WCIU Blog

In the Fijian language, the word for enemies is meca, as in “dou lomani ira na kemudou meca,” which is Jesus’s command to “love your enemies” (Matt 5:44). This essay is my deep dive into what this means, what it feels like, and how it is deployed in the climate crisis. It’s always an exciting moment when one of our participants in the Christian Climate Observers Program (CCOP) gets to meet a US senator at a UN Climate Summit. How often does one have such high-level access to talk about climate change? How often do you meet a politician who cares? The US congressional delegation usually comes in at the start of the second week of the COP. They are greeted by the US Special Envoy on Climate, John Kerry. They come prepared with their talking points, including that one tweetable soundbite. For Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) that statement was: “The number one enemy to solving the climate crisis is the fossil fuel industry but the number two enemy is despondency.” Despite the buzz around Schatz’s quote, I however could only receive it uneasily. This, I felt, was one of the worst things the senator could have said at COP28. Read More.

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This is unimaginably high-level influence.  Al Ghais himself shows up on December 10 to help advance his agenda.  He conducts a “Special Day—OPEC and the Youth.”  It’s a fireside chat.   According to Reuters, “roughly a dozen young people attended.”  Four of them were CCOPers. In the wake of that agenda, Al Ghais encounters pushback.  There’s protest out in the hallway—thank you, 350.org—but inside there are respectful questions and challenges—about Carbon Capture and Sequestration, about the false narrative that OPEC is spinning.  Our CCOPers know what they were talking about.  Al Ghais leaves.  The PR guy remains.  He is apparently frustrated—but that is because his plans have been frustrated.  What Reuters called a “charm offensive” has failed.  No one has ever likely stood up to them before in such an intimate setting.  No one has ever been given a chance to engage their falsehoods before in a dialogue setting. Read More.

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I understand that the U.A.E. is rich in fossil fuels.  So is Canada, the United States, Mexico, and many of the other countries represented today in this room.  Faith communities must take up the prophetic task of promoting the love, harmony, and obedience behind Net Zero.  In the Appalachian region of the United States, there are many church buildings that have been built by the coal companies.  In the Athabasca region of northern Alberta in Canada, there are many churches dependent on offerings from families employed by the oil companies.  The same is true for churches around Houston, TX.  It is hard for a preacher to step into the pulpit with a commitment to the gospel and a commitment to the fossil fuel companies.  The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and our Apostle Paul had something in common: when they both entered the city they were disgusted, outraged, deeply troubled by the idolatry they encountered.  Today, may we also have eyes to see the idolatry that has sprung up around our use of fossil fuels. Read more

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For the sake of this paper I’ll mention only three capacities that, in my experience, evangelicalism has denied the creation care plant over the last two decades, namely: 1) a capacity for integration with the environmental justice movement, 2) a capacity to confront Christian nationalism and political conflation, and 3) a capacity to evolve that next step theologically: we abandoned Dominionism for the concept of faithful “stewardship”—thank God for Francis Schaeffer and Cal DeWitt—but now we need to develop a new, but biblical, anthropology of our creatureliness and interconnectedness. What I mean by “capacity” is: they didn’t let us go there. Evangelicalism didn’t let us go there. Read More.

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Hope for the possibility of the 1.5°C target has been an illusion for nearly a decade; an assessment by experts siloed within their narrow disciplines projecting a possible case provided that, if everything outside of their realm goes just right (e.g. politics, international relations, military conflict, banking systems, religious engagement, etc.), then maybe they can still model their 1.5°C scenario.” Glibness? Cruelty? Irrelevance? Whatever it felt like, it made me wake up and realize that desperate hospital waiting rooms are populated by more than just medical experts, grieving families, and timid siblings. Chaplains—professional in their own right—are also common figures at hand in a hospital when calamitous pronouncements are made. It is an act of great leadership—spiritual, emotional—for a chaplain to step forward and compassionately suggest, “It may be time that we consider a different approach to care.” Read More

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It’s December 2018 at the COP24 climate summit in Katowice, Poland, and I am as depressed as I have ever been. It didn’t help that I had an attack of kidney stones during my layover in Brussels. It didn’t help that my normal set of colleagues at these climate summits weren’t attending this one. I was alone. I was alone on a mattress on the floor of my price-gouging AirBnb, touk and gloves on to try and ward off the cold. And then there was the summit itself. Poland was hosting COP24 in their coal-mining region, promoting “just transition” seemingly as a way to keep promoting the fossil fuel itself. When the climate march rolled around on the Saturday after the first week, phalanxes of Polish police in riot gear were out in full force. COP24 is generally considered a “failed” COP, precisely at the time when the Paris Agreement needed to shift into a higher gear.

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