According to ABC Online, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has turned to the Church in its campaign to halt climate change.
The ACF has formed an alliance with the National Council of Churches to encourage Christians to write to, or visit, their Federal MP to lobby for a re-think on water and energy use.
Reverend John Henderson, the general secretary of the National Council of Churches, says Christians have a moral obligation to help fight climate change:
“These are basic issues through the teachings of the New Testament and the Old Testament,” he said.
“This is not new to us. I mean the Christian Church comes out of a long community, in fact it comes out of more than 2,000 years of community life where people have learnt to live with the world in which they are placed.”
While the ACF and mainstream Christian Churches are, in my view, both essentially faith-based institutions, how much of their base philosophy is compatible when it comes to the environment and how it should/might be managed/not managed? For example, while the ACF generally advocates a “hands off” approach to nature i.e. exclude people from the landscape and don’t manage it, in the bible Noah took a “hands on” approach i.e. built the ark to save the animals.
What do you think?
One of my definitions of sustainability has been salvation in the church of the environment.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.