March Village Green Corner

Give up some carbon for Lent

"Fasting seems both a spiritual exercise and a digestive one; it makes you see things differently, appreciate small mercies; and, despite its name, it slows you down.......it strikes me that it is potentially one of the most profound and promising of the responses to the ecological crisis. Here you become aware of over-consumption in the most intimate and convincing way; you realise you have been eating too much, too fast for most of your life (and that is just the tip of the iceberg). You actually feel better and become happier by consuming less, and more slowly."

Harry Eyres, The Financial Times (Oct 2007)

The Bishops of London and Liverpool recommended we give up some carbon for Lent when they launched Tearfund's Carbon Fast challenge. They explained that those of us who emit more than our fair share of carbon have a moral obligation to cut the consumption which causes emissions. The Archbishop of Canterbury backs the Carbon Fast campaign. He says he is cutting down flying ‘drastically'.

Operation Noah, the Christian climate change campaign, also suggested church communities hold days of fasting and prayer as a way of intensifying their own awareness of Creation and the impact of over-consumption on rising greenhouse emissions and climate change. Taking action on climate change is necessary if we genuinely care for some of the poorest of the world who bear the consequences of our fossil fuel addiction.

We need to take action individually and collectively now. When Al Gore was presented with the Nobel Prize for his work on sounding the alarm on climate change he said: ‘The next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn't you act?” or, they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?”'

Barbara Echlin