Climate justice: for the good of all creation

‘What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!’

People seeking justice of one kind or another rarely seem to be out of the news these days. Christians should be discerning about which causes we support, but ultimately God is a God who loves justice and who wants us to do the same. As the prophet Micah says: ‘What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’ (Mic.6: 8). We should love, care for and support anyone suffering from genuine injustice.

Justice and the cross

John Stott traced the call for social justice back to the cross: ‘The cross is a revelation of God’s justice as well as of His love. That is why the community of the cross should concern itself with social justice as well as with loving philanthropy.’

But why is this a subject for a column on caring for creation? Because one dimension of justice is climate justice.

Climate justice is not about acting justly towards the rest of creation, but towards people whose lives are vulnerable, either because of the impacts of climate change or because of solutions to climate change. It’s about loving poor and vulnerable people, wherever they are in the world.

Poor people suffer most

Here’s the thing: poor people suffer the most as a result of climate change. It might be rising sea levels which threaten Bangladeshi farmers. It might be African farmers devastated by drought, or Asian fishermen hit by a typhoon. In the UK, it might be households on low incomes who find it difficult to get flood insurance.

A recent report from the Norwegian Refugee Council found that intense storms, floods and wildfires triggered three times more displacements of people than violent conflicts did in 2020. Millions of people across the world were displaced, mostly in China, the Philippines, Bangladesh and India. 7million people worldwide are refugees because of disasters. Not all weather-related disasters are directly related to climate change, but a heating climate acts as a ‘threat multiplier’ and exacerbates the impacts of many natural phenomena.

Problems caused by the rich

What’s worse, poor people are on the receiving end of a problem largely created by rich people. The UK, as the first nation to industrialise (a process largely dependent on our abundant coal), has the longest history of industrial-scale pollution and therefore perhaps a unique moral responsibility to clear up the mess.

Recently I watched the BBC documentary about Greta Thunberg’s gap year, ‘A Year to Change the World’. I was struck by her willingness to meet with redundant Polish coalminers. You would have expected them to be bitter at the closure of their coal mine, yet they were very welcoming and understanding of what she was doing in raising awareness of the pollution caused by coal.

Perhaps those miners were unusual. But fixing the climate problem has to be done in a way that’s just. There may be new green jobs on the way, but there are still people who will lose their jobs in any technological revolution, and we should care for them too. To give another example, if the cost of energy rises as a result of switching away from fossil fuels, it’s poor people who will feel it in their pocket most. Fortunately, the cost of renewable energy has plummeted as it’s been rolled out at scale, so this is no longer such an issue.

What can we do?

What can we do about this? We can be more conscious of our own carbon footprint and how to reduce it, and we can remember that most of us in the affluent West can afford to pay to fix the problem. Above all, we can pray that decisions made at the global climate summit later this year will be just for people as well as good for creation.