Beyond Fossil Fuels Vigil

Vigil outside Parliament

Well, there was a midwife, a psychotherapist and a solicitor …. No, this isn't the beginning of a joke! These three inspirational (and joyful) women are united in a far from laughing matter: the existential threat to humanity due to climate and ecological breakdown!

They are three of the organising team behind 'Beyond Fossil Fuels Together', a newly-formed independent group that recently organised a two-week 24-hour vigil and fast outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster (I didn't have the privilege of meeting the fourth member as she got Covid at the beginning and I didn't meet her later.)

The Vigil was supported by Laudato Si Animators, with a banner used at the COP26 in Glasgow: 'Stand with the Pope Stand up to Fossil Fuels'. We know that 86% of greenhouse gases are caused by burning fossil fuels. We know that we need to reduce 45% of our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. So, what the group is asking for - no more new licenses for coal, oil and gas, and no more subsidies to fossil fuel companies - would seem like a no brainer, right? Well, that is why we were there to pray and meditate and fast.

The tragic and terrible war in Ukraine has raised questions about the source of our energy supplies. Out of the awful destruction of war, could this be a Kairos moment when we finally make the choice that there is no future for any of us in fossil fuels? Could we once and for all treat the climate emergency like it really is an emergency, as Greta Thunberg has so often urged us to do? Bill McKibben has written that during the Second World War it was all hands on deck and production was speeded up so that so many bombers were made every day. As he points out, wind turbines are so much easier to make than bombers.

As Dr Hoesung Lee (quoted by Dr Carmody Grey in her recent Hook Lecture) has said, what keeps him awake at night, is not what to do, or how we need to solve the climate crisis, but "Why do we not do what we know we should do?"

Last week the temperature in the Arctic was 30C above normal, the Antarctic 40C above normal. God's creation is being destroyed before our very eyes. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said, commenting on the most recent Report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), "humanity is sleep walking towards climate catastrophe". The previous IPCC Report had told us it is Code Red for humanity.

So back to our Vigil and our praying and meditating…. Is there any hope?

Well, for starters, back to the organising team. Jo is the midwife who gave up full time midwifery once she realised the gravity of the climate crisis. She sees her activism as a continuation of her duty of care to the babies she has helped to bring into the world over 30 years. Satya is the psychotherapist, and she did a solitary vigil on the streets of her hometown one hour every day, for a whole year. Melanie is the solicitor and 60-year-old mother of four - and a Catholic - who walked 500 miles to Glasgow as part of the 'Camino to COP'.

As Greta Thunberg says, and which I have found to be true, "Once you act, hope is everywhere". I think of all those others who participated in the Vigil, in person or prayed or fasted at home; all the small conversations that were had, including with a few MPs.

As Satya said, in our conversations about climate change, people are like a bucket with water and we never know at what point that bucket will overflow and that person will get it and be moved to take action.

I have recently been encouraged by a quote of author Marianne Williamson, mentioned by Fr Richard Rohr in his daily reflections. "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."

My hope is that each of us can "step into our power", as Melanie likes to say, and believe another world is possible. And "bring the whole human family together … for we know things can change" (LS 13 and 'Laudato Si Action Platform' - a rallying cry to us all to begin a journey of ecological conversion and action for societal change).

And the dream of Teilhard De Chardin SJ may come true: "The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire."

LINK

Beyond Fossil Fuel Together - https://beyondfossilfuelstogether.info/

Sr Kate Midgley is a Columban Sister based in London.