We are delighted to host this guest contribution from Colin Cartwright, partner in our Woodlands for All environmental lobby project.
Colin is a minister at Carey Baptist Church in Hemel Hempstead.

A short, personal reflection for your thoughts and prayers and discussion. 

Thirty years a polluter. Yes, that’s me. Just the other day I realised that it’s 30 years since I learned to drive. Despite being an obsessive cyclist for most of that time and despite the fact that I haven’t needed to commute in a car to work, 30 years of driving round a petrol-driven combustion engine every week, must add up to a lot of polluting. Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, as well as carcinogenic particulates. Which is why I want to make the next 30 years look a lot different.

My hope is that 2020 is a ‘turning point’ year. It was a year when I started to undertake a journey of ecological repentance, in order to ‘redeem’ the last 30 years and to live in a more sustainable way for our planet. For starters, I am looking at replacing my existing car with a more environmentally friendly one. But I also want to be responsible for planting and growing one new tree, in a sustainable way that is appropriate for the environment, every year that I am on this planet.

Going beyond my own personal responsibility, I want to encourage those around me to take similar steps. And what would be most desirable would be to encourage Carey collectively to engage with drawing up a positive strategy, perhaps called: ‘renewing our community with God’s creation for the future’. This would help to generate much-needed new leadership in the church, by the church showing leadership about our environment. This might involve, for example, re-configuring our church buildings so that they are more energy efficient and at the very least, carbon neutral. Perhaps Carey might also partner with a local nature reserve or with a wildlife trust. However, the details of this new strategy will require a lot of further thought & discussion.

There are a whole number of things we have learned from this coronavirus crisis. But it has certainly shown us that:

• 1) Together we can take drastic steps for the global good when needed.
• 2) Humanity cannot just ‘revert to type’ after the pandemic. That way leads to mass extinction for many other species and ours as well.
• 3) The natural world which we are part of, continues to astound us and we can learn so much from engaging positively with it.

I pray that our Creator and Saviour God will show us the way of life and lead us to build a new future together. And I look forward, once you have had time to think about all this, to hearing your reflections and to discussing this in depth, as we continue to emerge from this pandemic.

Colin Cartwright,  Carey Baptist Eco-Church