Richard Chirombo Notes on Climate Change

CLIMATE CHANGE NOTES
• This term is commonly used interchangeably with "global warming" and "the greenhouse effect," but is a more descriptive term. Climate change refers to the buildup of man-made gases in the atmosphere that trap the suns heat, causing changes in weather patterns on a global scale. ...
www.green-networld.com/facts/glossary.htm
• The term "climate change" is sometimes used to refer to all forms of climatic inconsistency, but because the Earth's climate is never static, the term is more properly used to imply a significant change from one climatic condition to another. ...
www.natsource.com/markets/index.asp
Climate change is the result of changes in weather patterns due to increases to the Earth's average temperature. This is caused by increases in greenhouse gases from activities such as burning fossil fuels, land clearing and intensive agriculture. Climate change is also often referred to as global warming.

Climate change will alter both global and regional climates. In Victoria, this means a warmer and drier future, with the increasing likelihood of more extreme events such as heatwaves, bushfires and storm surges.

The Earth's climate has changed over the last century and there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed in the last 50 years is due to human activities.

While climate change is a global issue, it will affect us all. Climate change has the potential to adversely affect our environment, our communities and our economy unless we take action now - to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for the impacts.

This section explains climate change science in simple terms and where Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions come
For Concerned Citizens
If you’re a committed Christian and you care about creation, we believe that addressing climate change is one of the most critical moral issues facing the church today. There are resources on this site to help equip you as you seek to protect the least of these and care for the Lord’s creation.
Learn about the science behind global warming, and discover its impact on everyone, and especially on the poor and vulnerable abroad. There are some important domestic impacts as well.
Pray for God to help us find effective, just, and compassionate solutions to the problem of climate change. Pray that the Christian church is united in its witness to the glory of Christ.
Act Once you have learned about the impacts and the basic science and have agreed to pray earnestly and regularly before God, then it is time to act. Do what you can in your own life, in your household, church, community, and business. Contact your elected representatives to tell them you’re playing your part, and they should play their part by enacting prudent, cost-effective measures that start us down the road to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In particular ask them to protect the most vulnerable among us at home and abroad in any domestic legislation.
vEvangelical Climate Initiative
Ccall to Action
Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action
Preamble
As American evangelical Christian leaders, we recognize both our opportunity and our responsibility to offer a biblically based moral witness that can help shape public policy in the most powerful nation on earth, and therefore contribute to the well-being of the entire world.1 Whether we will enter the public square and offer our witness there is no longer an open question. We are in that square, and we will not withdraw.
We are proud of the evangelical community’s long-standing commitment to the sanctity of human life. But we also offer moral witness in many venues and on many issues. Sometimes the issues that we have taken on, such as sex trafficking, genocide in the Sudan, and the AIDS epidemic in Africa, have surprised outside observers. While individuals and organizations can be called to concentrate on certain issues, we are not a single-issue movement. We seek to be true to our calling as Christian leaders, and above all faithful to Jesus Christ our Lord. Our attention, therefore, goes to whatever issues our faith requires us to address.
Over the last several years many of us have engaged in study, reflection, and prayer related to the issue of climate change (often called “global warming”). For most of us, until recently this has not been treated as a pressing issue or major priority. Indeed, many of us have required considerable convincing before becoming persuaded that climate change is a real problem and that it ought to matter to us as Christians. But now we have seen and heard enough to offer the following moral argument related to the matter of human-induced climate change. We commend the four simple but urgent claims offered in this document to all who will listen, beginning with our brothers and sisters in the Christian community, and urge all to take the appropriate actions that follow from them.
Claim 1: Human-Induced Climate Change is Real
Since 1995 there has been general agreement among those in the scientific community most seriously engaged with this issue that climate change is happening and is being caused mainly by human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels. Evidence gathered since 1995 has only strengthened this conclusion.
Because all religious/moral claims about climate change are relevant only if climate change is real and is mainly human-induced, everything hinges on the scientific data. As evangelicals we have hesitated to speak on this issue until we could be more certain of the science of climate change, but the signatories now believe that the evidence demands action:
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s most authoritative body of scientists and policy experts on the issue of global warming, has been studying this issue since the late 1980s. (From 1988—2002 the IPCC’s assessment of the climate science was Chaired by Sir John Houghton, a devout evangelical Christian.) It has documented the steady rise in global temperatures over the last fifty years, projects that the average global temperature will continue to rise in the coming decades, and attributes “most of the warming” to human activities.
• The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, as well as all other G8 country scientific Academies (Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Italy, and Russia), has concurred with these judgments.
• In a 2004 report, and at the 2005 G8 summit, the Bush Administration has also acknowledged the reality of climate change and the likelihood that human activity is the cause of at least some of it.2
In the face of the breadth and depth of this scientific and governmental concern, only a small percentage of which is noted here, we are convinced that evangelicals must engage this issue without any further lingering over the basic reality of the problem or humanity’s responsibility to address it.
Claim 2: The Consequences of Climate Change Will Be Significant, and Will Hit the Poor the Hardest
The earth’s natural systems are resilient but not infinitely so, and human civilizations are remarkably dependent on ecological stability and well-being. It is easy to forget this until that stability and well-being are threatened.
Even small rises in global temperatures will have such likely impacts as: sea level rise; more frequent heat waves, droughts, and extreme weather events such as torrential rains and floods; increased tropical diseases in now-temperate regions; and hurricanes that are more intense. It could lead to significant reduction in agricultural output, especially in poor countries. Low-lying regions, indeed entire islands, could find themselves under water. (This is not to mention the various negative impacts climate change could have on God’s other creatures.)
Each of these impacts increases the likelihood of refugees from flooding or famine, violent conflicts, and international instability, which could lead to more security threats to our nation.
Poor nations and poor individuals have fewer resources available to cope with major challenges and threats. The consequences of global warming will therefore hit the poor the hardest, in part because those areas likely to be significantly affected first are in the poorest regions of the world. Millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors.
Claim 3: Christian Moral Convictions Demand Our Response to the Climate Change Problem
While we cannot here review the full range of relevant biblical convictions related to care of the creation, we emphasize the following points:
• Christians must care about climate change because we love God the Creator and Jesus our Lord, through whom and for whom the creation was made. This is God’s world, and any damage that we do to God’s world is an offense against God Himself (Gen. 1; Ps. 24; Col. 1:16).
• Christians must care about climate change because we are called to love our neighbors, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and to protect and care for the least of these as though each was Jesus Christ himself (Mt. 22:34-40; Mt. 7:12; Mt. 25:31-46).
• Christians, noting the fact that most of the climate change problem is human induced, are reminded that when God made humanity he commissioned us to exercise stewardship over the earth and its creatures. Climate change is the latest evidence of our failure to exercise proper stewardship, and constitutes a critical opportunity for us to do better (Gen. 1:26-28).
Love of God, love of neighbor, and the demands of stewardship are more than enough reason for evangelical Christians to respond to the climate change problem with moral passion and concrete action.
Claim 4: The need to act now is urgent. Governments, businesses, churches, and individuals all have a role to play in addressing climate change—starting now.
The basic task for all of the world’s inhabitants is to find ways now to begin to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that are the primary cause of human-induced climate change.
There are several reasons for urgency. First, deadly impacts are being experienced now. Second, the oceans only warm slowly, creating a lag in experiencing the consequences. Much of the climate change to which we are already committed will not be realized for several decades. The consequences of the pollution we create now will be visited upon our children and grandchildren. Third, as individuals and as a society we are making long-term decisions today that will determine how much carbon dioxide we will emit in the future, such as whether to purchase energy efficient vehicles and appliances that will last for 10-20 years, or whether to build more coal-burning power plants that last for 50 years rather than investing more in energy efficiency and renewable energy.
In the United States, the most important immediate step that can be taken at the federal level is to pass and implement national legislation requiring sufficient economy-wide reductions in carbon dioxide emissions through cost-effective, market-based mechanisms such as a cap-and-trade program. On June 22, 2005 the Senate passed the Domenici-Bingaman resolution affirming this approach, and a number of major energy companies now acknowledge that this method is best both for the environment and for business.
We commend the Senators who have taken this stand and encourage them to fulfill their pledge. We also applaud the steps taken by such companies as BP, Shell, General Electric, Cinergy, Duke Energy, and DuPont, all of which have moved ahead of the pace of government action through innovative measures implemented within their companies in the U.S. and around the world. In so doing they have offered timely leadership.
Numerous positive actions to prevent and mitigate climate change are being implemented across our society by state and local governments, churches, smaller businesses, and individuals. These commendable efforts focus on such matters as energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy, low CO2 emitting technologies, and the purchase of hybrid vehicles. These efforts can easily be shown to save money, save energy, reduce global warming pollution as well as air pollution that harm human health, and eventually pay for themselves. There is much more to be done, but these pioneers are already helping to show the way forward.
Finally, while we must reduce our global warming pollution to help mitigate the impacts of climate change, as a society and as individuals we must also help the poor adapt to the significant harm that global warming will cause.
Conclusion
We the undersigned pledge to act on the basis of the claims made in this document. We will not only teach the truths communicated here but also seek ways to implement the actions that follow from them. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, we urge all who read this declaration to join us in this effort.
Understanding the science

About half of the Sun’s energy reaching the top of our atmosphere penetrates to the Earth’s surface as short wave radiation. The rest is either reflected back into space by the atmosphere or absorbed by gases and dust particles. The solar energy that does reach the Earth's surface warms the land and oceans. In turn, the land and oceans release heat in the form of infrared radiation or long wave radiation. See Figure 1

Figure 1: The greenhouse effect


Greenhouse gases absorb some of this radiation, acting like a blanket and keeping the planet warm enough to sustain life. This is called the natural greenhouse effect.

Throughout history, the Earth’s climate has fluctuated naturally– from seasonal variations to sweeping shifts on geological time-scales, like ice ages. However, human activities, predominately the burning of fossil fuels, intensive agriculture and land clearing, are causing greenhouse gas concentrations in the lower atmosphere to rise above natural levels. In effect, the Earth’s blanket is becoming thicker, trapping extra heat and further warming the planet. This is called the enhanced greenhouse effect, often referred to as global warming or climate change.

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, are higher now than at any time in the last 420,000 years. These higher concentrations correspond closely to increased rates of fossil fuel consumption and land clearing.

Earth's average temperature might increase by up to 5.8°C over the next 100 years, if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase. As the average global temperature rises, it will lead to other changes in weather. Storm patterns and severity might increase, sea levels will rise, and floods and drought may become more frequent and more severe.

Some changes to the climate are inevitable – even if we stop emitting greenhouse gases now, the gases we have already released will have an effect. However, we must do everything we can to avoid further changes, and to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

The scientific consensus

A majority of the world's scientists agree that human activities have resulted in observed increase in global average temperatures, particularly since the middle of the 20th century.
Recent data indicates that the global mean temperature has increased by between 0.2 and 0.6°C since the late 19th century, while Australian average temperatures have increased by 0.8°C. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) releases a statement each year on the status of the global climate. For 2008, the global mean temperature was 14.3°C, making it the tenth warmest year on record that dates back to 1850.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the WMO and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.

The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (2007) concludes that global warming has accelerated in recent decades, and there is new and stronger evidence that warming over the past 50 years is attributable to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions associated with human activities.

Updates in climate change science

The Victorian Government regularly monitors updates in climate change science through the Victorian Climate Change Adaptation Program.The most recent synthesis for Australia is ‘Climate Change 2009: Faster Change and More Serious Risks, often referred to as the Steffen Report, produced by the Australian National University on behalf of the Commonwealth Department of Climate Change.

Key findings from the report show that:
• The earth’s climate is changing faster than expected and while climate change science is still evolving and some areas remain uncertain, it appears that climate change impacts will be more rapid and severe.
• It is clear that greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced urgently because long term impacts are starting to develop now such as melting of snow and ice in the Antarctic.
• Large scale changes, such as melting of glaciers and ice sheets or significant changes to the global carbon cycle, once started cannot be stopped or reversed by human interventions in the short term and may take thousands of years to recover.
Critical risks for Australia include:
• Sea level rise
• Ocean acidification (when carbon dioxide reacts with water to create carbonic acid)
• Severe recurring droughts and drying trends
• Increase in extreme weather events such as heatwaves, bushfires and floods.
The Copenhagen Synthesis Report was released earlier in 2009 and updates the findings of the 2007 Fourth Assessment by the IPCC and was published in preparation for the UN Climate Change Conference scheduled to take place in December 2009 in Copenhagen. It takes a more global perspective of the implications of new developments in climate change science. Highlights of global risks identified include:
• Current estimates show that global warming is around 50 per cent greater than was reported in 2007
• Small increases in average temperature could lead to impacts on human well-being in the future
• Heat extremes will increasingly have serious implications for food production and security
• If carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, climate change will become irreversible (for example, reduced rainfall in some regions and global sea level rise).
The Department of Sustainability and Environment has prepared a 2-page fact sheet summarising both of these reports which can be downloaded below.
Why and how Christians care about the Climate, key note lecture by Claire Foster at the "Climate Change: How Christians Respond" conference
Introduction
Having heard the facts about climate change, may I invite you to take a step back in order to reflect on a proper Christian response? I offer the analogy of the bow and arrow by way of justification. The further back the bow is drawn, the further and truer the arrow will fly. Non-governmental organisations involved in the environment have become very interested in the role that Faiths can play, not only because they offer large constituencies of concerned people, but also because they are familiar with the realm of human experience where perceptions can change. When perceptions change action can follow.

Human ingenuity and creativity has shown itself to be capable of having a profound and lasting effect on the elements of this world. There is something about humans - us - isn't there, that just can't bear to leave things along. We want to `pass everything through our hands' as John Zizoulis wrote. We want to experiment, alter, improve, adapt our environment. Unlike other creatures, which on the whole adapt to the environment they find themselves in, or if they can't, go and find a different environment, we have been pretty good at changing the world we live in to suit our wishes and needs, and this tendency has grown with the growing sophistication of our technology. Some prophets see a time coming where this tendency is taken to its logical limit, where we create an entirely artificial environment. EO Wilson predicts this. He calls it the `eremezoic era' - the era of loneliness. For it will happen, he argues, not through our desire or free choice, but through necessity. Humanity will have so poisoned the natural environment, the environment that Rowan Williams calls a gift, that we cannot any longer exist in it.
Growth without limit
Part of the reason for our tampering with the environment is, I would argue, entirely natural. We like doing it, and we can be exceptionally creative about it. Look at the great buildings and sculptures and paintings and other works of art that are the things of the natural world transformed by human hands. Much of the rural landscape we love and enjoy has been shaped by humans. Look at the acts of productivity and trade that people quite naturally engage in with each other, forming communities of shared effort such that everyone doesn't have to do everything for him or her self.
Economic activity, understood in this broad sense, can easily get out of hand, however, and others have written about the causes and consequences of the project of growth without limit, with no end in view except that of growth itself. I'm thinking particularly of the Bishop of London, who's book Tree of knowledge, tree of life (Continuum) has just been published. He deals with this subject most persuasively. We can see in our own lives what a governing idea growth for its own sake is, and how exhausting it can be. Just as speed and competition and busyness wear our own bodies out, so they wear out the planet. See the heat that is created from so much rushing about. Today we are focussing on one particular cost to the environment of such excess, namely climate change. In this address, I should like to offer some suggestions for a proper Christian response to this glorious creation in which we find ourselves. My suggestions are first of all spiritual, contemplative and to do with perception. My hope is that such suggestions will elicit a change of heart, a metanoia, that will ensure an openness to the advice on practical action that much of the rest of the day will provide. We don't want, in our own haste to help, to miss the silence in which wisdom can speak and direct our actions.
I have four principles to discuss. These are also treated in the report Sharing God's Planet.
The creation covenant
The first principle is the covenant that God made with Noah and the whole creation. This was not just with human beings but with all creatures, the web of relationships that makes our living planet. “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations… When the bow is in the clouds I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” (Gen 9.12,16).
The Hebrew word for covenant, berith, is very similar to the special word used for divine creative activity, bara. The root of these words conveys the sense of binding. Creation is bound to the invisible God and to itself in a web of interrelationship. Sever one part and every other part is affected. Sever enough parts and the whole web falls apart.
Scientists tell us that it is not possible to separate human beings - or any other beings - from the environment in which they developed. That is, living beings did not find their abode on the earth and adapt. Rather the environment and organisms evolved together, so that it is not really possible to separate them and think of one existing despite the other, or as a tenant of the other, or on the face of the other. Theologians and mystics concur with this perception. Hildegard of Bingen wrote:
God has arranged all things in the world in consideration of everything else.
In her description of the first stage of contemplation, Evelyn Underhill takes her readers through a process that leads them to an awareness that `St Francis was accurate as well as charming when he spoke of Brother Wind and Sister Water'.
Jacques Lusseyran, blinded as a young boy, describes his experience of the universe thus:
Yet there was something still more important than movement, and that was pressure. If I put my hand on the table without pressing it, I knew the table was there, but knew nothing about it. To find out, my fingers had to bear down, and the amazing thing is that the pressure was answered by the table at once. Being blind I thought I should have to go out to meet things, but I found that they came to meet me instead. I have never had to go more than halfway, and the universe became the accomplishment of all my wishes… If my fingers pressed the roundness of an apple, each one with a different weight, very soon I could not tell whether it was the apple or my fingers which were heavy. I didn't even know whether I was touching it or it was touching me. As I became part of the apple, the apple became part of me. And that was how I came to understand the existence of things…
Before I was ten years old I knew with absolute certainty that everything in the world was a sign of something else, ready to take its place if it should fall by the way. And this continuing miracle of healing I heard expressed fully in the Lord's Prayer I repeated at night before going to sleep.
This deeply shared history is why we experience nature as restorative, and why the eremezoic era would be so very terrible, so very lonely. We would miss our relations!
The sacrament of creation
Closely allied with the notion of the cosmic covenant is the second Lambeth principle of the sacredness of creation. Creation is sustained and given life continually by the Holy Spirit. It is the expression of God. It is not to be mistaken for God but because God is its true inwardness and being no part of it is without God's sacred presence. Therefore no part of it can be thought of as other, or outside. There is no “away” where we can throw things, no “other” whom we can exploit for our own ends.
Julian of Norwich wrote:
See, I am God: see, I am in all things: see, I do all things: see, I never lift my hands off my works, nor ever shall, without end: see, I lead all things to the end that I ordain it to, from without-beginning, by the same might, wisdom and love that I made it with. How should anything be amiss?
This principle echoes “Word made flesh”. `Manichees despise matter; pagans worship matter; materialists are largely indifferent to matter. It is Christians who, because of the Incarnation, revere matter as it leads them to God' said Richard Chartres in his opening address in the recent debate in General Synod. The very corporeality of Christ and his identification with the cosmos means that we can experience him and his redeeming power through this material world. Similarly, our responsibility is to all of creation; “the least of these my brothers and sisters” of the parable in Matthew 25 did not just mean other humans.
The role of humanity
Some argue that the human species is at best irrelevant and at worst a rogue species of rapacious bipeds that has dominated the planet to terrible effect. A great king went to a priest to ask for spiritual guidance. The priest said immediately, `sleep as long as possible'. The king was astonished. How would that help his faith to grow? `It would limit the damage you are doing to others', was the priest's reply.
What is the proper place of humanity on the planet? The Bible offers three roles: prophets, priests and kings (Hart p 3).
A prophet is a seer: one who perceives things as they truly are, that is, shown by God, and who speaks of what he or she sees.
When people see the world as independent, objective and separate from its Creator, they are like the prodigal son who takes his share of the universe and turns his back on his Maker. After he has finished investigating it and using it for himself he is left with the empty husk of old knowledge, knowing that there is something missing, the most important thing, which is not his material well-being.
To be a prophet is to be primarily receptive. Simone Weil, writing about prayer as attention, said:
Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object… Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it… The love of our neighbour in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: “What are you going through?”... This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth.
(Weil p 62)
Once the prophet sees, s/he stands in awe. When asked what he was doing in a place, a monk simply said, `keeping it' (Chryssavgis p 33). The prophet understands the power of silent observation. Intelligent contemplation of things as they really are, restraining the urge to experiment, interfere, change or improve, is a service humanity can offer the whole created order, and its effects cannot be underestimated. What is seen is understood, and what is understood is loved. If no time is made simply to see what is, it will not be missed it until it has gone forever, and then it will be too late. Starets Zosima says in The Brothers Karamazov:
Love all of God's creation, love the whole, and love each grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love animals, love plants, love every kind of thing. If you love every kind of thing, then everywhere God's mystery will reveal itself to you. Once this has been revealed to you, you will begin to understand it ever more deeply with each passing day. And finally you will be able to love the whole world with an all-encompassing universal love.
(Doestoyevsky p 399-400)
Once s/he sees, the prophet must speak. Christ exemplified this. His programme of work, as declared in Luke 4, can be understood in a way that is directly relevant to this theme:
The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18-19)
It is a prophetic role to speak of the beauty and goodness of the creation; to make people see things as they really are; and to free the earth (in this context) from the oppression of exploitation, ignorance and plunder.
The priest is primarily active, and this role recognises the human tendency to pass everything that exists through our hands. We may choose to do this in order to transform it, acting as God's servants, and this is to become a priest of creation. Standing between earth and heaven, the priest can bring God's blessing on all the earth, by caring for it as God's steward, not its master. The priest's hands become God's hands, and through Him what is touched is transformed. For some, this is most clearly demonstrated in the eucharistic feast. The elements of earthly reality, the bread and wine, become a means of grace for human beings and also themselves receive new meaning and status as they are offered to God. The offertory prayer acknowledges the balance between what has been given by God and what part humanity has played in transforming it:
Blessed be God through whom we have this bread to offer which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.
The third human role is that of kingship. The servant-king defends the rights of the poor and disadvantaged, but kingship also implies dominion:
And God blessed them, and God said to them, `Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'
(Gen 1:28)
A wrong understanding of human dominion over the earth has had devastating consequences. What might the proper meaning of the verse be? Does it imply, if not tyrannical lordship, at the very least some sort of pivotal leadership role in relation to the earth? Does the earth depend on humans in any way?
Dominion should be an exercise of viceregency: lordship under God. The biblical term for humanity's relationship with creation is `steward'. A steward is a servant who relates to God, on whose behalf s/he exercises dominion. S/he is also called to render an account to God of his/her stewardship of tilling and keeping.
St Paul calls Christ the Second Adam. Remember that the first Adam was created to `till and keep' - to serve and preserve - the Garden before the Fall. In Romans 8 St Paul says that creation was caught in bondage to decay - futility, going nowhere - waiting for the Sons of God, disciples of Christ, to set it free. These `Second Adams' are called to till and keep the land, to restore the fertility of the earth. This is real kingship.
The sabbath feast of enoughnes
The fourth and last Lambeth principle is that of the Sabbath - the feast of enoughness. In the roaring voracity of desire that can so consume our waking hours and even our sleep in dreams, our religion calls us to stop. Completely, properly, for a period of time. Not just to pause for breath before carrying on consuming, but to take a deep dive into God's peace. In the Genesis description of the creation, the crown of all creation is not man, created on the sixth day, but the Sabbath, in which God himself took a rest - and one does not imagine he did so because he was tired. Such a rest is to be offered not only to humans but to all creation. Leaving land fallow, forgiving debts and returning goods are all part of the jubilee call to stop awhile and be still. Have you noticed how unbelievably hard that is for us these days?
Conclusion
I hope I have shown that a thoughtful Christian understanding of God's creation and our place in it helps us to see how to respond to its needs. We need to get our facts right, and we need to study our own rich Christian tradition to understand why this is an issue for us to address. First of all, though, what is needed is a change of heart, a shift in attitude, an inner realisation or clearing of perception. With a distorted perception we cannot see what is there. With true perception we can, and we can respond truly. The biggest obstacle to true perception and sincere response is self-interest, born of fear and desire. These are hardly Gospel imperatives.
(Claire Foster kindly sent us the text of her talk)\
Adaptation action

Over the coming decades in Victoria climate change is expected to mean:
• increased temperatures
• drier conditions
• more frequent extreme events such as extreme rainfall, bushfires and droughts.
Despite global and local efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, some level of climate change is now inevitable, and we will need to adapt the way we do things to maintain Victoria's social, environmental and economic wellbeing.

Adapting to climate change is about taking deliberate and considered actions to avoid, manage or reduce the consequences of a hotter, drier and more extreme climate and to take advantage of the opportunities that such changes may generate.

Adaptation can take many different forms. It includes education and training about climate change; revising emergency planning responses for more severe extreme weather events; revised planning standards for more vulnerable areas; or it may require more technical and scientific solutions such as developing drought-resistant crops, increasing thermal performance standards for buildings.

Adaptation may also involve managing and assisting our natural assets to improve their resilience to climate change impacts, for example working to identify and establish migration corridors or ‘bio-links’ that join up suitable habitat fragments.

Benefits of early action may help reduce the need for and the cost of remedial action and may also provide some additional benefits in the interim. For example, improving water efficiency will have immediate benefits, but also better prepare us for times in the future when there is less water available.

Preparing for climate change is not something that governments can do alone – it is a shared responsibility that requires partnerships across the community so that individuals, businesses, communities and governments can make to prepare effectively and efficiently. Mitigation action

In climate changes terms, "mitigation" generally refers to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Victoria faces some particularly difficult challenges in reducing greenhouse gas emissions due to our heavy reliance on brown coal. To do this, we need to transform our energy sector to access new and cleaner sources of energy and maximise energy efficiency.

We also need to change the shape of our urban environments to maximise building energy efficiency, reduce car dependence and encourage transport modal shifts.

The carbon stored in forests and other natural systems help reduce our overall greenhouse gas emissions. Changes in the way we manage and use land will increase potential for biosequestration - the process by which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and absorbed by living plants.

The establishment of a carbon price at the national level will also be a key driver for emissions reductions across the Victorian economy.

This section outlines the challenges in greater detail as well suite of approaches the Government is taking to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Emissions trading
The establishment of a national carbon price will drive emissions reductions

Energy
To move to a lower carbon future, we need to transform our energy sector and the shape of our urban environments

Land-based carbon
Information how trees help offset greenhouse gas emissions and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector

Key projects and activities - mitigation
A summary overview of some areas of action being undertaken by the Victorian Government on mitigation

Government operations
Ways in which the Victorian Government is working to improve its greenhouse performance
MALAWI: Climate Change Is Changing Farming Methods
By Claire Ngozo

LILONGWE, Mar 5, 2010 (IPS) - As they slept soundly on the night of Feb. 28, a family of four was killed when their house collapsed over their heads in Malawi’s southern district of Chikhwawa.

Christopher Ganizani, 27, his wife Grace, 29, and their children Rymon, six, and Christian, who was only nine months old, were buried alive under the rubble of their house, according to Chikhwawa police spokesman Sunday Ngulube.

"The house, made of unbaked mud bricks, buckled under the intensity of the heavy rains that have been falling in the area recently," he explained.

Heavy and stormy rains started hitting the area last month. They followed a drought the district experienced since October, a time of the year when the country usually receives rain. Chikhwawa is one of the districts in the country facing harsh effects of climate change, according to a 2010 Government of Malawi report to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).

Malawi has experienced extreme weather events, the report states, ranging from droughts in the 1991/92 growing season to floods in the 1996/97 season and flash floods in 2000/01. Such extreme weather events "clearly show that there are large temporal and spatial variables in the occurrence of climate-related disasters and calamities", according to the authors of the report.

This has caused irreversible damages to crop and livestock production. In Chikhwawa and Nsanje districts, farmers have been forced to plant more than twice because crops were destroyed, while others did not plant at all by mid-February, according to the report.

Ganizo Nyandoro, 39, a subsistence farmer from Chikhwawa, says she has stopped growing maize, the country’s staple food. "With the unpredictable weather patterns, I have had to start growing drought-resistant crops and early maturing crops because the rains the country is getting at the moment are no longer conducive to growing maize," she told IPS.

Nyandoro says she now grows cassava, sweet potatoes, cotton and rears goats. "For the past eight years, as far as I can remember, my area has been affected by droughts and floods. Most people in my community are moving away from growing maize," she added, explaining that her community still buys maize after selling the produce from their farming activities. "We are so used to eating the staple food that we have to buy it."

Malawi’s economy is highly dependent on agriculture, with up to 85 percent of the country’s 13.1 million citizens relying on the land for their livelihoods. Like in other southern African countries, the harvest of staple crop maize has dropped severely. In Malawi, president Bingu wa Mutharika, who is also the country’s minister of agriculture, said he expects a 30 percent reduction this year, down from last year’s maize production of 3.7 million metric tonnes.

Throughout the country, communities are highly vulnerable to different climate risks, including flooding, shorter rains, dry spells, late rains, drought, strong winds and hail storms, according to a September 2009 study conducted by Bunda College, a constituent college of the University of Malawi.

"Floods and drought were mentioned by all vulnerable communities as being the most climate change risks affecting their adaptation efforts," noted Dr. David Mkwambisi, one of the researchers.

He says, as a result, crops die before maturity, crop are damaged by floods and there is soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, siltation of fields, shortage of water, loss of land and reduction in yield. Loss of productive land has led to lower family income, hunger, diseases and malnutrition.

Those that are already disadvantaged will suffer most from the effects of climate change. "Although all households are affected, the most affected households are female-headed households, child-headed households, the physically disabled and the elderly. Since impacts are high and adaptive capacity is low, the communities are highly vulnerable," explained Mkwambisi.

Communities have tried their best to devise resourceful ways to cope with and adapt to the adverse impacts of extreme weather events. They have started to diversify crops, adjust the timing of farm operations, change tillage practice, store grain, irrigate, use indigenous genetic resources, utilise wetlands for winter production and raise smaller livestock, especially goats.

"Off-farm strategies include food rationing, casual labour, selling household assets and migration. Other options related to rural livelihoods include shifting homes to higher ground, hunting small animals, gathering and eating wild fruits and vegetables," said Mkwambisi.

Such local level interventions have been supplemented by initiates from government and development partners, he adds, such as food and material donations, shallow well and borehole installation, construction for bridges and irrigation schemes, provision of medicine and other drugs.

But until such adaptation methods kick into gear, the adverse effects of climate change continue to wreck havoc on the lives of people in the country. In Nkhotakota in central Malawi, a 35-year-old pregnant woman, Grace Rajab, and her seven-year-old daughter, Alice, died in early January after lighting struck them during a storm. Grace’s son Henry sustained serious burns during the accident, which happened as the family was sitting down for dinner.

In December last year, stormy conditions displaced 500 families in Dedza, also in central Malawi, while another 177 families were left homeless and two people were injured by storms in lakeshore district Salima. Last November, seven people were injured and 25 houses collapsed during a powerful hailstorm that hit another lakeshore district, Mangochi.