During the pilgrimage to Santiago in 2013 I wrote a short blog about ‘Saving the World?’ it was a little tongue in cheek at the time but nevertheless was highlighting the need to try to sustain the world’s resources. In the film ‘The Way’ there are many shots of wind turbines in the background as the pilgrims’ journey unfolds. I mentioned in my blog that I had witnessed the wind turbines first hand. However I then went on to write about my experience taking a shower with the health and safety issue of energy saving light switches. As I started the shower I experienced 30 seconds of pure bliss as I relaxed following another strenuous walk in the hills of Galicia. Unfortunately, that was when I heard the dreaded click and the lights went off. In my panic I dropped the soap and knelt down to try to find it before my foot found it first and sent me crashing! Composing myself I then jumped up and banged my head on the shower head!
Eight years on the need to protect the world we live in has grown dramatically as we see increasingly dangerous and traumatic impacts on the world we live in. People like David Attenborough have been speaking about these concerns for over 50 years. My experience in Spain was a silly way to highlight the problems of making changes. There are huge costs financially and practically that need to be made. We can no longer put off making life changes whether at local or more importantly on a world stage. Today the COP 26 climate summit has started in Glasgow and countries from around the world (hopefully) will be making decisions that will prevent greater global temperature rises. All Saints, alongside a growing number of churches is taking seriously the challenge to become an Eco-Church. Christians believe that God gave us life with meaning and that we have a role to care for our bodies, for each other and for the world we live in that sustains us. The way Spain was trying to reduce carbon emissions through wind turbines was and is a serious issue and my minor bump to the head was incredibly unimportant in the scheme of things.
In Attenborough’s program ‘The Perfect Planet’ the final episode highlighted the account of the devastation caused to the planet by humans. The production of carbon dioxide has destabilised life on earth by warming up the planet to cause melting ice caps, droughts and hurricanes. Viewers were shown the heart-breaking sight of a dehydrated elephant in Kenya. When I visited Kenya in 2013, I viewed Elephants and buffalo drinking contentedly from a waterhole. It would appear the water 8 years later is far more scarce. In the same program a patch of the Amazon the size of two football pitches is destroyed by humans every two minutes.
Every time a species becomes extinct, its genetic material is lost. If we knock out too many links in our global ecology, we may find our own life support machine is put at risk. The recent ‘Earthshot Prize’ which encourages change to repair our planet was awarded to Costa Rica. The words that form a mantra across this country are ‘Pure Vida’ – pure life. This country has greater bio-diversity than the USA and Europe combined. Wind farms offer 19% of the countries energy and 50% heat energy comes from volcanoes. If we are to value creation, we may wish to follow the advice of the author, Gregory David Roberts (He wrote ‘Shantaram’ one of my favourite books) who says, ‘we should move away from a view of the world where we compete and consume to one where we co-operate and conserve.’
Blessings,
Fr Jeremy
Father Jeremy's Journey 
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