Whilst in the UK, the arguments of non-believers were generally dismissed as ridiculous, eccentric, misinformed or influenced by outside bodies. Oh, sorry, we're talking about global warming. This confidence was fed by apparently year-on-year occurrences of record high temperatures. Here the situation is much less clear. Certainly record highs (e.g. for a given month) are not occurring year on year and, for example the period of the Exile appears to have been the coldest mid-January to late-February period in about 10 years. This means that opinion ends up being much more divided and a film like An Inconvenient Truth has had a significant impact in pointing out what people are not necessarily feeling. Of course the energy-use culture is much more hardened here as well, so that both individuals and business feel the threat to their lifestyles more strongly.
My belief is that we have to look after the world and that reducing our misuse of its resources is one part of that. To be honest, that holds up whether or not global warming is real and/or caused by human activity. The church has not had a particularly good record on this subject and someone brought a TV programme on the topic in the UK to my attention today. You can read more about God is Green and read some discussion of it. Some friends of mine have just started an education programme at their church to give an action point every week for a year under the title "52 ways (to show God's love)" about one third of these will be environmental, the others being about loving your neighbours. If you are interested, and I hope some of you are, you can visit their website and, if you want to, sign up to receive the 'ways' (and any discussion that follows on from them) by email.
As for us, we are preparing for another storm to come in tonight, a few inches of snow followed some freezing rain. Sounds like fun. I doubt that they will be calling it the St David's Day Storm however. Leeks at the ready everyone...
Dydd Gwyl Ddewi Hapus i chi!
ReplyDeleteA bit late, but I hope the greeting goes down a storm, as your report yesterday suggests it should.
And anyway - surely the point of global warming (and I haven't seen Al Gore's film, so I don't know if he says this, but I imagine he does) is that some places will get hotter - but some will be resultingly colder?
I'm just back from a week in Switzerland. And for the middle of February, I have to report frighteningly little snow. But then again, there are always occasional years like this.
At least here in Pontypridd the rain remains predictable. And (I pause to look outside the window for dramatic effect)oh, yes, there it is...
Happy St Agnes (of Bohemia) Day Marcus!
ReplyDeleteI suppose it's just harder to swallow behaviour-change because of 'global warming' if you're having colder weather than 'normal'. The problem is if you don't want to believe, you can always find an excuse.
It's actually raining and above freezing here too (for the first time in at least 50 days). Still snow and ice on the ground though. Strange.
Not a lot of rain here but very windy...who said the Brits are obsessed with the weather.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the plug for 52 Ways.
Adrian