Climate change challenges my faith. It would perhaps be surprising if it didn’t – our Planet’s problems seem overwhelming. As Government leaders gather in Glasgow for the pivotal COP26 climate conference, I find I have to go back to basics. Sometimes that’s the best way.
The reality of global warming has long been evident. Working in climate research 30 years ago made that clear – the basic physics is not ‘rocket science’. The global graphs of temperature would go up. A lot. How far and how fast, that was the question.
Covid-19 brought graphs into our living-rooms. Graphs went up – further and faster than we could have imagined. We yearned for them to descend again, and thankfully they did. We seem to have survived the worst, even if Covid still lives with us.
What about global graphs of climate, then? They’ve only just started to rise. 
The peaks ahead look like mountains disappearing into the clouds. How can we possibly ascend them? It’s no wonder ‘eco-anxiety’ is a growing problem; as one newspaper recently headlined, “Fear of environmental doom weighs on young people.” How can we cope seeing this looming ahead? Besides, it’s not as if we don’t have more immediate worries to contend with – health, livelihood, simply getting by.
So I head back to basics. ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’. We can’t carry the whole world’s burdens – that’s God’s job. We need a haven in the storm. Let us rest in the harbour.
Who, then, is managing the storm? Governments? Are they our hope? I’ll be glad for everything COP26 achieves. But governments are fickle and prone to failure. So are we, even in our own valiant efforts to 
play our part.
So I’m drawn right back to the first Century, when Christian hope was first forged – not in a time of ease but of doom; ‘[Emperor] Nero fiddles while Rome burns,’ it was said. And I’m drawn to the Cross and Resurrection, from which this hope exploded. A hope that isn’t escape or denial but comes from a deeper reality – a love from another World that has entered ours and redeems it even when it’s on its knees. A love that flows whatever is burning around it. The Love that carries our burdens, and is steering the storm too.
Climate change challenges my faith. It may yet strengthen it too.
