Today, we’re continuing in the series we started last week, looking at items that have been in the news recently and thinking about how we respond to them as Christians.
This week, we’re going to look at some items that have been in the news recently, related to global warming. I’ve titled this talk, ‘Going the wrong way – faster.’
That’s the situation when it comes to global warming. The world is going the wrong way -0 and we’re going the wrong way faster. It isn’t good news. As Christians, it shouldn’t distress us. But we need to think through how we will respond to it.
I think it will help if I give you an analogy.
Occasionally it happens that a motorist makes a mistake and drives down a motorway the wrong way. This is a picture of someone driving the wrong way down a motorway. It was in 2020, on the M4. The person was a nurse. She drove seven miles the wrong way, and she was drunk. Fortunately, it didn’t end in an accident.
If you should ever make such a mistake, the advice is, slow down, turn on your hazard lights, and pull over to the nearest safe place as soon as possible.
How is this an analogy for global warming? The advice for a driver is to slow down and stop. The advice to prevent global warming is, reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero. And then start removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Continuing to emit large quantities of carbon dioxide is going the wrong way. But recent news reports tell us that the world isn’t just doing that: the world is emitting even more carbon dioxide than before. It’s going even faster the wrong way. It’s bad news for the world.
Let’s look at some news reports which tell us that.
The first news item was on 17th January. The BBC reported, ‘Levels of the most significant planet-warming gas in our atmosphere ROSE MORE QUICKLY THAN EVER PREVIOUSLY RECORDED last year.’ The gas the BBC was talking about is, of course, carbon dioxide.
In 2019, most countries of the world reached an agreement in Paris. They would cut carbon emissions by 43% by 2030. That would be a huge reduction! It was an ambitious goal. How much progress do you suppose the world has made in the last five years? Do you think the world has achieved the 43% reduction? The answer is that the world hasn’t achieved any reduction at all. Carbon emissions have not fallen. They have risen. And last year, there was a greater level of carbon emissions than ever before. So much for achieving this goal. The world continues to go the wrong way – and it’s going even faster the wrong way.
The second news item was on 10th January. Carlo Buontempo, the director of the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, had the figures for global temperature for 2024. The past decade has been hot. The last 10 years have been the ten hottest years on record. You can see that on this graph. Every single month in 2024 was either the warmest or second warmest for that month ever recorded. And last year was the hottest year on record. Buontempo spoke to the news agency Reuters. But he didn’t just say, ‘2024 was hot.’ He said, ‘The trajectory is just incredible.’ It wasn’t just the fact that the world was heating up that astonished him. It was the RATE at which the world was heating up that astonished him. There was no sign at all that the measures the world had been taking were bringing global warming under control.
Our car is heading the wrong way down the motorway. It’s going fast, and it’s accelerating.
The third news item was a week ago, on BBC news. It began with the newsreader, Ben Brown, reporting on the wildfires in California. He then went on to talk about global warming. He got a professor involved. Let’s see what they have to say.
Ben Brown:
‘Well, with that evidence that climate change has played a significant role in the Los Angeles fires, new figures show that last year was the hottest since records began. Scientists from the European Climate monitoring body say temperatures were 1.6°C higher than the pre-industrial average. They say that it shows that a key warming threshold of 1.5° that was agreed in Paris 10 years ago is now in danger of being permanently breached.
...
Well, how worried should we? We can speak to the climate scientist Richard Betts, who is head of climate impact research at the Met Office, also a professor at the University of Exeter. Thank you very much for being with us. We were told, you know, 10 years ago when all this was being discussed in Paris, that this figure of 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, you know, we couldn't breach it. Now we have breached it. So how alarming is this for the world, for the planet?’
Richard Betts:
‘So, it is of course alarming, although it's important to be clear, we've not actually gone past 1.5° warming in the long-term average, which is what the Paris Agreement refers to. We've had one year at 1.5° above pre-industrial levels. And that's because of burning fossil fuels and building up of greenhouse. So, we have caused this, but also, we've had an extra kick in the global temperatures because of natural cycles in the climate, particularly El Nino, which is a phenomena that comes and goes in the Pacific Ocean that temporarily warms the Earth. Other things as well. So that's an extra kick on top of the long-term trend, the long global average trend is about 1.3° warming, so we're almost at 1.5 in the long term, but not quite. It's still extremely concerning, of course.’
Ben Brown:
‘Yeah. Well, thanks very much for clarifying that. And do you think then given that you talk about that long term average, are we likely to breach that, do you think in the future or the near future?’
Richard Betts:
‘We are starting to go over the trajectory of greenhouse gases, which we'd need to be tailing off to stay at 1.5 so that we ... It would be astonishing, personally, if we limited global warming to 1.5, it’s my personal view. I mean we're so close. Global emissions are going up still. They need to be going down massively. That's not happening. So, it's looking like we're gonna go through it, unfortunately.’
Ben Brown started by commenting that a key warming threshold of 1.5°C is now in danger of being permanently breached. Professor Betts agreed. He said that global warming went over the 1.5°C threshold last year. But the Paris Agreement looks at the average over a period of years. So, the target set out in the Paris Agreement hasn’t been missed – yet. But then Professor Betts commented, ‘It would be astonishing ... if we limited global warming to 1.5.’ I think Professor Betts knows his stuff. At some point, global warming will breach the 1.5°C target set in Paris.
If the scientists are right, that the world will become very sick once global warming exceeds 1.5°C, then the world is about to get very sick.
What do I mean by sick? We’re getting a taste of it now. At present we’re having heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, rain, flooding, and more and stronger hurricanes and typhoons. As global warming increases, we’ll have even more weather events like these. Many animals will die as their habitats become unsuitable for them. Already, almost half the world’s coral reef has died. If the temperature increases by 2°C, it’s expected that almost all coral reeds will die. But perhaps what we should be most concerned about is the effect that global warming will have on human populations. Global warming will wreak havoc with agriculture. Crop yields will fall, resulting in a global food crisis. That means famine.
Our fourth and last news item was on 20th January. It was the day Donald Trump was inaugurated president. The BBC reported:
‘At the White House on Monday evening, Trump signed the order to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.’
The BBC then reported what Trump said in his speech earlier in the day. ‘We will drill, baby, drill … We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.’
Trump would only withdraw from the Paris climate accord if he thought that the United States would not meet its commitments. The United States is the world’s second-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. So, Trump’s decision doesn’t bode well for the world.
Those are four pieces of recent news about global warming. They don’t present a pleasant picture. My take – and many others’ take – is that the world won’t come anywhere close to achieving the 1.5°C target. We’re in 2025, and we’re already close to breaking it! Where will we be at the end of the century? If we’re in our seventies or eighties it probably won’t affect us much. But what sort of world will our children and grandchildren live in?
As Christians, can we find anything to take comfort from? Is there anything we should or should not do?
I’m going to offer three things.
First, we must not be alarmed. There are many passages in the Bible which prophesy global devastation. Let me give you an example. This is from Isaiah 24. The chapter starts:
‘Behold, the Lord will empty the earth and make it desolate,
and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants...’
Moving on to verses 3 and 4.
‘The earth shall be utterly empty and utterly plundered;
for the Lord has spoken this word.
The earth mourns and withers;
the world languishes and withers...’
That’s quite graphic. ‘The Lord will empty the earth and make it desolate ... the earth shall be utterly empty and utterly plundered.’ When does this happen? In the next chapter, Isaiah writes about things that relate to the close of the age. For example, ‘He will swallow up death for ever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces’ [verse 8]. So, it looks very much as though the desolation Isaiah is describing is set in End Times.
We find the same in Jesus’ description of End Times and of course, in Revelation. The descriptions in Revelation are very similar to what the climate scientists say will happen – for example, burning of trees and grass, death of sea life, water becoming bitter, and so on.
So, in End Times, the world will be devastated. The Bible has forewarned us. And it tells us that if we hold fast to Jesus, we will make it through these difficult times. So, let’s not be alarmed. God knows what he’s doing.
The second thing to say is that in Genesis, God laid on humankind the responsibility of looking after the world. But some Christians argue that if we’re entering ‘End Times’ then the key thing is evangelism. If the world will be destroyed, why waste effort looking after it?
But this isn’t a correct view. We still must look after Planet Earth. There are two reasons why.
First, in Genesis, God laid on humankind the responsibility of looking after the world. God has never released us from that responsibility.
Second, there are two curious verses in Revelation which show that we must continue to protect the created world. One is Revelation 7:3 and the other is Revelation 9:4. They’re similar, so I’ll just quote Revelation 9:4. An angel releases locust-like creatures onto the earth. But the creatures ‘...were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree.’ If these locusts had to avoid harming the earth or the sea or the trees, even in a time of destruction, then it’s important that we do the same.
What does caring for Planet Earth look like? Climate change is considered the most critical environmental threat. So, we need to cut out burning fossil fuels as much as we can. If we must take a flight, then let’s carbon offset. We need to heat our churches with electricity. But there are lots of other things we can do. We need to avoid throwing away plastic. We need to buy fish from sustainable fisheries. And so on.
The third thing to say is that we mustn’t destroy the world. Of course, we wouldn’t do that, would we!? But we have been destroying the world. It is my carbon emissions and your carbon emissions that have caused global warming.
There is a point in Revelation when a series of trumpets is sounded. When the last trumpet is sounded, twenty-four elders who sit on thrones before God worship God. Then they say this:
“The nations raged,
but your wrath came,
and the time for the dead to be judged,
and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints,
and those who fear your name,
both small and great,
and for destroying the destroyers of the earth” [Revelation 11:18].
At this point in history, the time has come ‘for destroying the destroyers of the earth.’
This is the only verse in the Bible which talks about people destroying the earth. It comes right in the middle of End Times. It gives another clue that destruction of the earth is tied up with End Times. It also shows us that some of the environmental destruction in Revelation, at least, is caused by humankind.
I struggle with this verse. I think, ‘Surely we’re all guilty of destroying the earth!’ I don’t have a solution to it. But if the destroyers of the world are going to be destroyed then I don’t want to destroy the world. I don’t want to get anywhere close. I think that would be a good policy for all of us.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 27th January 2025, 10.30 a.m. service.
If you would like a PowerPoint with the video clip and slides I used for this talk please just ask! Simon.Bartlett@Virtuality.Co
