The renowned theologian Karl Barth said that we should “preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” Barth was saying that our preaching should align with the truth of Scripture while at the same time being culturally and scientifically relevant.
‘Good Shepherd’ Sunday, April 21st , 2024
On Sunday, 21st April, the lectionary readings in our churches will focus on Jesus as the ‘Good Shepherd’. ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’, says Psalm 23. The Lord, as God the Creator, has provided sufficiently in creation for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed. If the Lord truly is our shepherd, and we live closer to the non-consumerist values he lived by during his earthly ministry, then the world today would not want. However, we all have work to do on that front.
Earth Day, April 22nd, 2024
On Monday, April 22nd this year, people around the world will be marking Earth Day, this is a day on which we remind ourselves that we all live as ‘one family’, relying on the same air, water, food, and resources. We all share the same environment and are interconnected. To state the obvious, we have one home, one habitable planet, one Earth. However, the way most countries live, it would seem that they act as if we had more than one Earth! Ireland, for example, lives as if it had two and a half times the resources which one Earth can provide sustainably. How do we know this?
Ireland’s Biocapacity Overshoot Day, May 2nd, 2024
Well, scientists compile every year a National Footprint and Biocapacity Account. Ireland, for example, will use up its share of the Earth’s resources for this whole year by Thursday, 2nd May 2024. So, from May until the end of the year, Ireland is consuming beyond the Earth’s capacity to provide. One could say, we will be spending our children’s inheritance.
Country Overshoot Day Calendar & Calculations
A country’s overshoot day is the date on which Earth Overshoot Day would fall if all of humanity consumed like the people in that country. Country overshoot days are published on January 1st of each year, using the latest year of the most recent National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts edition. As you can see from the table, Ireland will have used up all its planetary share of the Earth’s resources for 2024, by May 2nd. It would be interesting to investigate all the factors which inform this calculation. One may want to consider amounts of energy and other resource importation and demand, data centres, non-animal and dairy food imports, carbon sequestration, reliance combustion engine, standards of energy insulation, etc
Churches are used to Financial Budgeting
There is a saying that we can only manage what we can measure. Hence, we tend to focus at our Easter Vestries on financial budgeting, as we can count income and expenditure in time honoured ways. Now, our future survival depends also on ecological budgeting. Science tells us that humanity has shattered its ecological budget. Carbon emissions combined with all other human demands on the biosphere consume more than 175% of what the Earth replenishes—in effect, humanity on average now uses nearly two planets. Business as usual is eroding our ability to thrive. Living within the means of our planet does not mean that people have to live with discomfort and without human dignity. Thriving is possible if we put our heads, hearts and hands to it, prayerfully and practically. Avoiding the topic, in contrast, will make thriving impossible. The first step is to talk about biocapacity budgeting. Jesus did not have to when he walked on Earth, but for the sake of our children and grandchildren, we do!
REFERENCES
Global Footprint Network, advancing the Science of Sustainability: www.footprintnetwork.org