I felt a little like the Grinch stealing hope when I expressed my doubts about the COP25 international climate conference a couple of weeks ago. I questioned the value of bringing together thousands of people for a carbon-costly event at which resolutions are passed without binding agreement and action plans. I wondered as well about the parallel events for NGOs and faith groups, given the propensity for inaction in the bigger picture.
Unfortunately the two weeks of COP25, plus a couple of frustrating days of extension as leaders attempted to hammer out an agreement on concrete goals turned out to be a step back rather than forward as some of the biggest polluter nations, including the United States, stonewalled.
To make matters worse, fossil fuel corporations were present and allowed a forum while groups of Indigenous peoples and young people were literally shown the door when they showed up to protest. It's hard to imagine how these Grinches were allowed to have a green-washing voice when in truth they were leaving a lump of coal and a bucket of crude.
We can be grateful to those who spoke truth to power, even though doing so must have been disheartening. given the outcome of COP25. On December 8th there was a worship service at which
Rev. James Bhagwan, General Secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches, was a preacher. He asked "How long before the world recognizes that we have broken the covenants?" His message reflected the urgency of climate action for the Pacific region, where islands are already disappearing beneath rising sea levels, and these islands represent people's homes, but also their traditional land, and the seat of their culture and history.
A panel followed and here are some of the observations, including one from a United Church of Canada representative.
"If we want to declare a climate emergency, it is for us to define how we change what we believe, how we act, to find a balance that allows us to work together as a human population on this earth, and how we can be in balance with everything around us in creation." Rev. Tony Snow, United Church of Canada.
"We must all have the opportunity to make a change, as a society, that we all unite with the same cause, because we all want to live in a fair, dignified, and clean world." Sebastian Ignacio Munoz Oyarzo, Lutheran World Federation
"The language that we use, how we talk about who God is, these are all important issues of how we tackle climate change... We always talk about the earth as 'Mother Earth'. When the earth is feminine, that is why it is so easy to dominate the earth as we have dominated women for all of our human history." Grace Ji-sun Kim, Earlham School of Religion
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