Wednesday 25 August 2021

Psalm 51

Background

My theme for my year as Youth President is 'God’s World, Our Home'. It focuses on the Methodist Church’s response to the climate crisis, theologically, scientifically, spiritually and practically.

Climate justice is very closely linked to my faith: in Genesis 1 God calls us to be good stewards of creation, and we are called to love others as ourselves – climate injustice has a huge and disastrous impact on the lives of those who, for the most part, are already vulnerable. While there are many individual lifestyle choices that each of us can take to improve our impact on the planet (such as eating a more eco-friendly diet, using less plastic, and reducing our energy usage), we are in limited in how much we can choose to live in a more green way. This is where governments and businesses have a lot of power – they can make green choices easier and more available.

There are many companies who are starting to take steps to be more eco-friendly. But it isn’t so simple. Unfortunately there is a new phenomenon taking over, called 'greenwashing'. This is where companies market their products or services as eco-friendly or beneficial to the environment, but their claims are false or significantly lacking in evidence. As the public become more conscious of the importance of the environment, there are many well-known businesses doing this. For example, there is a popular budget airline who claimed to have “the lowest carbon emissions of any major airline” in Europe – their advert was subsequently banned by the UK advertising authorities because they couldn’t provide convincing evidence for their claims.

In this passage, Paul warns the people of Colossae about the dangers of living out a life of pretence. He tells the Colossians that living out Jesus’ callings is about doing the right thing and doing it with God in your heart. It's not about tokenistic rituals to be seen by others. The companies who greenwash are not actually eco-friendly, they just want to be seen as such in order to gain customers, and ultimately to continue making a profit. As God’s good stewards, we should hold these companies accountable and campaign for true transparency when it comes to a company’s ethical and environmental footprint.

As much as it is hard work, it is important we take the time to do our own research and ask: “Is this product or service actually eco-friendly?” You can find the details of a business’ environment and ethics policies on their websites, normally at the bottom of the page, or the Ethical Consumer website is very useful for finding information about a particular company. Finally, it is important that we ourselves don’t greenwash – we should live out our lives with integrity, in word, deed and thought, not just in terms of the environment but in all aspects of our lives.

To Ponder:

• How are you making green choices in the way you live? What more could you do to live a more eco-friendly life?
• How can you spread awareness of greenwashing and work to achieve transparency in business?
• Where have you seen people not acting with integrity? How does it make you feel?

Prayer

I pray that there will be significant steps towards business and government being truly transparent about their environmental and ethical impact. I also pray that we can each do our bit to bring about climate justice, and do this rooted in prayer and Scripture.