Oil Fast?

I'm in a quandry. I was all checked in, bags packed, passport in hand, and ready to board my flight to Nairobi and then I decided to check the Christian news sites. The first item I hit on was from an organisation I had not heard of before. Apparently Operation Noah are a Christian environmental agency in the UK and they had the bright idea to call for an "oil fast". When? Tomorrow just as I board the 1020 to Nairobi and listen to those engines roar and look out my window at those graceful wings that will carry me hundred of miles in just a few hours - wings full to the brim with oil. Do I cancel my trip? Do I encourage others to fast while I go ahead with my trip? Why am I special?

I will fly and in fact I don't feel so bad about it. I quite like flying!

But there is a deeper question here. If we are to take environmental questions seriously how much will we allow them to impact our own life style? Do we just go back to hanging about in trees and caves and eating whatever fruit we can find, or is it OK to enjoy a good DVD on a Saturday night and take a drive in the country on Sunday afternoon. We need to be reasonable about all this but we also need to be serious and honest.

In fact this is the first long-haul flight I have made for a while as I have managed to divert some of my business onto Skype - oil free as far as I know. If you are interested I'm off to Nairobi for four days, on to Ethiopia for a few more and then ending up in Cape Town for the Lausanne III Congress. More reports will follow ......

13,589,257

That's how many people had signed the Avaaz petition to world leaders gathered in Copenhagen when I last checked their website earlier this evening. I'm not sure whether that gets them a world record for the largest petition ever but I do know its a lot of people - more than voted for the X-Factor winner! But that's just as it should be, after all the future of our planet is slightly more important that Joe McElderry's singing career.

The petition says, "We call on each of you to make the necessary concessions to meet your historic responsibilities in this crisis. Rich countries must offer fair funding, and all countries must set ambitious targets on emissions. Do not leave Copenhagen without a fair, ambitious and binding deal that keeps the world safe from catastrophic global warming of 2 degrees."

When I logged on to sign I was struck by the single word 'concessions'. In fact it almost stopped me signing. My struggle with the c-word is that it implies that I have a right to burn as much fossil fuel as I like and fill the sky with CO2 but, 'as a concession' to some suffering people in Bangladesh or somewhere I will make a generous gesture and reduce my emissions a little. But this is not about generosity, its about responsibility, and for Christians its about stewardship. However, I'm not naive enough not to realise that the world of politics, especially international politics, is all about concessions and compromises. So for the sake of a result I was prepared to ask our leaders for concessions ... but in my heart I really hope we might see a little more responsibility and even stewarship of God's wonderful creation.