Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Creation Care, & Climate Politics


                                                   Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault 

This Groundling blog is my opportunity to celebrate God the Creator and the extraordinary diversity and beauty of Creation. As the name suggests, our scriptural witness says that we are adamah, formed of the soil, rather than disembodied spiritual beings. And our Christian story affirms that the Creation God proclaimed is good, and very good, and is redeemed through the Incarnation, literally God-in-the-flesh.

All this means that the Creator is imbued in every aspect of our humanity and therefore must be reflected in our discipleship, our willingness to cherish and steward the Earth, Turtle Island, in practical and political ways. 

Today the Canadian government will share how it will fulfill the Net Zero Emission Accountablity Act  which it passed in June 2021. Since then we have a new Environment Minister, Steven Guilbeault, who was an environmental activist in a previous life. Will that passion make a difference? The Liberals have made plenty of virtue-signalling commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the past six years and essentially missed every target by a wide margin. It's easy to be cynical about their commitment to address the Climate Emergency which is at a tipping point.

I want to be a hopeful person because hope is at the heart of our Christian faith. I would get down on my knees and touch the earth to pray for what will unfold in this plan, but the ground is frozen and arthritis makes it a challenge to get back on my feet again. I will pray, just the same, and I will make a prayerful commitment to dig past the rhetoric to the substance of what Minister Guilbeault shares with us. I ask that you do the same. 

This quote from Katharine Hayhoe, a Canadian teaching climate science in Texas, and a Christian who is passionate about Creation Care, says it well. 




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