You represent a sizeable voice. Do you feel governments don't take Tearfund and organisations like Tearfund seriously with what they are saying on the issue of climate change?
I think so and I think that you often get a very supportive message coming back. They are saying 'Without further action carbon emissions are going to rapidly increase'; 'There is action we can take now'. Well that's great but what are we actually going to do. I guess it's not a new problem in a sense as in all the other issues that we campaign on we face similar issues; whether it's been debt or aid it's very similar. And I guess we just have to learn from these experiences and keep going. Sometimes it does feel you are repeating the same message again and again but you just have to do it.
Tearfund's call is for more urgent action to be taken now. How realistic is it, with all the different countries and all the different agendas, that multilateral action on a global scale can be put into place on this?
After summits like this one you question that. But I think what we are seeing with climate change, it feels we have been saying this for a long time and it's just the same message coming out, but I do think momentum is growing on the issue. Whether it's, for example, through the formation of Stop Climate Chaos which is also part of the Up in Smoke coalition, which has produced reports, and we are seeing that kind of model of environmental organisations and NGOs together being replicated in other countries. Even in developing countries, in Bangladesh a similar coalition is being established.
In Australia on Monday they are releasing a report looking at the impact climate change in the Pacific.
We are certainly getting the impression that momentum is coming within the churches, among Christians, recognising the need to get behind the climate change campaigning. And we are hearing similar voices in America. So it does feel momentum is growing and certainly as we lead into this climate change conference in November, whilst there is perhaps no specific decision they are going to make, there is definitely a lot more interest in it and a lot more people are going to go. And we just hope that momentum will keep growing and the increase in press coverage will keep growing. And all of that and the economics will create the momentum. At the end of the day, we hope that that overwhelming support and actually highlighting the issue will lead to the necessary action being taken.
This week just shows we have just go to keep being persistent and it might take a while and unfortunately as more and more people get affected that will have to make more people stop and think.
Dudley Coates, the Vice President of the Methodist Conference, said recently that he didn't think churches were doing enough to get behind the climate change issue. Is that how you feel as well?
We certainly feel there is a lot more we could be doing and a lot more Christians who need to find out more about the issue and be a lot more informed. But I think that it is certainly growing, certainly the interest and involvement. But certainly something Tearfund is trying to do is produce resources for churches whether it is campaigning resources or guides that give people their own practical things that they can do. So it is certainly something that we are trying to promote.
