Prayer Eleven

12 Years

In 2018, the United Nations – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced that we have just twelve years to prevent the temperature of the world increasing above the level of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial temperature. We are currently more than 1 degree above. Most scientists now believe that going above 1.5 degrees will lead to a significant increase in drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. At the current level of government commitments, the world is on course for a disastrous 3 degrees of global warming. The IPCC report calls for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”, which includes changes to how we generate electricity, how we power our different forms of transport and a reversal from deforestation to reforestation of the world. To stop us going above 1.5 degrees by 2030 we must cut carbon emissions by 45 percent.

Pray and Do

This year, the Prayer Eleven prayer campaign is called “Pray and Do”, because it is both a call to pray for this world and a challenge to do whatever we can to reduce the carbon pollution in our own part of the world. Here is how we might like to pray for this world:

Prayer for the World

Heavenly Father, when you created this world, you looked upon it with love and saw that it was good (Genesis 1). In our greed for more, and our reckless use of the world’s resources, we are turning the green and pleasant home you gave us into an infertile and desolate place. We need your forgiveness. But we also need your wisdom in dealing with this problem and the kind of love for the whole of your creation that will move us to make good choices for how we treat this world. Please guide the governments of this world to work together with boldness and determination to solve the global warming crisis and show us what we can do to play our part. Amen

Ideas for Doing

Here are some ideas for how we may be able to get engaged with the global warming crisis.

• Contact your local and national government representatives to let them know how concerned you are about global warming.
• Recycle as much as you are able in whatever way that you can.
• Improve the insulation of your home.
• Purchase your electricity from non-carbon producing power stations if that choice is available to you.
• Try to reduce the amount of driving you do in vehicles with petrol or diesel engines.
• If you are changing your car this year consider buying a hybrid, plug-in hybrid, or even an electric car if they match the needs you have for the car.
• Plant a tree, or even better, work with your neighbours and local government to plant many more trees in your neighbourhood.
• If you can afford to do so, consider replacing gas powered home heating systems or cookers with electric heating systems or cookers.

On the 26th June 2019, on the BBC Radio 4 ‘PM’ programme, Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the following about climate change. “All of the experts are telling us we’ve got at most another decade in which to have taken drastic action. Otherwise, we will be getting up to 2 degrees or more of warming which will bring with it really catastrophic consequences. The problem is the policy makers are turning a blind eye to this and just assuming, for some reason, that it’s not going to happen…. By and large, most governments can’t really get their acts together. They’re ticking boxes. They’re putting out climate policies. But they’re not really taking most of the steps that are going to be necessary to re-engineer the economies in order to avoid the looming disaster…. I think the [United Kingdom] is doing something. Most definitely. There is the national strategy. There is the 2050 target. But if you take it even half-way seriously, the sort of estimates that are coming out of all the responsible experts, you’ll see that talking about the year 2050 is much too late. There really is a decade during which radical change has to be achieved. And that requires not just minor measures to mitigate, but measures to fundamentally change the forms of economic activity that are pumping out emissions at a rate that’s going to bring disaster.”

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa13KrOvE2s&feature=youtu.be

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6zzp60qE4s

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDe6ONkyQLQ&feature=youtu.be

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HytYnmCHWlQ&feature=youtu.be

Please email a link for this page to others if you think they would want to join with us in this prayer.