The Carbon Dating event was organised by the Stop Climate Chaos coalition and saw numerous top politicians move from table to table in a bid to convince around 700 environmentalists that their parties could offer the best way forward in environmental protection and renewal.
Tearfund held a special prayer meeting with worship by one of the UK’s best known worship leaders, Andy Flannagan, to start the event which attracted top MPs including Conservative leader David Cameron, Menzies Campbell, stand-in leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Labour’s Environment Minister, Margaret Beckett.
Politicians, or the political ‘dates’, were challenged by supporters of Stop Climate Chaos representing a broad range of environmental, faith-based and international development organisations.
Tearfund challenged MPs to support the government and call on the UK government to take action internationally to ensure that carbon dioxide emissions peak by 2015.
Andy Atkins, Advocacy Director of Tearfund, warned that unless carbon dioxide emissions began to decline after 2015 – a ‘key moment’ – there will be “no chance that we can as a world avoid the most disastrous effects of climate change,” he told Christian Today.
Mr Atkins also called on the government to take action at home by launching a carbon budget alongside the financial budget that would detail precise steps to carry through in the year following to reduce emissions by 3 per cent – the minimum cut needed to bring carbon dioxide emissions to controllable levels.He also called on MPs to support action abroad for poor people, adding that wealthy nations had contributed to the climate problem already having a massive effect on poor communities according to reports from Tearfund partners.
President of Tearfund, Elaine Storkey, one of the event’s key speakers, emphasised that part of the solution to the climate change problem lay in the hearts of the people.
She stressed that people need to shift the focus away from the individual and individualism to relationships with each other, with God and with God’s creation.
“We are here to love, to love each other, to love God, to love the climate,” she said. “We need to change all of our mindset away from the individual and back to love.”Christian integrity is vital in this. We are asking Christians to get engaged and show their integrity by campaigning, by asking governments to take action, but by taking action in their own lives as well.
Andy Atkins, Advocacy Director of Tearfund
