The vagaries of the climate debate initially seemed only a spat between climate dogmatists and climate heretics. But rumors of a climate “conspiracy” fan flames already lit by the East Anglia University email scam.

They erode public confidence and raise fears the 12-year trail from Kyoto to Copenhagen may end up next week with little more than a peak carbon trail of jetsetters and their powwows.

Almost two years before media reported the email scam and scientists’ efforts at damage control, this column cited early cracks in the climate debate. It cited Arctic researcher Derek Mueller’s chilling news that ice shelves were not reintegrating from their disintegration in the last 100 years.

The column also quoted Bologna University Professor Antonio Zucchini telling a Vatican-sponsored Climate Change Conference in 2007 that the Earth’s North and South poles had disappeared and later reappeared four times in a period of 500,000 years.

More recently, we have heard that global warming stopped in 1998 and the Sahara has begun to green. Yet, we also see that rising seas threaten the Maldives, Kiribati, Tuvalu and even parts of Bangladesh.

Such contradictory data about the impact of climate change confound the public. Worse still, the alleged nexus between scientists and politicians is seen as the downside of the climate debate. And big business’s grip on both science and politics leads to suspicion of talkathons in which hawkish politicians lobby for a carbon tax and scheming business people seek to make a living of it.

On top of these ominous signs comes the news of a behind-the-scenes deal to thwart the Kyoto prescription and push for a climate treaty that further disadvantages already-disadvantaged developing nations.

But disadvantaged nations know how world powers abuse international confabs to enforce neo-colonialism’s desperate grip through various fronts including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Fortunately, the hindsight of civilization has left humanity wiser about the fallout of talkathons.

Just over the past half-century, numerous UN confabs and world forums struck panic and blew up some issues as end-time problems. Despite all the scaremongering and panic generated about population explosion, AIDS, and various pandemics, humanity survived. More importantly, hope survived. While politicians, big business and their newly allied scientist lobby shop from one scare to another, Church groups have discerned such issues and explored the potential for a positive outcome.

Decades ago, the Church was derided for opposing chemical contraceptives and promoting Natural Family Planning (NFP). But as “Time” magazine reported on Oct. 26, environmentalists now commend NFP as “organic” and “green.” The method has been lauded as a “means of avoiding both ingesting chemicals and excreting them into rivers and streams.” Belated environment-friendly wisdom!

Despite the strategizing and posturing by climate sceptics and climate loonies, civil society and Church groups can contribute at two levels to help make Copenhagen a “hopenhagen” for humanity. Firstly, they should look beyond lobbies seeking to get political or business mileage of the event or to make a cult of Gaia worship. They need to push for responsible stewardship.

The leadership given by British economist Barbara Ward to the first UN Conference on the Human Environment, in 1972, can be an inspiration in this direction. Her book “Only One Earth” not only impacted the Stockholm event, it also revived social consciousness in the 1980s. Environment-related pastoral letters of the bishops of Guatemala and the Philippines became trendsetters. In more recent times, we have the repeated calls for environmental justice made by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

The Church is at her best in the mission of witness. History records how every time the world panicked in the face of pestilence, pandemic or disaster, Church-led groups sustained hope. And as noted in the column cited earlier, such groups have been busy in small but catalytic efforts to help save the environment in various parts of Asia.

No doubt, the experience of civic and religious groups monitoring the climate summit could be a further boost for such praxis of stewardship long after the jetsetters have winged out of Copenhagen.

Today Church groups in Asia are active in environmental education and conservation. Parish-based lay groups, basic communities and groups of Religious pioneer environmental ministry through projects such as consumer education, energy saving, home gardening and motivating the young.

The upcoming Christmas season can further challenge the Christian community to proactively engage in witness to environmental justice that will enhance the joyful memorial of Jesus’ birth. Such motivation can lead to creative ways of sharing Christmas fellowship, gifts and joy without capitulating to consumer culture.

But why wait for a consumerism-free Christmas? In a call to curb emissions, Paul McCartney recently proposed that meat-free Mondays could follow weekend banquets. Of course, abstaining on Monday after gorging over the weekend may make little difference other than a change of menu. Instead, perhaps, Adventide may offer an opportunity to invite lovers of the environment to follow the Christian tradition of meat-free Fridays.

After all, meat farming is reportedly responsible for 18 percent of carbon emissions, far above the 13 percent pollution produced by transport. And cutting down on meat protein may also help promote the use of vegetable protein from the Third World.

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Hector Welgampola, a Sri Lankan journalist, was Executive Editor of UCA News from 1987 until he retired in December 2001.

Source:  Make Copenhagen a ‘hopenhagen’ (UCAN)

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