BBC Radio 4: Thought for the Day - 10 August 2021

Good morning,                                                  

Over the weekend, I watched a terrifying video of a boat evacuating people fleeing wildfires in Greece. The boat was eerily moving out on the water as its passengers looked back at a landscape engulfed in flames. One evacuee on another BBC news clip in the Athens seaside suburb of Pefki described the situation there as ‘like a scene from an apocalyptic movie’.

Such visions frighten anyone with an imagination vivid enough to transfer the images to the bottom of their own street, as scenes of burning landscapes appear on our screens more and more often. What was once only the stuff of disaster movies and apocalyptic novels has become our reality.

Using the word Apocalypse to describe such moments points to the original theological sense of the word: an ‘unveiling’. In New Testament Greek, the book of Revelation is literally called the apocalypse of John. The word apocalypse here meaning revelation, that which is uncovered.

In yesterday’s IPCC report, a team of global experts sent a dire warning about the state of our planet; and told us the increased intensity and frequency of heatwaves, are unequivocally the fault of human actions.

The report was described as “a massive wake-up call” – a profound revelation in a sense, that we have got to drastically change course if we’re to have any hope of preserving the earth for future generations.

My climate anxiety feels at its most overwhelming when I think about the world my three-year-old son will be living in when he’s 33. But the revelation of the devastating reality of climate change requires us to have compassion not just for future generations, but for those today suffering its effects.

Christianity calls us to have compassion not just for our own flesh and blood, but the whole of humanity. There are people in some of the poorest communities today for whom climate change is not a debate, not a future revelation they might fear. They can see it right in front of their very eyes. And they too are our family.

The IPCC report sets out the actions we need to take. Scientists say a catastrophe can be avoided if the world acts fast to what the UN boss has called a “code red for humanity". Faith, too, compels believers towards hope. Hope that we’ll be able to work towards the common good. As the Pope wrote in his 2015 encyclical on Care for our Common Home Laudato Si : “Human beings… are… capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start.”