Weekly Reflection – Safeguarding Eden

25 July 2024

Last month I attended a conference for Church leaders at Manchester University on the theme ‘Extinction and biodiversity: Evolution, action and hope’; an opportunity to equip senior Christian leaders with the latest research in scientific fields such as ecology, conservation, climate studies, and evolutionary biology, as well as their intersection with theology.

Over the course of two days delegates heard and discussed a wide range of issues such as how species respond to environmental change; the theology of evolution and the problem of suffering (both animal and human), especially in the light of irreversible ecological changes; research into methods for combating parasites and how, in order to allow some species to thrive, we would effectively need to cause parasites to become extinct; and the moral and ethical aspects of being part of a world where humans have so greatly impacted the planet around us. Particularly striking was a single graph which showed our global climate history over the last 500,000 years. It was clear that every 100,000 years or so earth’s average temperature dropped from a period of warming to a period of extreme cooling, and that we are currently in one of those cool periods. However, despite the climate regularly flipping from warm to cold throughout earth’s history, the current ‘cool’ period is actually far higher in temperature than any of the preceding ‘ice ages’ – more akin to the warm periods: this demonstrates starkly the effect of human environmental activity and it’s difficult to ignore when the data shows in graphic detail that all is not well with our world.

A number of the panelists recommended a book called The End of Eden, by the American writer Adam Welz. It’s an exploration of climate breakdown from the perspective of natural ecosystems and species at a more tangible, and thus accessible, level. Welz begins with an introduction centred around the imagined small changes we might observe in New York’s parks in the late 2020s; for example, many plants that would have had flowers on a lovely spring day might be carrying clumps of shriveled brown mush because an unusual warm spell earlier in the year tricked them into flowering before freezing weather destroyed the blooms. This in turn means that there were no insects to pollinate the flowers because they flowered too early in the year, and the insects themselves, emerging later on, now face starvation. And so it continues in a domino chain of interconnected events that demonstrate that the tiniest of changes to our environment can have unimaginably significant effects. I’ve only got a small way through the book but I commend it to you.

What all of this shows is that climate breakdown, extinction events, and ecological disasters are things that affect us all, even if we don’t yet appreciate that. As people of God charged with being good stewards of His creation, what we think of these issues and how we deal with them is important. So, if the only thing you do as a Christian is to consider the scientific evidence, pray over it, and resolve to (in your own way) treat God’s creation with respect then that’s a good start. And that might give us some hope for the future.

In Christ,
Canon Kathryn

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