‘Gravity, history, and progress’ make the drive to clean and green energy unstoppable, says leading evangelical climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe as the COP 29 gathering concluded.
The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference began on 11 November in Baku, Azerbaijan and ended on 22 November.
A number of government leaders from across the globe were notable by their absence, and concern has been expressed about US President-elect Donald Trump’s attitude to climate science.
The unstoppable momentum of clean energy
But writing in a recent newsletter, evangelical climate scientist Professor Katharine Hayhoe, a Canadian scientist, said: ‘Clean energy is like a giant boulder that’s already reached its tipping point and is now rolling downhill toward a greener future’.
‘It could still be slowed by actions of governments and corporations – delays that will have serious consequences for people and planet alike – but it can’t be stopped. Gravity, history, and progress are on our side. As you know, being a Christian is what motivated me to become a climate scientist and that is what feeds my fight.’
As COP 29 began, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told attendees: ‘Families running for their lives before the next hurricane strikes; workers and pilgrims collapsing in insufferable heat; floods tearing through communities, and tearing down infrastructure; children going to bed hungry as droughts ravage crops. All these disasters, and more, are being supercharged by human-made climate change.’
In mid-November, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) issued a ‘red alert’ at what it described as ‘the sheer pace of climate change in a single generation, turbocharged by ever-increasing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere’.
‘The record-breaking rainfall and flooding, rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones, deadly heat, relentless drought and raging wildfires that we have seen in different parts of the world this year are unfortunately our new reality and a foretaste of our future,’ said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.
COP 29: global leaders face urgency of climate action
Paul Kunert, author of Jesus Died To Save The Planet said: ‘We should be calling on our political leaders, whether it’s at local council or at the national level, to make the changes that are needed. Unless there is some kind of regulation and legislation to force the change, the change won’t happen.’
Israel Oluwole Olofinjana, director of One People Alliance for the Evangelical Alliance, says climate change is inherently shaped by inequality. ‘Any action on climate loss and damage must start from understanding the transatlantic slave trade as a global economic system and an institution that prospered because of racial ideology,’ he said. ‘… As an African Christian I can’t see how we can have this conversation, particularly on looking at our pollution, without looking at slavery, industrial revolution and colonialism.’
Understanding how the past has led us to this point is crucial to addressing the climate issues the world is facing today, Olofinjana says. ‘Today the symptoms of the wider problems are health inequalities, colonial conservation, racial discrimination to name a few… but the main causes are enslavement, colonialism and industrial revolution and how they have shaped our history, world and the narratives on environmental degradation.’
I'm a Christian, and I'm Green - here's why
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