Psalm 24 does not forget where we come from. “The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness, the world and all its people.” The earth comes first. God has “set it on the seas, on the waters he made it firm.”
The earth was created before us, and we depend on it for life. Its minerals, its water, its plant life sustain us. We are its fullness.
We’re called to climb the mountain of the Lord, to stand in his holy place, to share in his glory. We go with the gifts of creation.
We have received blessings from the Lord, to seek him, to seek the face of the God of Jacob. Let’s not forget how many of those blessings come from the earth, so let us care for it. The earth shares in the promise made to us.
The UN Conference on Climate Change (COP26) takes place in Glasgow, Scotland October 31-November 12. 197 countries have agreed to a framework for dealing with climate change. Scientists say we have about a decade to deal with fuel emissions due to the Industrial Revolution that began in the 18th century. Yet, the human response to this threat to the earth is inadequate thus far. Over 20,000 people, government officials, scientists, interested parties, will attend the conference.
Come, Holy Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
The Victor's Place 
Bearing no consequential weight,
Voluntary promises are weak.
Heavy fines ought to be due
For those who destroy
What only God can create.
Holy Spirit move the leaders
to be strongly steadfast.
Urge them to protect creation
as each vote is cast.
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Good comment. We need action.
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Dear Lord, in COP26, give us:
Real promise, not false promises,
Heads together, not ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing) nor SMH (shaking my head),
Flying carpets to inspire, and not to sweep,
What we need to believe and to achieve!
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
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Good reflection, fdan
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Environmental advocate for Samoa Brianna Fruean said Pacific people were not just victims of the climate crisis, but were beacons of hope. She is 23 and has been promoter of environmental care since age 11.
“This is our warrior cry to the world – we are not drowning, we are fighting. This is my message from earth to COP.”
She said Pacific countries were living in the reality of climate inaction with more frequent cyclones, floods and coral bleaching.
https://eveningreport.nz/2021/11/02/pasifika-climate-activists-cry-to-cop-were-not-drowning-were-fighting/
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Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, an Evangelical Christian, declared two summers ago, in the midst of unprecedented Amazonian rainforest wildfire (home to a third of all known terrestrial plant, animal and insect species), that his presidency (and, I presume, all of the environmental damage he inflicts while in high office) was “fulfilling a mission from God”. What matters most to Bolsonaro is the creation of jobs, however limited or temporary, and economic stimulation, however intangible the concept when compared to the grand-scale, consequential environmental destruction.
There’s a general belief held by many monotheists, that to defend the natural environment, even from the world’s greatest polluters, is to go against God’s will and therefore is inherently evil. Some among them may even credit the bone-dry-vegetation areas uncontrollably burning, along with global warming, to some divine wrath upon collective humankind’s sinfulness.
Closer to home, many of Canada’s leading conservative politicians, not to mention our previous prime minister (i.e. Stephen Harper, close friend to Postmedia’s then-CEO Paul Godfrey), are/were ideologically aligned with the pro-fossil-fuel mainstream American Evangelical community and Republican Party. They generally share the belief that to defend the natural environment from the planet’s greatest polluters, notably big fossil fuel, is to go against God’s will and therefore is inherently evil. (Might this in particular include Greta?) Some among them may even credit the bone-dry-vegetation areas uncontrollably burning, along with global warming, to some divine wrath upon collective humankind’s ‘sinfulness’.
I, a believer in Christ’s unmistakable miracles, do not blame Christ-ianity for this. I cannot at all see Jesus condoning or being silent about the big fossil fuel business nor the immense environmental and human-health damage it causes. Rather, it’s the money-minded theocrats who misinterpret or plainly misrepresent themselves as being Christian that are the problem. Jesus must be spinning in heaven knowing what atrocities have been connected with the faith.
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Here in the West, if the universal availability of green-energy alternatives would come at the expense of the traditional energy production companies, one can expect obstacles, including the political and regulatory sort. If something notably conflicts with corporate big-profit interests, even very progressive motions are greatly resisted, often enough successfully. And, of course, there will be those who will rebut the concept altogether, perhaps solely on the illogic that if it was possible, it would have been patented already and made a few people very wealthy. Meanwhile, many migrants from the southern hemisphere are fleeing from climactic-change-related chronic crop failure that is mostly caused by the northern hemisphere’s chronic fossil-fuel burning, which began with the Industrial Revolution. …
As individual consumers, though, far too many of us still recklessly behave as though throwing non-biodegradable garbage down a dark chute, or pollutants flushed down toilet/sink drainage pipes or emitted out of elevated exhaust pipes or spewed from sky-high jet engines and very tall smoke stacks — even the largest toxic-contaminant spills in rarely visited wilderness — can somehow be safely absorbed into the air, water, and land (i.e. out of sight, out of mind); like we’re inconsequentially dispensing of that waste into a black-hole singularity, in which it’s compressed into nothing. … While we all need to keep doing our very best to correct it ASAP, humankind, in short, is distracting itself/ourselves from our own burning and heavily polluting spaceship.
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