Dr Christina Nellist
These volumes (1 & 2 ) feature chapters by groups of international specialists, with expertise in different disciplines, who write from different contexts and cultures. They come together to write with authority and clarity on various aspects of the climate crisis and care for the natural world. They write either from faith-based or secular perspectives but share a vision and desire to explain why we are in this situation, ask difficult questions of us and institutions, and explain how we might affect real change. Regardless of their expertise, they write in the hope that we – either as individuals or as decision-makers in government and civil society, will be guided to respond to the climate crisis far more quickly than is currently the case. For without swift action, we condemn future generations of human and non-human animals, to lives of intolerable climate and social instability, with little hope of regaining what humans have squandered by our collective arrogance; more explicitly, to the certain death of billions of people and species of flora and fauna, as the ‘Hothouse-Earth’ scenario becomes reality.
Some write with bravery on topics that are rarely discussed such as corruption in government or the media, or biased fiscal systems and on challenging subjects such as population or animals as testing material or as co-workers. Some voice criticisms of governmental and institutional indifference that have brought us to this existential crisis. Others write from a scientific or legal perspective on planetary boundaries or the legal case for the right to a healthy environment, whilst others still, combine subjects such as economics and ethics, theology and dietary choices or medical unpreparedness, social welfare and mass migration.
As a theologian and lifelong conservationist, I have always argued that people of faith and their clergy, must be engaged in these subjects, both individually and institutionally (locally and nationally) just as they are engaged in providing alms or justice for the poor, or in the provision of schools, health clinics and feeding programs or in the prescription of diets.
The climate emergency is real, it is imminent and without local action, millions, possibly billions of people and certainly billions of animals and plants species will die, if our religious institutions among others, do not ‘set the scene and grasp the opportunity’[1] given to us by God to prevent such calamities.
Expected publication Summer 2021.
[1] Refers to my chapter title.