NJPN Conference: Our Children's Future - Tackling Climate Change in Times of Covid

Dr Lorna Gold - Image ICN/JS

Dr Lorna Gold, Chair of Global Catholic Climate Movement gave the following address at the 2021 annual conference of the National Justice and Peace Network of England and Wales at Swanwick Conference Centre on Saturday, 24 July.

Let me tell you a story - of my own personal ecological conversion. I believe there is great power in sharing our stories, so I offer this to you as one story, and you can take from it what you need.

When 'Laudato Si' - on caring for our common home' landed on my desk in Trocaire in 2015, I read it above all through the eyes of motherhood. I had just become a mum to two boys when Pope Francis penned the encyclical and I was becoming increasingly concerned about the state of our world. The opening line of the encyclical jumped off the page at me: "our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us." It felt like motherhood, our capacity to mother and be mothered, was on Pope Francis' mind too as he wrote.

As a long-time activist and academic, I was well aware of the science of what is happening to our world. Having worked on these issues for over 20 years with Trocaire and seen things deteriorate pretty fast, I was questioning the value of all the effort the environmental movement had put in with seemingly little return. At the same time, I was conscious of the stark injustice of climate change and the way this was already devastating the lives of people across the world. I felt I was doing my bit to try and address the issues in as much as I could with two little boys to mind, but it felt completely inadequate in the face of the mounting crisis.

As I read Laudato Si' in detail I kept having to pause to absorb the wonderful turns of phrase and thought-provoking ideas. I could see that this encyclical was something special, which had an appeal far beyond the Catholic Church. As I read on, I kept imagining my two little boys grown up. What world was I leaving behind for them? What more could I do to change the destructive course the world seemed to be on? Parenting, at its very essence, is a bridge between the past, present and future. As parents, we largely inherited who we are and what we know from those who preceded us. We want to equip our children for the future - and also to do our bit to ensure that their future is as good, if not better, than the life we have enjoyed. And yet everything I read about the climate crisis seemed to be pointing to the opposite.

Against this backdrop of parental love, the kaleidoscope of devastation depicted by Pope Francis, I have to confess, had me quickly in tears. Are we really bequeathing debris and desolation to our children - or in Pope Francis' language "a pile of filth"? Those tears of sadness and of anger provoked by Laudato Si' were a pivotal moment for me in my life journey of personal ecological conversion. Up until then I had perhaps allowed a disconnect to creep in between what I knew to be true about the climate crisis, what I felt about it and what I actually did. This sense of cognitive and affective dissonance is widespread in our society - it has become a coping mechanism and way to deflect blame.

Somehow, Laudato Si' seemed to break straight through that sense of disconnect for me. The message of Pope Francis was not a harsh one - although it was very hard hitting. It read like a love letter to the Earth - illuminated by a deep sense of care, a tenderness overflowing from a heart full of maternal love. It enabled me to connect with the situation the world is in, but not in a disempowering way. Yes, I experienced a huge wave of grief, but I didn't feel abandoned in a place of grief and isolation as I had done reading many other environmental books. I felt gently but firmly encouraged to move through that pain into hope, even joy. I felt a liberation in truthful acceptance of where we are, and a new energy to act.

Action for me meant and continues to mean many things. It has become a way of life. First and foremost, Laudato Si' completely changed my relationship with nature. It underpinned the love I had of nature, instilled in me since I was a child by my own mother, with a deep theological understanding of God's mystical presence in Creation. My first reaction after reading the Encyclical was to go outside and exclaim "Laudato Si!" This unfolding realisation of the mystical presence of Christ in the cosmos energised me, raised up in me a new sense of mystical communion in the great story of Creation. There is a pure joy in sensing that mystical presence - a wonder that nothing can extinguish.

It also changed how I parent my children. Everything became wrapped up in the story of tender caring for each other and the Earth. Being outside, learning about and through nature, caring for other creatures together, became a major part of our lives. As a mother, I wanted above all to teach my own children about the wonderful Earth God has given us as a gift - and to nurture in each other an appreciation of the beauty of the Earth. Many times we would go for walks in the woods when they boys were younger and those walks would become the nature place for catechesis. "Who made all this, mummy? Why did God give us such a beautiful gift? Where do the creatures go when they die?" Big questions!

From this ground of a newly found connection and contemplation, an urge to do everything to protect and safeguard the Earth and the future inevitably rose up in me. Laudato Si' was the inspiration and spur for me to capture my experiences of trying to come to terms with climate change and parenthood in a book 'Climate Generation: Awakening to our Children's Future.' In this book, written above all from the perspective of motherhood, I shared my own experience of spiritual awakening to the state of our world and how the vision of Pope Francis has given me the courage to make a difference in my own small way.

This desire to do everything I could to respond to the cry of future generations in Laudato Si' also spurred me on to join the climate strikes in late 2018. I heard that a young Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, had sat outside the Swedish parliament in protest about climate change and the fact the adults were not doing enough. I was deeply struck by her courage, but also by her sense of abandonment. Not thinking twice about the fact I wasn't 16, I decided to pitch my sign outside the Irish parliament that same Friday in solidarity. I wanted to simply let Greta know (via Twitter) that some adults do care - in fact many do - and we are with her. As I stood there alone at first in the December rain, the words of Pope Francis came to my mind: "Will the promise last, in spite of everything, with all that is authentic rising up in stubborn resistance?" My own stubborn resistance had brought me to the point of standing still - calmly, quietly, standing in solidarity. I was there as a mum - as someone who stood for her own children, but also for those yet unborn. Over the following weeks many people joined each week outside the Irish parliament. Amongst them there were many grandparents, priests, sisters, brothers - all motivated by the vision that Laudato Si' had lit in their hearts. It became a place of intergenerational solidarity. Within six months, what Greta had started had grown to a wildfire of protests seeded, at least in part, by the invitation of Pope Francis to be counter-cultural and stubbornly resistant.

As I opened my heart to "action", it became an increasingly wonderful adventure which continues to this day. As Greta Thunberg said when asked about how to be hopeful: "Hope comes when we act" and this has also been my experience. I quickly discovered that the 'action' I was drawn towards was part of a great action taking place in our world today, a great turning which can only be explained as the Holy Spirit. That same Spirit was at work in many different hearts right across the world - and in my local community in Ireland! Together we started to meet each other using social media and other means, exchanging ideas and planning what to do. We met up in prayer groups, book clubs and environmental groups to study Laudato Si', and over time developed a growing sense of a movement emerging led by lay people and youth. And at the heart of that journey has been the Global Catholic Climate Movement, which has emerged as a vibrant network of networks sustaining and nurturing ecological conversion right across the world. The mission of that movement is simple: to turn Laudato Si' into a lived reality! It feels like we are just at the beginning.

Six years after the publication of this encyclical, the challenges we face as a world have only deepened. None of us can deny that the times we are living in are truly extraordinary. The past couple of years have really turned all our lives upside down. All of us have seen our lives disrupted in major ways. For many of us it has been a strange paradox of forced changes to our lives, bringing much stress and uncertainty but also a certain simplicity. And we know, sadly, that the nightmare of the pandemic is not over. The story has a long way to run, not least because of the deep inequalities in our world which mean that only a tiny fraction of us will be vaccinated any time soon and many thousands more will perish.

The pandemic is hugely relevant to what happens in relation to climate change - and especially at the COP in Glasgow, as well as how every single one of us responds to the call to take action to safeguard our earth. We cannot be healthy on a sick planet. The backdrop - or the foreground - of pandemic politics is the context in which we are now living and working. It affects so many aspects: how we can meet together, who can and cannot travel and meet, how much resources are available and the levels of energy and focus we have to tackle the issues. The pandemic is happening in a world which was already deeply divided and these divisions are deepening.

Like the virus itself, moreover, pandemic politics is affecting climate action in ways we do not fully understand yet. For example, how does the anger over lack of access to vaccines of poorer countries and the sense of betrayal affect their willingness to engage in climate negotiations? Will the bad blood translate into poor outcomes? How the pandemic is managed - and particularly universal access to vaccines - is one of the keys to a positive outcome at the COP in Glasgow. This is why, I believe, Pope Francis is making the unprecedented move of travelling to the COP. He will be there as the voice of the billions who are voiceless - and we need to be there with him in some way whether it is physically, our prayers or signing up to the global petition launched by GCCM and partners.

Looking at it like this, many are saying that the pandemic could not have happened at a worse time. Just as we were somehow, slowly waking up to the climate crisis, thanks to prominent campaigns, the pandemic has acted as a massive distraction. The pandemic hit right as the protests were at their peak. The message of the scientists, taken up so well by the climate strikers was pretty stark and dire: you have 10 years to change direction we are heading in or face catastrophic, irreversible change to ecosystems. People and politicians had finally started to listen. Climate emergencies had been declared in many countries, major institutions such as faith groups had begun to get out of fossil fuels, renewable energy technologies had started to go mainstream.

Yet the pandemic hit and here we are now. We are living in what feels like a very different world. Yet whilst for many the pandemic may seem to be only negative, I see things rather differently. There is no denying that the pandemic is a nightmare. With the exception perhaps of a major war, it is a crisis of epoch-changing proportions. Since we are still right in the middle of it we can only surmise about its long term impacts.

Yet the pandemic is teaching us important lessons about ourselves and our world which perhaps as a species we had ignored for far too long. Pope Francis, in his wonderful book 'Let us Dream', talks about the fact that the definition of crisis is change. You cannot come out of a crisis the same as you went into it. The nature of crisis is defined by change. The pandemic is a crisis and therefore none of us will come out of it the same as we went in. And because the crisis is global, it changes all of us. It is a shared experience. What the Pope says that whilst we know change is inevitable, we don't know exactly how we will be changed - we have choices. We can choose how we respond to the crisis. We can react with anger, fear, selfishness… or we can choose to respond with solidarity, compassion and love. In other words, the crisis can become a Kairos, an opportune moment for positive change, if we allow it to.

Just think of the outcomes of other major global crises in history. The Second World War was the most awful tragedy with millions of deaths, and the holocaust. Out of it came the United Nations and major global institutions, international law, human rights, the welfare state, the NHS. Whilst by no means perfect, out of crisis came an era defined by international cooperation and the rallying cry 'never again'. History, like individual human lives, is built on cycles of tragedy and rebirth, dying and re-imagining society. It is an opportunity to change the story. Arundathi Roy, the Indian author speaks of our current pandemic being a 'portal'. Because everything is shaken to the core, the pandemic becomes a time to choose what aspects of society it enables us to shake off - and which we want to carry into the future. We have each experienced this in our own lives. Somehow, the pandemic is teaching us about deep connection - we are all connected to each other and to nature. This is no longer a theory, it is an undeniable lived experience. The forced separations and absence of deep connection has shone a light on who we are.

The pandemic has taught us other lessons which are critical to tackling the climate crisis too. In particular, what it means to act together to face a common threat. Greta Thunberg and the climate strikers called for the world to treat the climate crisis like the emergency it is. The scientists tell us that we are currently on a warming path which will render large parts of the world unliveable by the end of the century. Because of the time it takes to effect change everywhere (you can't just turn off the coal powerplants unless there is a clean energy alternative built; you can't magic up green alternatives to transport), actions we take in the next couple of years will determine how this plays out in the next decades. Whilst governments eventually called climate emergencies, very little actually changed. The strikers accused them of procrastinating, declaring emergencies in words only. Greta uses the analogy of a house on fire. If your house is burning you don't sit around and have a detailed considered discussion as to the nature of the fire, whether it is really happening, how hot it is, how quickly the house will burn down - you take emergency action to put it out!

Before the pandemic human society had forgotten what it means to take collective action in a crisis, to act together. We had become completely sold on the idea that it is enough for us all to follow our individual self-interest, to do what is right for us in the short term, in order to have a good outcome for everyone. We had become wrapped up in the false notion that market economics and politics would save us from ourselves and the ravages of climate change. We had devalued the potential that we have to act together for a greater good when we decide to do so. I don't think we really believed we could do it. The pandemic, however, with all its flawed responses, has taught us a huge lesson: we can bend curves if we all play our part. We can do impossible things like invent and roll out vaccines in record time, lock down our economies to save countless lives, get public information out to vast numbers of people, put in place safety nets for the vulnerable. Responsible collective action, guided by solidarity and enlightened self-interest perhaps, is the most powerful tool we have in a crisis, not blind market forces. Moreover, we taught ourselves what an emergency response really looks like. It is interesting and certainly thought provoking to think that on the whole, the pandemic has meant the younger generation who face far less of a direct threat to their lives from the virus, making huge sacrifices to protect older generations. When it comes to climate action, the reverse is asked of us - older generations now need to step up for the sake of future generations. This is the opportunity and what is at stake at the COP in Glasgow.

And now, whilst there is a hankering now to get back to normal, there is an equally strong sense that we need to create a new normal. We are deeply conscious that the old normal was unsustainable in so many ways, including from an environmental perspective. The challenge now is to create a kind of normal which breaks with the cycles of environmental destruction and points to a clear pathway to a different future. We have many of the building blocks for that future but what is lacking is the ability to see beyond the narrow frame we have drawn for ourselves. Shifting this frame is no easy task as that future has to be guided by different values and how these are translated into key policy choices in the coming years.

A lot will politically depend on how the pandemic politics play out in the coming months. Almost every country in the world is now facing huge debts as a result of the pandemic. Some will not be able to pay them and fall into deep debt crises. The hard financial question of who pays for the changes that need to happen to tackle climate change are front and centre. Where is the $100 billion per year that was promised in Paris for the poorest countries?

In the face of all this, what can each of us do to help shift the dial? How can we do our part - however small - to respond to Laudato Si' and ensure that as we emerge from the pandemic, we do not go back to our old ways, but use this to become a Kairos moment for the whole world to tackle the climate emergency? So much is riding on whether each of us shows up at this unique moment of truth in human history.

There are many practical things we can do - this whole weekend is focused on getting practical about listening to the cry of the earth and the poor. I'd imagine that at this stage your heads are almost bursting with ideas. One word I would like to stress, however, that I haven't heard too much yet, is the power of community. In fact, Pope Francis vision of ecological conversion is very specific. He qualifies it by saying we need a community conversion. For me, this emphasis on community is really the magic ingredient we have been missing. We usually associate conversion experience as something personal - but that is rarely the case. Conversion is almost always something mediated by others, something that happens through others. So, what does it mean for us to convert together? What if all of us, in this entire room were to be converted? What if that process of community ecological conversion was to extend to the entire world of faith communities that still encompass 80% of the world's population? A community conversion involves us repenting together, agreeing follow through in a spirit of synodality, changing institutional structures, making clear plans, and ritualising our changes such as through Season of Creation…. It is extraordinarily powerful.

As people of faith, the how of what we do, the spirit in which we do it, is just as important as the what. Conversion is about stepping into a new reality, about inhabiting that future already and inviting others in. Given the often overwhelming sense of ecological crisis, it can seem at times a hopeless struggle. Yet as parents, as Christians we cannot give up. We have to believe that a new future, that God's kingdom can emerge, that death and destruction is not the end. We have to approach the future in this spirit of hope and renewal, like in the pangs of childbirth.

I am ever grateful for the coincidence of becoming a mother just as Laudato Si' was published. I will end by sharing an encounter that reminded me of this motherly connection. Just last year, on the eve of the Covid crisis, I had the joy of meeting Pope Francis for a private audience with the board of GCCM. Sitting in a circle together we discussed our 'Laudato Si' stories - our personal ecological conversion experiences and how they had sparked a movement. I shared with him the gist of what I shared here - moved by the immense gratitude I feel for this Pope for the gift of Laudato Si'. At the end of our meeting, spontaneously, Pope Francis told us to follow him outside as he wanted to show us something. It was a beautiful tapestry of the birthing of the universe. The tapestry reflected the act of birth: strong, yet gentle hands and a new born baby emerging from the darkness into light. The Pope used the moment for a little catechesis. He explained to us that the tapestry reflects the courage and tenderness with which we need to act today. He then urged us: 'this is how you need to be as we live Laudato Si'. We all need to be mothers.' I felt somehow, my little story of awakening, was perfectly reflected in that moment.