Climate Change and Spirituality

I started thinking seriously about Climate Change 15 years ago. I had young children; my friends and I felt it was imperative to do something. We set up groups exchanging information about how to lower our emissions, we bought solar panels (with generous government grants), vowed we would fly only once a year, and try to avoid long haul altogether. Various books came out around then by local writers - notably, George Monbiot’s ‘Heat', and Chris Goodall’s ‘How to Live a Low Carbon Life’ (which I helped research). Both won prizes, both were slowly shunted out of sight in the book shops. My BBC radio play, The Kingnorth Six, and a Guardian blog about climate conscience also gradually fell out of favour. So now here we are - our teenagers are out on the streets, pleading for us to do something, urgently; I myself have joined amazingly joyful and creative XR demonstrations in London; our Government and scientists have declared an emergency. More and more people now feel the reality of major, devastating destruction of the ecosystem that sustains us. This series of podcasts is an attempt to face that reality - engaging the expertise of people who have being thinking about Climate Change for longer than I have, I want to investigate this ‘emergency’ as a spiritual one. In the deepest part of ourselves, what Christians call our souls, what is it that has brought us here, and how can we go forward?

The first episode was recorded in November 2019 with IPCC author and Professor of Geophysics at Oxford University, Myles Allen. He sets out the IPCC analysis of where we have come to over the past thirty years, and the huge effort necessary if we are to limit warming to a level where life on earth can continue. He refuses to despair and insists there are ambitious solutions ahead, especially in the hands of the younger generation whose task it has become to clean up our mess. 

Julia Hollander