- 12 –
Christian Ecology Link Prayer Guide
M A R C H 2 0 0 6
“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it.” (Psalm 24.1)
“This is the famous stone that turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.” (“The Elixir” by George Herbert)
“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
For the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
(Proverbs 31. 8 & 9)
“The poor are not usually the major cause of environmental
degradation – they consume too little.” (Elaine Storkey)
Wednesday 1st March
Today the Stop Climate Chaos coalition of environment, development and faith-based groups is lobbying MPs at Central Hall, Westminster, to explain the need to take climate change seriously by:
· Helping poor countries to cope with climate disasters;
· Supporting technology transfer and training to developing countries to enable them to use low-carbon technologies;
· Setting a national Carbon Budget for reducing our carbon emissions by 3% year on year.
The role of the Chancellor in setting this year’s budget is pivotal, in order to:
· Set taxes to penalise excessive carbon emissions;
· Create incentives to reduce emissions, and
· Enact regulations to promote low-carbon technologies.
For more information contact: Stop Climate Chaos, The Grayston Centre, 28 Charles Square, London N1 6HT. Email: or tel. 020 7324 4750.
Thursday 2nd March
Many environmentalists believe there is an unbridgeable contradiction between the goal of sustainable development and today’s capitalist structures. Jonathon Porritt in his stimulating book “Capitalism as if the world matters” holds that today’s particular form of capitalism has indeed to be challenged, but capitalism in some form is now “the only economic game in town.” The drive to extend the reach of markets into every aspect of every economy is an irresistible force and, however great the costs of globalisation, the benefits still outweigh the costs. Moreover the adaptability and strength of market-based, for-profit economic systems have proved themselves time after time.
Friday 3rd March
Porritt distinguishes between “primary goals” such as ensuring human survival in the face of rapid climate change and “secondary goals” such as the elimination of poverty and the attainment of universal human rights. “If we don’t learn to live sustainably within the natural limits that provide the foundation for all life, we will go the same way as every other life form that failed to adapt.” Yet ecological and social sustainability go hand in hand. “As we continue to undermine nature’s capacity to provide us with essential services such as clean water and a stable climate, and resources such as food and raw materials, both individuals and nations will be subjected to growing pressures. Conflicts will grow, and threats to public health and personal safety will increase in the face of ecological degradation.”
Saturday 4th March
Last year’s UN report of progress towards the Millennium Development Goals reveals that more than 460 million people live in countries with a lower score on the Human Development Index than in 1990. “In the midst of an increasingly prosperous global economy, 10.7 million children every year do not live to see their 5th birthday and over 1 billion people live on less than $1 a day. One-fifth of humanity live in countries where many think nothing of spending £2 a day on a cup of coffee. Another fifth survive on less than $1 a day and live in countries where children die for want of a simple anti-mosquito net.” For every dollar spent on aid in rich countries $10 is spent on arms and military expenditure. Just the increase in defence spending since 2000, if diverted to aid purposes, would have been enough to reach the UN target of 0.7% of GDP being devoted to international aid. “This development disaster is as unavoidable as it is predictable.”
Sunday 5th March
Lord, we know that while we in our country have an abundance of good things, much of the world is in terrible want. Give us courage to face these things and to think more deeply about them. May thought lead to action in whatever way is in our power; for the sake of your dear Son, our Saviour.
(Frank Colquhoun)
Monday 6th March
Today marks the beginning of Fairtrade Fortnight when events take place throughout Britain to highlight the need to support small producers the world over in the face multinational competition. For example, 65% of banana exports are controlled by just three corporate giants. We can all look out for the Fairtrade Mark on coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar, bananas, fruit juices, honey, preserves, wine, roses and footballs – and ask for these products if they are not on the shelves.
Tuesday 7th March
“Economic growth has become fixed in people’s minds as a given – indeed a force beyond human control” (Jonathon Porritt). Yet research into US consumers’ attitudes reported in Clive Hamilton’s “Growth Fetish” found that the vast majority believed that “materialism, greed and selfishness increasingly dominate American life, crowding out a more meaningful sense of values centred on family, responsibility and community.” 80% believed that they consume far more than they need, while recognising that this lust for material things lies at the root of crime, family breakdown, drug addiction and so on. Hamilton believes they are too fearful to change their behaviour. They are wedded to “financial security”, even though they understand that non-material aspirations are the ones that will give them contented lives.” Porritt comments: “Politicians’ near-obsessive pursuit of increased growth, regardless of negative consequences, might be justifiable if people were genuinely getting happier – if all that planet-trashing consumptive economic activity resulted in more and more people feeling more and more content with their lot. But surveys of national wellbeing and satisfaction levels show that when a nation moves from developing to developed status, there is at first a significant gain in wellbeing. But once most citizens’ basic needs are being met, relative affluence beyond that point makes no difference.
Wednesday 8th March
In the UK stress-related illness costs around £4 billion a year. “But not to worry” writes Porritt. “The economy after all prospers on such chronic levels of anxiety and ill-health. The more we spend on the NHS, the bigger our GNP. The more people spend on making themselves ill, fat, unhappy and unhealthy, the more they can spend on making themselves thin, happy and healthy all over again – all of which keeps the wheels of the economy whirring merrily away, even if it is rather difficult to see what this has to do with real progress.” Professor Richard Layard, an economist, in his book “Happiness” wonders why governments everywhere refuse to address happiness, or the lack of it, by policy interventions. He suggests that happiness is an objective dimension and can be measured. Since humans are programmed to seek happiness, it should be self-evident that the best society will be the happiest rather than the richest society. As we are social beings, happiness is profoundly affected by levels of trust. We are also adaptable: just because consumption is addictive now does not mean it always will be. (Many societies, both ancient and modern, have been totally devoid of any urge to consume above immediate needs) Finally, “Public policy can more easily remove misery than augment happiness”
Thursday 9th March
Nobel prizewinner Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank, in an interview for The Independent, refers to the US as the elephant in the room on climate change. “President Bush won’t do anything beyond trying to find technological fixes. We have reached an impasse. And the problem is too important for that.” He supports carbon trading as an incentive for developing countries to get involved in tackling global warming.
“Kyoto offered rewards to developing countries for planting new forests,
but not for maintaining existing ones. So Papua New Guinea can get money if it chops down its forests and replants them, but not if it just keeps them. That’s silly.” Finally, he believes that the EU and others should apply to the WTO for a ruling that America’s refusal to join in carbon cuts constitutes a hidden subsidy to US industry – which is illegal under WTO trade rules.
Friday 10th March
New research from the New Economics Foundation finds that recently reported annual profits from Shell and BP would be turned into losses if the costs of their greenhouse gas emissions were taken into account. A report prepared for DEFRA and the Treasury estimates that each tonne of CO2 emitted costs about £20 in environmental damage. Emissions stemming from BP’s activities and the sale of its products causes 1,458 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent to enter the atmosphere, so incurring a damage bill of £29 billion. Thus BP’s reported profit of £11 billion would put it £18 billion in the red – effectively bankrupt. Equally Shell’s profit of £13 billion would become a loss of £4.5 billion.
Unfortunately Treasury statistics show that Government income from the fossil fuel sector – conservatively estimated at £34.9 billion a year – is greater than the revenue from council tax, stamp duty, capital gains and inheritance tax combined. So policies to reduce CO2 emissions could have a major impact on Government revenues – a serious disincentive to action. Despite a call from the RAC for a major hike in vehicle excise duty for petrol-thirsty cars, there is no sign of Government action to curb transport emissions.
Saturday 11th March
Ten years on from the wreck of the Sea Empress off Milford Haven, there is still no emergency towing vessel available to cover the Irish Sea. According to WWF, there are more than 300 pollution reports a year to the Maritime & Coastguard Agency, the latest being the sinking in the Channel of the chemical tanker Ece. The growing export of Russian heavy crude oil has increased tanker traffic in UK waters. The oil is shuttled from ports in the Baltic and Barents Seas and transferred in UK waters to 250,000 tonne supertankers to continue its journey. Despite the risks of ships dragging anchors, pipe separation between vessels and collision, there are no current regulations, except in Lyme Bay, covering ship-to-ship transfers in UK waters. WWF is pressing for new regulations to be included in the Government’s Marine Bill now being drafted.
Sunday 12th March
Lord, protect your creation; defend the work of your hands.
Save our generation from our addiction to fossil fuels.
Wash our hands of their clutch on dirty energy.
Clean our hearts of our desire for more and more.
Turn our souls away from materialism and our desires from taking and taking from your limited, sacred world.
Give us a vision of the blessings we will receive if we turn away from idolatry of the economy and bow to wisdom and truth.
Let humankind see that true happiness rests in enjoying your earth as you intended, not according to the lies of the enemy.
Show us that a kinder, simpler lifestyle will allow us to see your glory more clearly. Let your glory shine through your kingdom.
(Ruth Jarman)
Monday 13th March
According to China’s Xinhua news agency, 82% of the wetlands around the Haihe River in northern China have been sucked dry by industry and a growing population. Only 538 sq. km. remain of wetlands that used to stretch over 3,800 sq. km. along the Haihe, one of China’s three main rivers. China’s per capita water availability is a quarter of the world average. The government’s new 5-year plan aims to marry economic development with resource security and includes water diversion from the Yangtse to northern China, deep mining for water and large-scale desalination of seawater amounting to 50 billion cubic metres a year by 2010. “China’s huge demand will offer enormous business opportunities for firms centring on desalination” say experts. However, China’s vice-minister for construction said: “China faces a water crisis more severe and urgent than any other country.” That crisis as yet appears to have little impact on China’s headlong drive for economic development.
Tuesday 14th March
According to the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, sales of bottled water have risen by 57% in the past 5 years. In 2005, 154 million litres of it were consumed around the world. One-third of the money spent on bottled water would be enough to halve the number of people without access to clean, safe drinking water (one of the UN Millennium Development Goals). Sales are rising even where tests have proved many times that tap water is equally safe. Result: much unnecessary packaging waste and huge expenditure of energy used in extraction, bottling and transport.
Wednesday 15th March In India, as elsewhere in south-east Asia, water is a free resource. Asking farmers to pay for it would be politically impossible. Yet, according to Ramon Alikpala of the Manila-based National Water Resource; “If water is free, then it becomes a subsidy which is against WTO rules. People also take water for granted, so you get a situation where, if a pipe leaks, nobody feels responsible for it.” Participants at a journalists’ workshop in Bangkok agreed that, while those who can afford it do not mind paying for clean water delivered to their homes, no politician dares to suggest that raw water itself should be priced. Alikpala believes that water companies should pay for raw water themselves, but their customers should pay for the companies’ services, such as cleaning and delivering the water.