Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old leader of the climate movement, said last month in the House of Parliament, "We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back." As a church, we need to Act Now and respond to this crisis. We need to have a clear message and mission for the age of climate breakdown. I am pleased to see the emphasis the Council of Mission h

Speech to General Synod on 17 May 2019, I’d like to draw Synod’s attention to the investment performance in 2018 on pages 30 and 31. It was a difficult year but the RCB investment committee and staff must be thanked for their superb work on behalf of the church. The returns from invested funds help to support the mission and ministry of the church. This reminds me that last year synod passed a motion to fully divest from all fossil fuels by 2022. Actually, following that successful motion, a member of our Diocesan Council asked me how he could ethically invest his retirement lump sum. I told him that his investment manager could exclude unethical investments like fossil fuels. Six months later, he told me his investment manager had looked into it the options and was himself surprised to find out that green investment packages had performed better than traditional ones. He was going to recommend to other clients that they too should exclude fossil fuels. New evidence produced b