BBC Radio 4 2016-11-07

Good Morning

On Friday the historic accord on climate change agreed a year ago in Paris, came into force having been ratified in record time by an impressive range of countries. This week, urged on particularly by the leaders of vulnerable island states, those governments will meet in Morocco to discuss how to turn words into actions.

Hailed as a milestone of international co-operation by many, most scientists agree that the world continues to move too slowly to hold global warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels. Framed by the Washington Post as ‘a race between physics and politics’, the central question this week in Marrakesh will be the strength of political will to make decisions based on the long term – not something for which politicians tend to be renowned or rewarded.

Taking the long view is something that religious traditions, though, know a good deal about. All grand narratives can be totalising and should be subject to critique. However, the stories that religious communities preserve about the nature and purpose of all things offer horizons against which the impacts of both scientific developments and political decisions can be tested.

The Christian scriptures begin in a garden filled with abundance of life and end with a vision of a built environment to which all nations will bring their glory - a city that has a river at the heart of it spanned by a tree that is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit for the healing of the nations. In the pages in between, the books of the Bible tell the story of human beings as they either listen to God’s wisdom to work together, to honour the creation and to care for the poor; or fail to listen, descending to the depths even of human sacrifice amidst pits of rubbish and fires that are never put out.

Commentators have suggested variously this weekend that if the Paris Accord is to be fruitful we will need financial investment in low carbon alternatives as well as a focus on how to implement them; that we will need scientific effort to identify the most strategic ways to reduce human impact on the climate; and that we will need help to keep our aspirations high.

Last night many of us will have watched David Attenborough narrating the first in the series of Planet Earth II and our minds will still be full of the exotic and beautiful images of the intricate and delicate island ecosystems that were its subject. As we watch events unfold this week in the political arena and as the deadlines of the Paris Accord tick by we will need to hold on to such vivid visions of how we want things to be if we are to secure a sustainable future.