Sunwarrior I noticed some mention of the China and India question. This brings to bear an incredibly interesting point. Head over to http://tools.google.com/gapminder/ and run up a chart of income per capita against carbon emmisions per capita, sorry the direct link is below I hope it still works:

Direct Link to the Graph

As you can see 1975 emmisions per capita for china are at 1.2 tonnes per capita while India is on 0.41 and the US on 20. Fast forward to 2002 and China has risen to 2.7, India 1.2 and the US remains steady on 20.

You can look at this data in two ways, one is with alarm at the rate of increase for Chinese and Indian emissions per capita, take another look along the y axis though and you will see massive improvement in income per capita with (relatively) small increases in carbon emissions per capita. Since 1975 US emissions have been 20 tonnes per capita the emissions from India and China does not even come close to the massive and steady emissions of the US.

Contrary to the wild theories which pitch the economy and social welfare against care for the environment, both China and India have achieved massive economic growth in the later part of the 20th century with relatively small increases in carbon emissions.

There is a small elite which is opposed to action on the environment, especially climate change because. Action on the environment will be broadly beneficial to all and mostly to the poor and less fortunate. For this reason Emergents and the Church as a whole MUST be at the centre of environmental justice movements. American heagemony is being challenged yes but not at the cost of the environment, some of the most inovative environmental policies are being pioneered in India and the developing world because resources are scarce and as such they must develop new solutions, political and technological.

We must also begin to bring our lifestyles into line, a situation where a tiny portion of the worlds population is overusing the worlds finite resources is not just and it is not inline with the gospel message of “good news to the poor”. This means collectively and individually, may this mean a carbon tax? Maybe this is a good idea, shouldn’t those of us who use most of the resources pay for this use, even capitalist values surely allow for compensation in this case.

This is going to require radical lifestyle changes and political action, I welcome the bill passed in California by the (I am sure not communist) somewhat famous republican govenor there! The church needs to be at the centre of this movement, we need a Kairos Document for environmental justice and we need it pretty soon lest we allow the “communists” (more often anarchists in radical green groups perhaps) lay down the value framework for this movement.