'Love your neighbour' key to Christian climate change response

The teaching of Jesus to 'love your neighbour as yourself' underpins a Christian response to climate change, the Rev Prof Ian James, Oxford Diocesan Environment Advisor told Christians on Wednesday.

Speaking at the Christian Resources Exhibition, running in Esher in Surrey all this week, he reminded Christians that the lifestyle choices of people in Britain had consequences on people living in other parts of the world that could not be overlooked.

"We are in an inter-connected world. We can't say that we exist and that something else is independent. We are inter-dependent," he said.

"The church is the people, it's you and I, and it's what we do Monday to Friday as well as on Sunday. The effect that you and I have in daily living is as large as what happens in our church on Sunday morning."

Prof James, who teaches at the University of Reading, urged Christians to make the changes that put the Earth, and other people living on it, first.

"We regard ourselves as important and the rest of the world as expendable," he told Christians. "But we are called to give ourselves at the right time that they may have life - that is the principle we are called to live out in this world, not to say the world is an infinite resource that we can just exploit as we like," he told Christians.

Prof James pointed to the example of science, which regards two objects as neighbours not necessarily when they are next to one another, but rather when they have an affect on one another.

"Who is my neighbour?" he asked. "Neighbours extend throughout the world. We cannot say anyone or anything is not a neighbour."

He brushed aside climate change sceptics, pointing to evidence in warming temperatures, melting glaciers in mountain ranges in all parts of the world except New Zealand, rising sea levels, and increasingly frequent droughts, floods and storms.

"Climate change is at least as serious a problem to the human race as terrorism is," he warned.

Prof James said it was not enough to cut out one factor, such as eliminating the use of airplanes or four-by-fours: "We have to look at reductions right across the board."

He advised Christians to start calculating their carbon emissions to guide decisions on all areas of life, before challenging the audience on whether they would choose a family package holiday to Greece by airplane, which would produce 950kg of carbon emissions, or a family holiday by train to Cornwall, which would produce just 55kg.

"These are choices we have to make. Do we just thoughtlessly take the package holiday cos it's cheaper?" he asked. "We need as individuals and churches to get into the habit of auditing what our carbon emissions are."

Prof James said that simple behavioural changes such as switching to green electricity tariffs, installing proper insulation or using more environmentally friendly modes of transport could make a huge difference.

"It can be done, and not all that painfully, and I think the church should be setting an example," he said.