Switch it off for love!
Ruth Jarman
There's a bit in the Bible (Galatians 5) that talks about the personality traits that can be evidence of God's spirit in our lives. Whatever you think of the Bible, it's remarkable how applicable it can be to the environmental crisis our world is embarking upon. Over the next few months I'm going to examine how each "fruit of the spirit" is an ecological virtue, how if humanity were really to live according to these characteristics, we would necessarily be living in harmony with the rest of creation.
The first one is "love". We are asked to love others as ourselves. Should this love be restricted to those in our own families or village or should it include those who live in a different country, be of a different race or creed, or even live in the future?
If we want to have an inclusive, "big-picture" love, then we have got to look at our life-styles. Because the lives and livelihoods of people in the future are being endangered by our very way of life. Our energy-profligacy is releasing too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and threatening to disrupt the earth's life-support system - its climate.
But we can live in a way that is loving towards others, our children and our world by reducing the energy we use and therefore the carbon dioxide we emit.
March Top Tip
Switch it off!
Use the OFF switch on the TV or DVD when you've finished with it, turn off computers and printers, unplug mobile phone chargers and switch set top boxes and broad band thingamajigs off at the wall. If you want to pick and choose what to turn off just feel how much heat things generates when they're on standby - if it's hot it means its wasting energy, and your money! Leaving things on standby uses about 6% of the energy the appliance uses when running, and nationally, overall, a whole nuclear power station!
