This week a major new report on climate change from Christian Aid hit headlines with its call to wealthy governments to take their share of the responsibility in helping developing countries adjust to the often devastating impact of climate change.
The release of the report, ‘The Climate of Poverty: Facts, Fears and Hope’, coincided with a major gathering on climate change which took place in Bonn this week.The report called on the UK government to put together a ‘carbon budget’ to outline how the government will reduce emissions year by year by two thirds of 1990 levels by 2050.
It also urged the UK government to lead rich countries in putting forward new financial support to developing countries, as part of compensation for the damage inflicted on the environment, and to establish and fund programmes that would bring renewable energy to poor countries.
Christian Today met one of the authors of the hard-hitting report, Christian Aid’s John McGhie, to find out more about progress on climate change, the role of government and what churches and Christians can do to help.
CT: The climate change talks in Bonn this week were denounced as nothing more than a talk shop. Would you agree with that?
JM: Yes, they looked to be like they were a little bit of a shambles, that’s what it looks like from over here. Yeah, it was, how can it be anything else?
CT: Do you think international level apparatus tends to get in the way of something that should be really quite simple?We hope one of the things our report will do is to galvanise people, Christians and the wider community to think they can do something themselves.
John McGhie, Christian Aid
JM: The simplest things often have the most complex implications and therefore the most complex answers and responses. And climate change is one of them. It is very, very obvious what to do about it, reduce the emissions now, now, from the very word go. But that is very hard to do because of the huge ramifications in terms of the industrialisation in the rich world, the developing world. We tend to say though, because we are a development agency, it is not new to look at climate change but new to take it in quite so mainstream way, this is a very major focus. So we say the time for shilly-shallying is gone. You can’t really mess about.
CT: What would you say to sceptics? Sceptics say there is no global warming so it’s a waste of talk and waste of investment.
