God's footprint

Can you see that footprint in the clouds? Is it God's our ours, carbon or creation? One reason some the world's leading religions might have appeared slow on the uptake on climate change might be because they've been preaching it all along, for thousands of years. Underpinned by doctrines of stewardship and creation, it is a "given" in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam that we should look after the earth and not exploit it. Maybe because it was so much taken for granted as part of their teaching, churches such as the Roman Catholic appear to have said little. There were a few exceptions, such as in Australia, at the front line of global warming and where the Red Desert photograph below taking. And now the climate is indeed now changing. Columban missionary Sean McDonagh reports in The Tablet of the plans in Rome for a summit on global warming, organised by the Papal Council for Justice and Peace and the Academy of Sciences. Sadly, this article is available to Tablet subscribers only but Mark Dowd, who supplied this wondrous photograph, has also written a really good piece for The Catholic Herald.

Mark's Channel 4 documentary on the subject, God is Green, from which this fire photo and the cloud footprint are taken, will be broadcast on February 12 at 8pm. The latest Baptist Times is also running a good summary of what all the churches are doing now. One example is the Church of England's Shrinking the Footprint. The new LiveLent campaign also has some tips. And in the Jewish Community, the Board of Deputies and the Noah Project are about to launch The Big Green Jewish Website.

I don't suppose I am alone in feeling powerless over all this, as I turn the heating off for the third day running in January because our home is suffocatingly hot in the middle of winter. It's all very well installing low-energy light bulbs, turning all appliances off at the plugs when not in use. We even run shallow baths and brief showers to conserve water, in spite of watching the Thames rise up repeatedly a few hundred yards away and threaten to flood out entire roads and schools near us. But how much use are our meagre efforts when one flight by those planes that go over our house can more than wipe out a lifetime's energy savings in one house? (Actually, given the terrible situation at Heathrow and British Airways, there haven't been many planes passing over Kew recently. Every cloud, as they say... Maybe those baggage handlers and cabin crews are inadvertently going to save the planet by grounding us all for ever.)

So I am starting to look for tips on what to do. Idea one - from the couple pictured here - is to offset our footprint by buying carbon points when we go skiing. (God I can't wait. Got to get through Primates and Synod first though. But will there be any snow? And is skiing allowed if you're trying to save the environment? I think Synod needs to debate this fast to help us all decide. But phew, I've just remembered Pope John Paul II used to ski, and dug up a pic to prove it, so that's allright then. At least we're not flying BA.)

So who are this couple? They are the amazing vicar's daughter Jessica Randall, a trainee doctor, and church youth worker Joe Carrick, who last Saturday had what must be the greenest wedding in history. What would have cost any other couple £20,000 cost them about £3,000 but more importantly, cost the earth almost nothing.

First, Jessica wore white wedding dress that cost £70 from one of Oxfam's charity bridal boutiques, satin shoes that cost £2 and a veil that cost £4.99, all from charity shops. St George's in Holborn was decorated with bulbs and greenery from her mother’s garden in Yorkshire that cost nothing except the time it took to plant and grow them. The diamond in her engagement ring was certified conflict-free, the beer, food and wine all organic and with the Fair Trade mark. Most controversial for guests, apparently, was that Jessica was not “given away” by her father, a senior Anglican cleric. She walked up the aisle with bridesmaids instead. Her dad put the liturgy together, arranged extremely loosely around Common Worship with all the legal bits left in but otherwise with African prayers, inclusive language and recognition of the equal value of divorced, single and child-free people.

There was no lavish reception in a London hotel. After the service, she and her new husband Joe Carrick, a church youth worker, simply moved the chairs in St George’s Church to one side. The 150 guests then sat down to couscous, chicken, carrots, potatoes and home-made bread, accompanied by jazz music played by friends. This was followed by a ceilidh and then the happy couple lrgy by train for a friend’s house in Sherborne. They are now on honeymoon, consisting of bracing walks in the Dorset countryside. Does this include going down to the beach to collect free booty for the bottom drawer from that liner I wonder? Where does that come on the church's ethical behaviour list - at the top for recycling or at the bottom for stealing? Anyway, if we see Jessica riding pillion on a BMW, I guess we'll have the answer to that.

The total came to about £3,000, well short of the £20,000 cost of the average wedding. Jessica, 24, from East Morton, Keighley and a final year medical student at University College, London, said she and her fiance had planned everything, from the dress to the car, to have the minimum impact on the world’s resources. I caught her briefly in a cafe near the church the day before the wedding, as she and Joe sipped Fair Trade coffee. She said: “The cost of the average wedding these days is a full year’s wage for many people. By any standards that’s a ridiculous amount on one day. I spent a few months as part of my medical training in Tanzania last year and it made me all the more conscious of how incredibly hyped up it is in the West. Our emphasis is on getting married rather than having a big, white wedding.”

When Joe proposed he used the Kimberley Process to make sure the diamond in the ring was conflict-free and from a reputable source. “I didn’t want blood on my hands,” said Ms Randall. “From the outset we’ve tried to keep a global - and God’s - perspective throughout. It hasn’t been any more effort to do and we haven’t had to compromise on quality and luxury either.” She discovered that Oxfam had seven bridal departments in the UK, one of which was near her parents’ home in Bradford. “So I bought a great dress that was originally £450 for a fraction of the price, and the money has gone to Oxfam. And rather than using flowers that have been shipped in from South Africa we’re mainly using flowers from the garden at home. It’s a bit tricky in January, but my mum had planted some beautiful bulbs.”

Instead of china, linen and silver cutlery, the couple’s wedding present list consisted of HIV counsellors and donkeys for communities in the developing world, organised through the Oxfam Unwrapped scheme. Only one relative was confused, asking the couple why they needed a donkey in London. In addition, all the stationery and invitations were made from recycled cotton paper, although when the postal authorities in Australia saw the envelopes, they subjected them to such an intensive process of chemical bombardment in case they were "suspicious" that the invitees received nothing but pale sludge in yellow liquid, wrapped in plastic bags. They guessed however who the relatives in England were who were sending such missives, and when they flew over paid for carbon offset credits. Joe and Jessica's car for the big day was supplied by a London cab company which also offsets all carbon emissions.

Ms Randall’s concern for the environment has been heightened by the bizarre weather of the last few months, but she grew up in a family where “green” values were embraced long before they were fashionable. Having had them inculcated from the cradle, she intends to carry on her green habits to the grave, and is perfectly placed to do so, given that her dad, Canon Sam Randall, Bishop’s Officer for Church in the World in the Diocese of Bradford, is the Church of England's leading promoter of cardboard coffins.

(I must not let pass this opportunity to mention here another notable environmentally-friendly churchman, the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, whose move to his new house in Leeds has been delayed while builders install a bat run for the protected bats they've discovered in the coach house, soon to become his new chapel.)

So there endeth today's lesson. I hope you all enjoyed that. It felt good to be able to write something positive. I feel this post must count as some sort of penance, a sort of "verbal offset" perhaps, for the excesses of my own three weddings, although I'm glad to say that the last one was pretty green by comparison, with any who wanted to give presents also being asked to do the Oxfam thing, with handpicked flowers and a borrowed wedding dress and a honeymoon by train to the Lake District. I'm off now to hear more on the environment from Patriarch Bartholomew at Lambeth Palace.Please do try to watch the documentary by Mark, below. documentary. The clouds pic a the top of this post also comes from that.

Comments

[Shannon O'Neill]

As a professional wedding planner I am completely in awe! What an inspiration to those couples wanting to make an effort to environmentally conscious.

-Shannon M. O'Neill, WPICC
Elegant Events By Shannon
Certified Wedding Consultant & Coordinator

[Stuart]

I have to say, Frank, that the puritan tendency nowadays is not mainly to be found in religion ; not in mainstream religion at any rate. And where it is found, it is usually the religious trying to suck up to vociferous secular minorities with bees in their bonnets.

What is all the fuss about global warming and carbon emissions? It is a moral blitz got up by rival sects in the 'scientific community' who are looking for a perpetuation of their rather agreeable work lifestyles (in the form of research grants). And in order to gain their advantages, they try to terrorise the uncomprehending public with horror stories about the impending grisly end of humanity. Unless we mend our wicked ways (and cough up with the cash) the world will come to an end.

[Frank Schnittger]

What a lot of Simonising! And having heard you, Simon, people will no doubt take off their best clobber, and hand it and the keys to their car to you at the Church door. So how is it that the Church is associated with the comfortably well off middle classes and not with the marginalised that people so love to condemn on these pages? The sin is always easier to spot in those other people, isn't it? You know the sort, the gay lobby, the secular society types, the sleazy politicians who won't do what they're told. It's all for there own good, isn't it?

[simon]

Frank: "Human self esteem still seems to hang a lot around the big houses we live in, the big cars we drive, and the expensive clothes we wear. If faith communities could make people feel better about themselves, in themselves, instead of disparaging them as sinful at every turn, then perhaps people would need to turn less to consumer excess in order to feel good about their lives."

What a lot of schnit :) Sin is simply that which separates us from God, which damages our relationship with him, ourselves and those around us. The obsessive love of money and material things, as a validation of self, is itself a sin. What you are doing is the equivalent of blaming the person who points out that someone is an alcoholic, for the fact the person is an alcoholic.

Of course alcoholics hate all mention of the word "alcoholic", and often get rabidly angry at people telling them they drink too much. But you don't really help their alcoholism much by telling them that actually our best PM was an alcoholic, and all the nicest people have half a bottle of gin by lunch time!

[Frank Schnittger]

At the risk of turning environmentalism into a new form of fundamentalist religion, it's great to see environmental concerns embraced so enthusiastically and creatively. People actually changing their lifestyles to reduce their carbon footprint is worth a ton of carbon credits for flying off to the latest international conference on global warming.

At the same time there is a danger that we turn environmental concerns into the latest killjoy tool for puritanical proselytisers. Making a serious difference to our collective carbon emissions requires that it becomes a popular and practical project for everyone – and not the latest wheeze for an elect few to feel more environmental that thou!

Improving the capacity, quality and relative pricing of public transport is critical, as is a reduction in engine sizes and fuel consumption of cars. Cars are still being marketed on the basis of being able to 120 + mph, and 0-60 in under 8 seconds. Whatever for? (As the Chinese philosopher said when informed that Ben Johnson had reduced the world 100M record by .03 of a second: “What did he do with the time he saved?”)

Human self esteem still seems to hang a lot around the big houses we live in, the big cars we drive, and the expensive clothes we wear. If faith communities could make people feel better about themselves, in themselves, instead of disparaging them as sinful at every turn, then perhaps people would need to turn less to consumer excess in order to feel good about their lives.

[Chris Gillibrand]

Sitting in my eyrie in Brussels, I gaze on the thousands that blaze carbon trails through the sky to the European capital every week. That said I am a sceptic on the causality of global warming, but the visitors are not. However, in the words that a relative once addressed to Arthur Scargill in a different connection, "It would pay people like us to pay people like you, to stay at home" and to use modern means of communications such as video conferencing, one might add.

[David Keen]

Good for them. Are you watching Mr Blair? Is it still too much effort not to fly half way round the world for your holiday?

Fascinating that the Independent, who did a double page spread on this yesterday, carefully omitted to say that the couple were Christians. Can't let Christians be the goodies now can we? Not after last week.