with Rev Dr Chris Walker
For the Sake of the Planet
In my last blog I wrote about the Break Free Protest in Newcastle against coal mining and climate change that my wife and I took part in. Now I want highlight the main causes of climate change, loss of animal and plant diversity, and the impact of the human population. These come down to the fossil fuel industry as the main contributor to climate change, land clearing and hence loss of habitat for animals and plants, and the huge increase in human population over the past century. A related contributor is warfare, which devastates the environment as well as causing human death and suffering, and the willingness to spend on the military instead of on health, education, the environment and seeking to overcome the inequalities that lead to conflict.
The fossil fuel industry is the major contributor to global warming. We keep sending massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. The accepted science is that we need to keep the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to below 350 parts per million to ensure the planet is liveable. It recently passed 400ppm at the Cape Grim monitoring station in Tasmania. Last year journalists at the Los Angeles Times and the environmental news non-profit website Inside Climate News revealed that in-house scientists at Exxon (now Exxon Mobil, the world’s biggest oil and gas company) had known since the late 1970s that burning fossil fuels was contributing to global warming. But to protect its financial interests, Exxon did everything it could to discredit and cover up that science over the next decades. There are still politicians who say the science is not conclusive because of this kind of misinformation.
The coal industry is known to be a dirty form of energy yet we keep using it. The state governments in New South Wales and Queensland want to allow further coal mines. The proposed Carmichael mine in Queensland will have a direct negative impact on the Great Barrier Reef whose health is already in dire need. Short term gain overrules long term benefit. The renewable energy sector is growing and needs to replace fossil fuel sources of energy which should be phased out not expanded. The future is renewable energy which will provide new jobs, yet governments continue to advantage fossil fuel companies. Since the last federal election in 2013 the fossil fuel industry has donated more than $3.7 million to Australia’s major political parties.
A recent revelation came from Bill McKibben, an American author and environmentalist. He founded the climate change organisation 350.org in 2008. It mobilises mass public actions across the world having grown from a small group he gathered at Middlebury College where he teaches. It led to him becoming an international activist. He has written a number of books starting in 1989 with The End of Nature. He came to recognise that spreading the news of the science alone would not change the path we are on. He began piecing the evidence together showing that the lack of action is a direct result of the concentration of power in the hands of the few and the greedy. In a recent article he debunks the long-held view that natural gas is a cleaner alternative to coal and oil since burning it releases much less carbon dioxide. However, research now shows that fracking operations leak methane in massive quantities which is worse than carbon dioxide. Fracking not only pollutes water sources and land, it does more climate damage than coal. One way of responding is to divest from companies involved in fossil fuel extraction. I am pleased to be able to say that the Uniting Church has done so.
We are causing the extinction of plants and animals at an unprecedented rate due mainly to loss of habitat. A major reason for this is indiscriminate land-clearing especially in areas with unique eco-systems. The governments in New South Wales and Queensland put in place legislation to curb this which significantly slowed down the impact on rare plants and animals. Now they have gone back on those agreements. Queensland has seen massive land clearing as a result and New South Wales is soon to follow suit it seems. While this does not get the headlines, Australia has one of the worst records of extinction of plants and animals. Human ego-centricity fails to appreciate the intrinsic value of other species. We are also denying ourselves the interesting and potentially even valuable bio-diversity that our unique continent has developed. We may decry what is happening to the Brazilian and Indonesian rain forests but we are having a similar negative impact on bio-diversity in our country.
The human population has seen a huge increase in the past hundred years. In 1900 the population was 1.5 billion; in 2014 it was over 7 billion. The pre-modern period had a long period of slow growth. There were only 265 million people in 1000. The world’s population is projected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050 before declining. The capacity of humans to exploit and alter the environment has greatly increased since the industrial revolution. The growth of the population has also been accompanied by an increase in urbanisation. In 1950 30% of the world’s population lived in cities, 746 million; in 2014 it was 54%, 3.9 billion people, and is projected to be 66% in 2050. In 1990 there were 10 mega-cities of over 10 million; by 2014 it was 28 cities. This massive increase in the world’s population impacts on the environment especially with the development of technology and machinery, such as by the fossil fuel industry. Exploiting the earth’s resources for this rapidly increasing number of human consumers is hugely profitable. For affluent Western people the expectation is for ever increasing economic growth and wealth. Living simply and sustainably is a goal that we should be pursuing instead. It certainly fits my Christian convictions.
For the sake of the planet, which is the title of a Uniting Church statement, we need to move from fossil fuel sources of energy to renewable energy. We should be able to appreciate the intrinsic value of other species of animals and plants as well as recognise that biodiversity is both interesting and potentially valuable for our own well-being in the future. Our population will increase and I am not suggesting anything like the former one child policy in China. The best way to reduce family size is to provide education for women and health care such that people will not want to have large families. Spending should be increased on education and health especially in poorer nations for the sake of the people and the long term good of the planet.
Chris Walker
(National Consultant Christian Unity, Doctrine & Worship)