climatechange

An affordable net zero house retrofit

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Headlines such as “Average cost for net zero retrofit almost £70k” make the task of CO2 reduction seem daunting or unaffordable.  It doesn’t have to be that way.  I describe affordable and available technologies that allowed me to make my home carbon neutral for around £10k, verified by detailed energy measurements over several years.  The solutions also make living through increasingly frequent heat waves bearable and even comfortable. 

Conventional wisdom and solutions suggest that cutting emissions is a hobby for the wealthy. Technological solutions are too expensive for the majority of householders. This is not true.

‘Conventional’ solutions are simply too expensive for individuals or the country to afford, but there is a better way.

The chart below shows that if we count electricity from a renewable energy supply as zero emissions then we are better than net zero. If we count the carbon intensity of electricity at grid average then we have reduced our CO2 by 80%.

A quick win is to replace all lights by LED.

We installed solar panels without a battery early on, and the conservatory also captures solar energy (not included in the £10k as it was built for the space rather than energy reduction).

By far the biggest part of the energy footprint of a house is the heating. We need to minimise the energy in. We can do this by minimising the heat out and by optimising the efficiency of the heat generator (conventionally a boiler).

Lots of companies offer ‘wonder solutions’ online, but don’t be caught out by scams such as these:

Professionals have been ‘duped’ by rogue products such as the one below whose claims broke the first law of thermodynamics.

External wall insulation is just too expensive! Cavity wall insulation is great, and affordable, but a better solution is needed for solid walls. Physics tells us that there are decreasing returns from increasing the thickness of insulation. Just 20mm can be very effective.

Underfloor insulation is cheap from a material point of view, but disruptive and labour intensive. We needed to replace our joists and floorboards anyway so it was a cheap and obvious improvement. We tried two different insulation approaches – the solid insulation board was simplest and is the way I’d do it again.

The biggest benefit from double or triple glazing is the poor heat transfer between air and the surface of the glass, rather than the insulating property of glass or the air gap. We achieved this by a simple improvement to the original door glass and windows.

Curtains also reduce heat loss by the same mechanism. The thickness of the curtain material is less important than simply preventing the air passing from one side to another. The following temperature measurements either side of the curtain show the benefit when they are closed.

The biggest benefit in energy saving can come from choosing the best heat generator. The traditional approach is to use a gas boiler:

In contrast to converting chemical energy in the boiler to heat, a heat pump uses electrical energy to pump heat from the cold outside to the warm inside using the same thermodynamic process that cools the fridge and freezer in our kitchens.

Government promoted air to water heat pumps have a LOT of disadvantages, and will probably cost a little more to run than a gas boiler. No wonder they are not taking off!

A far better alternative is a traditional air conditioning unit, which is an air to air heat pump – warming the air in the house directly and efficiently. It can be installed without touching the existing boiler and radiator system, which can be retained as a back-up.

If you have nowhere to fit the outside unit of the heat pump, there are self contained units available that might solve the problem. They are slightly less efficient but are worth considering.

Don’t be misled by people who say heat pumps don’t work in cold weather. They do – although they will pump slightly less heat than in warm weather.

With any heating system, you will reach a point where you can’t get enough heat into the house to maintain the temperature.

We fitted a DEFRA wood burning stove, and use waste wood that we season as fuel. This is carbon neutral as the wood would rot and give off it’s CO2 anyway.

Energy measurements show that for the same heating demand (average outside temperature) the heat pump saves a large proportion of our energy – even when it is very cold. The total energy below includes heating, water heating, cooking, washing, TV etc. i.e. everything!

From the average daily gas and electricity use before and after the heat pump we can work out how much we have saved by fitting the air to air heat pump:

When buying a heat pump, it’s important to get the most efficient model. The cost difference will quickly pay back in energy savings, and the CO2 saving will be biggest.

Just a reminder of what can be done:

Housing is only a proportion of our CO2 footprint. The data below allows us to consider the benefit of changes to our life choices.

It’s a stark fact that those who are suffering most from our high CO2 production are those who produce least themselves and who are least able to bear the consequences. My wife and I run a small charity that sends funds to help some of the most vulnerable in Mozambique. A simple breeze block house can be life-changing, but will only cost around £1300. If you would like to join us in helping those in greatest need, or if you have simply found this helpful then please donate to the account below.

The secret heat pump that doesn’t cost the earth

/ Minimalist Christian / 4 Comments

There is a lot of noise about air source heat pumps at the moment, and in particular air to water heat pumps that replace the gas boiler in your house and feed the radiators. Heat pumps are extremely energy efficient, because instead of generating heat (from gas or electricity) they pump heat from outside a building to the inside. They might pump 3 – 4kW of heat for every 1kW of electricity that they use.  But systems that replace your gas boiler are costly, according to the Energy Saving Trust “Typical costs are around £7,000 to £13,000” https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/advice/air-to-water-heat-pumps/

An air to water heat pump system typically heats the water to 50 degrees C. This is lower than a normal central heating boiler, and so you might need bigger radiators for the system to provide enough heat to each room, or expensive additional insulation to reduce the heat demand. Air to water heat pump systems need space for the internal plant, and installation will take days and be very intrusive. This is probably why the government has little take up of the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.

There is an alternative to these expensive air to water heat pumps, namely air to air heat pumps – commonly called air conditioning units.

In an air to air system, instead of the heat pump being used to heat the water for your central heating radiators, it heats the air directly in a fan unit inside the house – hence the term “air to air”.  In effect, it is an extremely efficient fan heater. Air to air heat pumps are better known as air conditioning units because they have the additional advantage of being able to provide cooling in summer, making life bearable when outside temperatures are 40+ degrees.

We live in a typical 1930s 3 bedroom semi-detatched house with solid walls. We paid around £1500 for a 4kW air conditioning unit. It was installed in less than a day and sited in the hallway it provides heat to all the rooms in the house.  There is none of the ‘plant’ associated with air-to-water heat pump systems and so no loss of space.   Because the unit pumps heat, it only takes 1kW of electricity to provide 4kW heat – the most efficient heating technology on the market.

These pictures show the internal and external units.

We have been delighted with the performance.  The heat from the hall dissipates throughout the house through open doorways (both upstairs and downstairs), and we can avoid heating rooms that we don’t use simply by closing the doors. 

We have retained our gas boiler to heat our water, but have removed several radiators. We have kept a few as backup but have not had to use them. We have a wood burning stove to lift the living room temperature in the evenings and provide supplementary heat in the very coldest weather. Our only ‘regret’ is that we didn’t fit a slightly bigger unit, which would be better when temperature outside reached -5 to -7 degrees.

The chart below shows how much our energy consumption has changed as a result of the heat pump. Combined with our solar panels and renewable electricity supply, our house is now net zero.

In summary, there is a readily available, low cost, low disruption, extremely high efficiency heat pump available which you can install straight away without having to make your radiators bigger or spend thousands on insulation, and which will also provide cooling in summer.

So why haven’t we heard of this before? I don’t know – but you are in on the secret now.

Living with Hope in the Climate Tragedy

/ Minimalist Christian / 4 Comments

There are different phases as a tragedy unfolds.  Perhaps like when someone is diagnosed with terminal disease.

First of all, there is ignorance – the problem is not known about.  The tragedy is ‘undercover’ and waiting to unfold.

Then there is awareness – maybe a doctor’s diagnosis, or a smoke alarm going off in the middle of the night

Then there is anguish – the understanding of what is to come suddenly becomes real, and heart wrenching.

  • Reading up on the illness
  • Realising that flames have taken hold
  • First picture of the invasion of Ukraine
  • Seeing an ancient woodland being torn up for HS2, or the Amazon being burned down for cattle farming
  • The disciples seeing Jesus arrested, tied up and carried off by the mob

We are desperate to do something, we want the tragedy to stop and do all we can to prevent it.  Even if what we do will make no difference, we need to do it – mopping someone’s brow, sitting by their bedside.  Throwing buckets of water on the flames.  Striking off an ear.

We get frustrated and angry with others who get in the way – holding us back from putting out the flames.  Setting regulations preventing us from even seeing our child suffering in hospital, let alone hugging them tightly.

The anguish grows the more we care.  If we hear of a distant acquaintance getting cancer we might say ‘ah well, that’s sad’, but if it’s our child, or our spouse it is like a kick in the stomach.

The anguish gnaws our heart and becomes almost unbearable.

And when we are in the middle of a crisis and we realise there is no hope, anguish turns to despair:

No matter what we do, Russian troops are still pounding Ukrainian cities with artillery.  No matter what we do, the cancer is spreading.  And Jesus is bound, beaten, and nailed to a cross – and we are helpless to do anything.  But we continue to try. And we cry out in despair, even though hope is gone.

And then it is finished.  Grief takes hold as we look on the result – the dead child, the burnt house, the destroyed city, the body taken down from the cross.

The mourning for what was, for what has been lost, for what could have been.

The feeling of purposelessness – what is the point of anything anymore?  Why bother?

Hope has gone.

We are in a global climate tragedy.  Humanity is destroying life on this planet. We are condemning future generations to extreme climate and weather events, to suffering, to rising sea levels, maybe to extinction.

It’s actually a multitude of mini tragedies.  Each goes through the same stages, but they are relentless. At the grieving stage of one, another is waiting.  And they combine into one big tragedy.

In the past few of years I have become more and more aware of the desperate situation that the world is in.  The relentless rise in CO2 and average temperature.  The worsening climate disasters and weather events.  The melting of glaciers, Greenland ice and the poles.  The extinctions, and destruction of life.

That took me deep into the anguish phase – prompting me to do what I can!

My wife and I have invested our money and made changes in our lifestyle to radically reduce our CO2 footprint – almost meat free diet, using the train instead of flying, insulating our house, fitting solar panels and a heat pump – our house is now carbon neutral! 

I invest a lot of time and energy trying to put the message across to others, researching the facts and trying to put them into simple terms.  There is some encouragement when we see others doing the same, and when we see vegan burgers that taste like meat, plant-based butter, and other replacements for meat produce.

But people still don’t realise the scale of change needed, or the urgency: 

According to a poll carried out in G20 countries the vast majority – 83% – said they wanted to do more to protect and restore nature. However, when asked what actions they would take, they prioritised increasing recycling and avoiding excess packaging. ‘Higher impact changes like diet change and flying less are consistently bottom of their list,’ said Sophie Thompson, part of the Ipsos MORI team that carried out the survey.”

I can see that the technology is available, but action is too slow.  The world still wants to follow the rules of financial justification.  And poor countries rightly want to experience the same quality of life that rich countries do, and so don’t want to sign up to CO2 targets.   Time is running out – it has already run out for several mini-tragedies, but there is little sense of urgency. 

The steady stream of cars and trucks, the rush to book flights after covid, the meat-fest menus, people buying multi-packs of plastic bottled water, the waste …. You can’t get away from it, the relentless ‘in your face’ inaction that says, “I don’t care”, but that I realise may simply be “I don’t know”.

I moved beyond anguish to despair.  And sometimes I have felt I need to give up completely; get a log cabin on the coast in Northumberland and watch the sea.

And then I realised that whatever I do, much more climate change will happen.  Even with all the current government pledges, global temperatures will continue to increase.  And to imagine that our institutions will honour climate commitments, or that individuals will change enough to prevent further deterioration is to delude ourselves.  But also, for the majority world to be dragged out of poverty to share the lifestyle that I have enjoyed since I was born will need increased carbon emissions.  Population will grow as better sanitation, medicine and housing allows people to live longer – consuming more energy through their lifetime.  Reading the signs shows that CO2 emissions will rise further, and global warming will go beyond 2 towards 3 degrees – or higher!  It’s going to happen and nothing I can do will stop it.

And I entered the grief phase.  Do we ever leave that phase?  We recognise what is lost, or what is destined to be lost and it saddens us deeply.  Accepting the loss, the grief means the intensity of feeling fades.  The loss is still there, and we are no longer frustrated and angry at our helplessness.  And we are changed. 

And where is God in this?

“Father, in our despair, in our grief, bring us hope.  Show us the hope we can bring to others.  Tell us what you want us to do.  And give us the courage we need to act.  Amen”

God’s hope comes from where it has always come – but we have forgotten it.

There is nothing I can do that will prevent climate change.

There is nothing I can do that will prevent the powerful having their way.

There is nothing I can do that will make the world good.

These are things that are beyond the power of the individual.  It has always been so, and in a world where many choose selfishness over goodness it will always be so. 

My individual goodness does not make the world good.  The omnipresence of the spirit of goodness acting in all individuals could make things good, if each individual were to respond.  We can see this – if only everyone was good, then the world would be a good place; it would be heaven!  And it is because ‘they’ are not good (we are not either!) we find ourselves responding with anger and frustration and are tempted to despair.  

In the battle for good to prevail we have a great ally in ‘The Law’.   Laws, enforced by appointed guardians, codify what we understand to be good.  The law limits the power of the selfish, those who don’t respond to the spirit of goodness.  The law tries to teach what is good behaviour – but the law is made by human hands trying to define goodness.  Human hands can be wrong.  Human hands can corrupt the law.  And so the law does not reach goodness.  Although we say that nobody is above the law, the law is not above goodness.  We cannot be fully good by following the law.

The law is a powerful tool towards preventing climate change, and towards preventing the powerful having their way.  It is good and necessary to have good laws, but those who have the power to make the law are also those who have personal interests to serve, and so they do not always make good laws.  And people do not always keep the law.

So where is hope?

Christian hope comes from the power of the spirit of God; from a bigger picture that we have forgotten. People in the past understood that there was a life to come, that this world is not all there is.  The bigger picture is that we are offered everlasting life, against which this world fades into nothing.  Everlasting life in a new world where everyone chooses to be and is truly good, in the presence of the spirit of goodness and love.

My wife Cathy writes that:

“humanity has always been up to its chest in its own mire, mistakes, and sin. Because we live relatively fulfilled lives, we can forget that most people did, and still do, endure lives of fear, pain, hunger, death, and drudgery. Consider the slums of Victorian England, the lives of medieval peasants, the wars and diseases that have stained our history. It has always been thus. The Bible shows that this is the story of humanity: drowned in our self-inflicted suffering, with no hope that we can rescue ourselves, but that somehow, beyond anything that we can possibly understand, God has intervened to initiate a great rescue plan. That at some point, the mess will be tidied up and ‘every tear will be dried’.”

Many passages in the Bible describe this hope:

‘Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’

He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’

He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.  Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.

And from the apostle Peter:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.  In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory, and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.  Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Cathy continues

“I find hope in the belief that every person is unique, loved, precious.  That every person has something incredibly valuable to offer to others, whether teaching, engineering, dancing, poetry, cooking, listening, encouraging, smiling, gardening… and that God wants everyone to have the chance to grow into their own potential.  So, as part of His rescue plan, the child that drowns in Pakistan will – somehow – be restored, healed, and given the chance to become its full self.

Furthermore, I think that the earth itself, and all that lives on it, is also valued and precious to God.  That the koala bears that died in the fires in Australia, the glaciers that have disappeared, the animals hunted to extinction, the trees killed by drought, the hedges uprooted, may also be restored.

But this isn’t a ‘pie in the sky’ hope that gives me an excuse to do nothing now. I believe that I am called to take part in this great plan, and that my actions; not flying abroad but taking the train, moving to a more plant based diet, donating to charities to help feed the poor or plant trees, turning down my heating thermostat, biking more; are part of a great unnoticed movement of rescue.

I think and hope that the kingdom of heaven, a kingdom of fairness and wisdom, will be established in a restored, peaceful, green earth; bursting with life and enjoyed by loved, healed and beautiful people living their lives to the full.  And I believe that my efforts towards that are not wasted.”

So there is hope in the future, and purpose in what we do now.  But in the now there is more than just duty and hope for the future. We can and need to find happiness, peace, and joy. I have found some secrets to this in a short book called ‘Finding Happiness’ by Abbot Christopher Jamison.  And even if we do not accept the Christian hope we can benefit from the wisdom of the ancients.

Considering the ideas of the philosopher Plato, he describes that “contemplation of the good and the beautiful is Platonic happiness”.  Taking time to really observe and to absorb into ones immediate being that which is good and beautiful draws out joy and wonder.  A form of worship is appreciating the beauty of an ever-changing landscape, the journey of a piece of music, the wholeness of a novel.  Goodness and beauty contemplated in every diverse opportunity, fought for against the pressures of the rush of daily life, brings peace, joy, and happiness.

This is what the Apostle Paul said too, ‘brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.’

Abbot Christopher also tells us that “Happiness for Aristotle is ‘the activity of the soul expressing virtue’.  So in essence where Plato sees happiness as contemplation, Aristotle sees happiness as living virtuously.”  The call to action that Cathy described is thus not just a call of duty, but a call to happiness.  Living virtuously brings happiness. It will take courage, and effort, and perseverance.  It will test our reserves and frustrate us.  But as we persist in scrupulously examining our actions and our motives and seeking to live virtuously then we will begin and grow happiness in our lives.

Again, Paul wrote “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  Doing good deeds is part to becoming who we are.

We are not responsible for anyone’s behaviour but our own. That’s why the world is in the state it is – many choose the selfish path to death.  And as a consequence, we will experience global warming way beyond where it is today.  It is a tragedy, but it is the same tragedy that has been unfolding since the world began – the tragedy that many choose the path of selfishness.  But let us choose to be a people of hope.

Our role in tackling climate change

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Tackling climate change is not just the job of government.  We all have to do our bit. We all have to change our habits, particularly today when renewable energy is insufficient to meet demand and when demand is growing.

Demand is us.  Growth in demand is us.

Yes, government can offer grants and subsidies for insulation, for improved heating and for solar panels but we have to take up those offers.  And this is one area where the government can and should do more, with pubic information advertising.  We need a culture change.

We need to choose low energy foods, locally sources, less meat, less waste.

We need to think before we drive.  Every mile we drive causes global warming of ten square metres – is that an incentive to walk, or cycle, or take a train?

We need to think before we fly.  Do we really need to go half way round the planet on holiday?  Or to that meeting (I know one example of a business trip comprising a flight to Australia, a one hour meeting, a flight straight back.  And I was summoned to Brussels for a meeting but was bumped off the agenda).  Can we use the train instead, and make that part of the ‘adventure’?

Do we really need to wash our clothes so often, on such a high temperature? Do we really need to wash ourselves so often, on such a high temperature, for such long showers?

Do we really need to heat all of our houses for so long, to such a high temperature?

These are but a few examples.

There is so much that we can do without any detriment to our joy of life, but which will make such a difference.  But we need to accept low energy decisions as the ‘norm’. 

Why choose a renewable electricity tariff?

/ Minimalist Christian / 2 Comments

Can I really buy renewable electricity, or is the whole renewable tariff thing just a political stunt?

It is to an extent political, and it is to an extent how capitalism works. 

Starting with how the grid and distribution system works:

Imagine instead of electrons, the grid is a big water reservoir (the power pool).  It is essential that the amount of water in the reservoir stays constant. We are on the south side taking out water, so someone needs to put in water to cover what we take out.  We used to just buy water from the ‘pool’, but today we have to buy from someone who is putting water into the reservoir.  Say we agree with someone on the north side that they will put in what we use.  It’s clear that we won’t actually take out the water molecules that they put in.  In fact, if someone next to us is putting in water, we will probably actually take out their molecules.  But one molecule is the same as another and so it doesn’t make any difference.  The point is, we have made an agreement, outside of the reservoir, with someone who is putting water into it.  So we might choose a ‘renewable water’ provider (e.g. a rainwater collector) to put water into it, and then we claim that we are using renewable water – it is as if we had a direct pipe from them to us.

But, if we didn’t make that agreement with the rainwater collector, he would still put his rainwater into the reservoir!  So what’s the benefit of us making the agreement to buy electricity from him?

Well, he had to invest in his rainwater capture system, and he needs to know that he’s going to get his investment back.  If he doesn’t have a specific agreement for the water he captures then he will only be able to sell his water at the price anyone will pay – which may be close to zero!  So by choosing to buy ‘renewable water’ we would be allowing him to know that he can safely invest in his new plant and get his money back.

Buying from a renewable tariff is the mechanism whereby politics and capitalism invests in renewable energy.  And it seems to be working!  The proportion of wind and solar has grown dramatically, at the expense of coal.

(source https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-mix-quarter-and-fuel-source-gb)

So in practice, are we using renewable energy each time we switch on a light? 

No, not at all.  There would be a certain mix of generation producing the power that everyone else is using before we switch on our light.  That would already include all the renewable sources, and ‘carbon free’ nuclear.  Every extra kW that has to be generated would come from fossil fuel.  i.e. every time we switch on a light, the marginal generation will be the highest carbon producer!  Hence we should continue to minimise our usage, even on a renewable tariff. 

And it will be the same if we have solar panels and generate our own electricity – every kW that we don’t use will prevent someone else having to use fossil fuel generated electricity so we should still minimise our use.

As the amount of renewables increases though, we may get to the stage where there is no fossil fuel generation at all.  When we reach that point, we still need to balance the peaks and troughs of demand but with unpredictable renewable supply.  For that reason people are developing ways of storing the overproduced electricity (like if we fit panels, we might fit a battery to save the electricity generated when the sun shines for when we need it).   I recently did a bit of consultancy work for a company developing a compressed air energy storage project – a bit like pumped storage at Dinorwig but using compressed air pumped in to vast salt caverns underground. 

Another way to store the excess electricity is to convert it through electrolysis into hydrogen gas.  And gradually the expectation is that hydrogen will replace natural gas in the grid – hence some organisations who want to fit gas heating are buying ‘hydrogen ready’ equipment.  But to my mind, that will be a long way off, and since hydrolysis process is only around 60% efficient, gas must be less energy efficient that direct use of renewable electricity.

Carbon offsetting is again a mechanism whereby politics and capitalism can lead to the right projects going ahead.  The route is a bit indirect, and it can be an excuse to keep burning fossil fuels and so it should only be the last resort.

Hope this makes things clearer…

Plastic – part of the solution.

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The primary environmental crisis today is the accelerating effect of CO2 emissions on climate change and global warming.  To address this issue we need to put less CO2 into the atmosphere and we need to capture more carbon.

Plastic has a high carbon content and takes hundreds of years to biodegrade (a process that needs oxygen).  That is why we don’t like it – little bits of plastic are getting everywhere and littering the world for hundreds of years to come.

There are vast empty caverns underground where we have in the past and continue to extract coal for fueling our power needs.

So surely part of our solution is to capture all our waste plastic, and put it underground – in the mines where we have extracted the coal.  Having taken carbon out, we put carbon back.

This is potentially more powerful than recycling plastic, simply because recycling leaves the carbon that would have been used to make new plastic available for power production and CO2 emission.

It is also potentially more powerful than eliminating plastics and replacing with fast degrading packaging, particularly if the replacement packaging takes more energy to produce, or allows more product waste.

Finding a new use for disused coal mines could revitalize regions devastated (in the UK) by Thatcher.

We could use plastic recycling networks to gather the plastic, but we would need to public to fully engage with capturing their plastic and not allowing it to litter.  A start would be to compressing all our plastic sheet waste in plastic bottles.

Amazon Rain-forest Fires – are we being hypocritical?

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Pictures of the burning Amazon rain-forests are horrifying enough to bring despair.  Surely the world is doomed unless they stop!

Easy to say, isn’t it.  And I have found myself responding like that to the media attention.  But is that really the situation?   Is this just a smokescreen (no pun intended) to distract attention from deeper problems?  Let’s see if we can find the facts:

Carbon uptake in the Amazon is important.  The following article https://phys.org/news/2017-02-carbon-uptake-amazon-forests-region.html  points out that the carbon captured by the Amazon rainforests is equal to “four times the UK emissions for 2016”.  It is also equivalent to emissions in the region.  The nations of the Amazon are carbon neutral!

The  entire combined emissions from deforestation and fossil fuels  from the nations in the Amazon is only four times the emissions of the UK.   UK emissions are about 1% of global emissions. https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html .  China emissions account for 28% of global emissions.  The same site shows the emissions per person, with the top few being Saudi Arabia, USA, Australia and Canada at over 15 tonnes per person per year.  By contrast Brazil emits 2.17 tonnes per person.  France (with reference to comments from M Macron) emits twice that – and remember that France has a lot of nuclear power.

Clearly the countries of the Amazon are not the culprits in producing carbon emissions.  But consider why they are burning the forest.  They want to improve their standard of living, fulfilling a market ‘need’ for food.  And which capitalist country can argue with that?  Why do they want to improve their standard of living?  Because they are nowhere near the top. Brazil ranks 62 in the quality of life index. UK ranks 18th and USA 13th.  https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp

So the scale of the problem is small compared to the global emissions of the rest of the world, and the reason for the burning of the forests is to improve the standard of living of the population in the only way possible in the capitalist culture of the modern world.

And things have improved considerably in recent years.  Deforestation in the Amazon is roughly a third of what it was at the turn of the century: https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/deforestation_calculations.html  and is ‘reasonably’ stable at around 80% of the 1970 levels.  This is not to say it is not important, but that perhaps most of the damage has been done.

If we in the west value the contribution that the rain-forests make to the world then we should pay for it.  We should not be sanctioning, or even threatening to invade (which I saw suggested on one site).  We pay for oil, which we then use to produce CO2 for our comfort, so we should pay those who capture our carbon.

In fact, there are mechanisms in place if we are willing to put our money where our concerns are, then we can each do something to reduce deforestation.  Here is one example: https://www.carbonfootprint.com/brazil_para_redd.html. Why not commit to offset all your personal emissions in this way? And before you ask, yes, I have – my emissions for the last 35 years.

How should we respond to climate change? – A Christian perspective

/ Minimalist Christian / 1 Comment

The earth’s climate has seen dramatic change. Four and a half billion years ago, the earth was formed.  Its atmosphere had massively high levels of carbon dioxide, and there was very little oxygen.  Miraculously, life originated in this extremely hostile environment, and for the next one and a half billion years or so the cyanobacteria began cleaning up the atmosphere and enriching it with oxygen and allowing the formation of the protective ozone layer.

Over the next two billion years the beautifully designed process of evolution took those earliest forms of life and developed them into the staggering array of life that we take so readily for granted today.   Darwin hinted at the beauty of the process in the final paragraph of his book “the origin of species” when he wrote “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

So it is clear that man-made climate change will not destroy the planet, nor will it extinguish life.  But it will disrupt the extremely finely balanced ecosystem that sustains the human race.  That disruption will enlarge areas of local extinction of humans (desert regions), and in the extreme the whole planet could become unsuitable for human life.  Whilst wealthy countries are able to create local ‘microclimates’ with technology, for example air conditioning, people sentenced to live in the ‘natural’ local climate will inevitably suffer and may face extinction.  We already see an increase in suffering from natural disasters such as the cyclone Idai, and other increasingly destructive climactic events.

Greater parts of the world will become uninhabitable not just for humans, but for the cornucopia of other species who thrive in the environment that spawned us.  New species will emerge, but many of our present ‘friends’ will disappear.

The first book of the Bible describes how we were given the world to look after.  It is clear from the description above that if we don’t look after it then it will not be taken away from us, but we will be taken away from it.  This is reminiscent of the description of Adam and Eve being taken away from the Garden of Eden: the garden still thrives, but they were no longer in it.

God allows us to do things that harm us.  He doesn’t want us to, but he allows it.  Such action is called sin.  The basis of the Old Testament law was that God gave us rules that would bring us wellbeing, but our selfishness leads us to choose ways that harm ourselves and others.  Greed, lust, envy, and all the ‘sins’ damage both us and our neighbour.  Climate change is damaging to us and to our neighbour, and so the actions that leads to climate change are ‘sin’.  God permits us to damage the planet that sustains us, but it is not His will.  And disobeying the will of God is sin.  It is not good for us to do it!

There is not space here to fully discuss how we, through our actions are hurting God themselves, but we might empathise by imagining how we would feel if after giving a loved one a beautiful gift – perhaps a bunch of flowers,  we see them slowly trashing it, picking off one petal at a time.

So, how should we, as Christians, respond to the challenge of climate change?

First of all, we must recognise that it is real! (see for instance https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/)

Climate change is not the sin, but the consequence of our sin.  We need to reflect on what sins are the root cause of climate change.  Greed, selfishness, gluttony, envy will be high on our list, but a thorough examination of our lifestyle (in the context of and comparison with the other seven and a half billion people on the plant) must bring insight.

We then need to ‘repent of our sins and turn to God’.  There is surely enough evidence that we know that we are sinning, but we need to let the evidence sink into our hearts and truly convict us before we can honestly repent.  Until we reach that state then we might feel a little guilty but we will not have the power that comes from true repentance.  We need to be so convicted that we get on our knees, confess, and ask for forgiveness.

We must work with God to eliminate our sinful behaviour. We will need to be bold, counter-cultural and outrageously attractive in our approach.  We are Christ’s representatives, and our response has to mirror his character. And we must encourage our brothers and sisters to do the same.  Not only must we turn from our damaging practices, but we must do our utmost to relieve the suffering of those whose homes and livelihoods are ruined by the changing climate.  A radical change in our lifestyle must include loosening our grip on our wallets.

For example, we need to ask ourselves why we need to go to America, or China, or Australia for our holidays, for a speaking engagement, or for work.  99% of the world’s population cannot afford these luxuries – and yet many are closer to God than we are.  http://www.globalrichlist.com/

We have to challenge every decision of where we spend our money.  Should we always buy the cheapest, or should our buying decisions be made to minimise planetary damage?

We can make reparation for the damage caused by our personal sin.  We can ‘offset’ our carbon emissions, for example “Climate Stewards helps you to offset unavoidable carbon emissions by supporting community forestry, water filter and cookstove projects in the developing world”.  Some are beginning to do this for holidays or the odd long haul flight, but that is surely just lip-service.  Should we not examine our carbon emissions over our lifetime and offset them?  (see https://www.climatestewards.org/) At only £20 a tonne, many of us are in the privileged financial position to be able to do that.  There is real potential for tree planting projects to ‘buy some time’: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/planting-trees-could-buy-more-time-fight-climate-change-thought.  And churches can do the same, committing to offset past energy usage and adding carbon offset as a statutory spend each year.  It is much easier if we all make the commitment together.  Leadership from our Bishops can help here.

Those of us who live comfortably in brick houses in rural England can send financial assistance to those whose pole and dagga houses are swept away by floods or typhoon. (see https://www.christianaid.org.uk/emergencies/south-asia-floods-appeal)   As James says:  “Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, ‘Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well’—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?  So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.”  Communication is so good that we see our ‘brother or sister who has no food or clothing’ daily on our TV’s or computer screens.

We will of course fail to live up to our aspirations, but we can try. And when we fail, God’s grace will free us to try again.

And finally a thought about our legacy.  The younger generation are worried.  Environmental issues are at the top of their concerns.  And the younger generation tend not to know Christ.  We have a wonderful opportunity to bring them hope, both for a world to live in and from a God who loves them.  That is a far better legacy than bequeathing a scorching earth that is hardly able to sustain human life.

Let us be at the forefront of change, not dragging our feet but leading the way to a sustainable future.