Earth Hour
Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes: The Earth Hour saw a remarkable response from average people. People all over the world joined millions in Sydney in turning off lights for one hour last Saturday night. More than 1,700 companies turned off their lights and half of the consumers on the national grid did the same. It was reported that more than two million Victorian families flicked switches and turned off appliances last Saturday night, resulting in a 10-per cent drop in energy use across Melbourne.
Earth Hour began in Sydney last year and has become a global event with more than 35 countries taking part. In Chicago, lights in more than 200 city buildings were dimmed on Saturday night and lights also went out in the famed Wat Arun Temple in Bangkok, Thailand. Lights were also turned out in shopping and cultural centres in Manila, London City Hall, Canterbury Cathedral in England, and so on. Near Athens, much of the population of the isle of Aegina marched by candlelight to the port. In Ireland, lights went out in scores of government buildings, and on bridges and monuments. In the face of the symptoms of climate change, millions of people joined in Earth Hour as a symbol of their concern. Such action, if followed in regular practice, could become part of the solution to climate change.
But it would be the height of hypocrisy for climate sceptics to turn off their lights in order to reduce C02 emissions from coal-fired electricity generators. The CSIRO may warn that climate change is having a dangerous effect on threatened Australian wildlife species, but climate change sceptics know better. Photographs from satellites may show the progressive reduction of frozen sea ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic, but these climate change sceptics know better. Climatologists may show that rainfall patterns have been changing on every continent on earth and average temperatures have been rising over recent decades, but climate change sceptics know better.
Things do change and this does not lessen our concept of God the Creator, who not only worked but works. As Jesus said, “My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I too am working.” What is the Father’s work? It is creating, sustaining, restoring and providing all. All is the work of God, including those things that change. Yet some deny flatly all climate change. No matter what the evidence, they will never change their minds. To them, the earth remains flat. Some deny that humans can make a difference to the world so they oppose climate change. Have they not heard of evil? They deny that mankind contributes to the hole in the ozone layer by our extraordinary C02 emissions from our manufacturing, industrial pollution and domestic activity. This response is like the Luddites who opposed the man-made threshing machines because they just wanted to go on as they were.
Some deny the evidence. They believe the photographs that have dominated our newspapers of late of the shrinking Arctic sea ice or the breaking up of the ice shelf in Antarctica that had remained solid for tens of thousands of years are merely part of a worldwide conspiracy by scientists to fool people into buying water tanks and using less electricity. Some say strangely that we should not do anything now but wait until other countries like China and India act. This is the same attitude as the man who refuses to bail when he is in a sinking two-man canoe, saying, “It doesn’t matter, the water is only coming in your end.”
People who are politically conservative are often socially and theologically conservative, so it is no surprise to find that they are also scientifically conservative. Some Christians once declared Galileo a heretic because he confused them by demonstrating that the earth went round the sun while they believed they were the centre of the universe, around which everything revolved. Today some attack the scientists who believe in climate change rather then open their minds to the evidence.
Christians should never be afraid of truth. Truth cannot contradict itself. Jesus claimed to be the way, the truth and the life. Many accept the Lord as the way and the life but fail to acknowledge Him as the truth. We should never be afraid of truth but, in faith, allow it to lead us to Him who is the source of all truth rather than be left behind where He is leading. Our climate is changing, whether we acknowledge it or not. The only person fooled by rejecting truth ultimately is you.
