20131119_TH

Source: BBC Radio 4

URL: N/A

Date: 19/11/2013

Event: Angela Tilby: "Japan is on the 'naughty step'"

Credit: BBC Radio 4

People:

• Canon Angela Tilby: Author and Anglican priest

Angela Tilby: Good morning. Japan is on the "naughty step". Its government has admitted that they won't make their targets for reducing greenhouse gases - their emissions will actually increase, by 2020.

Most climate change campaigners are furious, and their anger is reflected in criticisms for the Warsaw climate change summit. But the Japanese are not alone. In spite of strident efforts and noble examples from Europe and elsewhere, there doesn't seem to be enough will among the nations to fulfil the targets set by the Kyoto Protocols. Some countries, of course, never signed up in the first place.

So has the effort to reduce emissions and change to renewable energy sources been a waste of time? It was once heresy to say so. But, as we heard earlier, the Japanese and others are beginning to suggest that we might have set ourselves the wrong goal. Harnessing the power of the sun, wind and waves sounds wonderful in theory, but in practice, many argue it's turned out to be hugely expensive and not always efficient.

To have to think again doesn't mean giving up on the planet. Climate change is real, and for many of us the threat to our environment has sounded a moral and spiritual alarm bell, which has changed our behaviour. I remember grumbling when the green bins replaced the old black ones, thinking what a bore it was going to be to recycle stuff. But I don't think I could ever now not separate out my rubbish, and the reason is - I don't quite know how to say this - it would feel sinful.

But I'm not sure that if targets do prove to be impossible, giving them up would be sinful. My own faith tradition tells me that the cure for sin is not self-condemnation but a fresh start.

Scientific consensus has always stated that reducing greenhouse gases is essential. But the Japanese are committing billions to research into innovative green technologies, in the hope that they will make fossil fuels redundant. If they succeed, we all gain. The policy is daring and perhaps risky. But it springs from vision, rather than despair.

A sense of sin seems to be built into the human psyche. We know when we've fallen short of the standards set for us, and we suffer from knowing it. It's meant to prod us into what the Bible calls repentance, a change of mind. There are always those of a legalistic temperament, who set us tasks of reparation, which are too daunting, commitments which drain our energy and destroy our hope. Perhaps the problem of concentrating on restricting our greenhouse gas emissions is that it simply leaves us guilty as charged.

A policy of looking for new ways of generating energy might release that moral regeneration which comes when sin is acknowledged and forgiven. Repentance does no good at all, if it doesn't bring hope.