Are you ready for the future?

Are you ready for the future? Pose that question to a Christian and I guess they will immediately start thinking of getting ready for the return of the Lord Jesus – a good reaction to have, but not quite what I had in mind. Let me put it this way: before that day comes, are you ready for the planet’s future?

I work in nature conservation, but I’m also a chartered town planner (yes, it is a slightly weird combination, but that’s another story). Town planners are in the business of looking to the future. They make plans for ten or 20 years ahead and even longer. It’s an uncertain endeavour. They have to carefully look at the evidence before making decisions, but also build in flexibility and regular review.

Christians look to a future which is both absolutely certain (Jesus will return) and highly uncertain at the same time (we have no idea when). Jesus commands us to trust Him for everything, yet James also tells us to ask God for wisdom in our daily life (James 1: 5).

It’s the same with the planet. We have a responsibility to care for it even as we wait for the Second Coming. This means making wise plans for the future and carefully looking at the evidence, including how ready we are to cope with a changing climate.

Hot summers getting hotter

One group of independent experts has recently published its assessment, after three years of research, of how ready the UK is for a changing climate. This isn’t just something for the distant future. Do you remember the record-breaking hot summer of 2018? A few decades ago, we might have had a hot summer like that once a decade. Now, it’s more like once every four years. By 2050, a summer as hot as that could be perfectly normal.

It’s not just going to get hotter. Although summers as a whole are expected to get hotter and drier, summer rainfall will be more intense, so both drought and flash flooding are more likely. Winters will be warmer and wetter. Sea levels will continue to rise. All these are already observable trends.

Good news?

This might sound like good news for your summer holidays, especially if you’re taking part in a summer camp. Leaders might be worrying less about the wet weather plan and more about keeping everyone cool.

However, the Climate Change Committee’s Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk paints a worrying picture of the threats we face and how ready we are as a country. In short, we’re not.

To take one example: while many of us were enjoying the hot summer of 2018, many homes and hospitals were overheating, private water supplies failed, thousands of homes suffered subsidence as soils dried out, wildfires were rampant, crops failed, and railways were disrupted. There was a very direct human cost with hundreds of deaths from heat-related illnesses. Even more recently, during the summer of 2020 in England, there were more than 2,500 heat-related deaths – the highest number since 2003.

It’s poor people who are likely to suffer most, as I pointed out in last month’s column. But although we can feel compassion, the solutions can seem quite remote. Isn’t it for governments to sort these problems out?

What can we do?

There are many things that we can do to avoid making the problems worse, but I’m only going to suggest one here. We all plan for our own future, and as Christians most of us have no problem making wise provision for our family through a pension and also trusting in the Lord. Pension companies are increasingly conscious of the environmental impacts of their investments, but how about yours? Why not check out if your earthly wealth is working for the good of God’s earth? That way, we can help the world be ready for the future, whenever the Lord returns.