Our commitment to net zero carbon 2030

 “This is a social justice issue, which affects the world’s poorest soonest and most severely, and if the Church is to hold others to account, we have to get our own house in order.”

Bishop of Salisbury, Nick Holtam

 

A matter of justice

Climate change hits hardest on the poorest countries and most vulnerable people of the world. Meanwhile the widespread destruction of the natural world is a crisis for creation.

Responding to the climate crisis supports our local mission, witnessing to communities that we care about climate justice, now and for the future.

Archbishop Justin Welby on the Climate Emergency and why Christians need to be at the forefront of taking action to protect the natural world:

Effects of climate change on human populations include:

• Direct health impacts (e.g. heat waves, wild fires, air pollution, weather disasters).
• Health implications (e.g. drought, reduced crop yields, disease).
• Indirect consequences (e.g. impoverishment, displacement/migration, mental health).
• Loss of biodiversity and species extinction.
• Conflict over resources.

In February 2020, members of the Church of England’s General Synod set new targets to reach a point where by the amount of greenhouses gasses released in to the atmosphere as a result of church life are reduced to zero or balanced by removal out of the atmosphere (otherwise known as “net zero”) by 2030.

During the Synod debate, Bishop of Salisbury, Nick Holtam said “Synod has set an ambitious target for the whole Church of England to respond to the urgency of the Climate Crisis.

“To reach Synod’s target of 2030 will not be easy, and requires each of us to hear this as an urgent call to action. But this is a clear statement of intent across the Church and to wider society about our determination to safeguard God’s creation.  This is a social justice issue, which affects the world’s poorest soonest and most severely, and if the Church is to hold others to account, we have to get our own house in order.”

Relating the increasingly intensified effects of climate change to other recent events, Bishop Graham Usher, Lead Bishop for the Environment said “The pandemic has foreshadowed the chaos and destruction that will follow should we not cease our exploitation of the environment, our greed for finite resources and the neglect of our interconnected nature on this precious planet. The Church is called to be a people of hope; to live in harmony with our world; to treasure God’s creation and our brothers and sisters around the globe.”

Carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by humans burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, is the largest contributor to the climate crisis.

It accounts for around three-quarters of the total greenhouse gases that are trapping heat in our atmosphere and contributing to global warming, with devastating consequences for people and nature.

Some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities are currently at the frontline of the crisis, due to the effects of heatwaves, wild fires and droughts, pollution, rising sea levels, storms and flooding.

Over the last decade, the world was on average around 1.2°C warmer than pre-industrial levels.

In January 2024 it was confirmed that 2023 had been the warmest year singe global records began in 1850, by a wide margin.

Global leaders agree we need to limit the increase in the world’s temperature to 1.5°C, to avoid the most catastrophic irreversible effects, as set out in the United Nations’ 2015 Paris Agreement The Paris Agreement | United Nations

To do this we need to reach net zero carbon emissions globally by around 2050, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): AR6 Synthesis Report: Summary for Policymakers Headline Statements (ipcc.ch)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report ‘Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis’ (IPPC AR6) stated that: “Climate change is already affecting every inhabited region across the globe” and that “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”. It adds that “Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.”

Observed changes due to climate change include:

• Each of the last four decades has been warmer than the one before it and any other since 1850.

• Global temperatures in 2023 were 2.12 °F (1.18 °C) above the 20th-century average of 57.0°F (13.9°C). They were 2.43 °F (1.35 °C) above the pre-industrial average (1850-1900).
• The 10 warmest years in the historical record have all occurred in the past decade (2014-2023).
• Globally, average precipitation over land has increased since 1950 with a higher rate of increase since the 1980s.
• Heavy precipitation events have increased in frequency and intensity since the 1950s over most land area.
• Ecological and agricultural droughts have increased in some regions.
• Near-surface ocean salinity has increased.

• Mid latitude storm tracks have shifted towards both the poles since the 1980s.
• Glaciers are retreating and Arctic sea ice has reduced by about 40% in September and 10% in March.
• Spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has reduced since 1950 and the Greenland Ice Sheet is suffering from surface melt.
• The global upper ocean (0-700m) has warned since the 1970s and have become more acidic whilst reducing in oxygen levels at the same time.
• Global sea level has increased by 20cm between 1901 and 2018 with the average rate of sea level rise increasing from a rate of 1.3mm yr^-1 to a rate of 3.7mm yr^-1 in 2018.
• Climate zones have shifted poleward in both hemispheres since the 1970s.
• There has been an average lengthening of the growing season by up to two days per decade since the 1950s in the Northern Hemisphere extratropic region.
• Hot extremes including heatwaves have increased in frequency and intensity across most land regions since the 1950s.
• Cold extremes have become less frequent and less severe.
• Marine heatwaves have approximately doubled in frequency since the 1980s.
• The global proportion of major tropical cyclone occurrences has increased over the last four decades and their point of peak intensity has shifted northward.
• There has been an increase in compound extreme events (e.g. concurrent heatwaves and droughts, storm surges with extreme rainfall or fire weather) since the 1950s.

Increases in greenhouse gasses, including carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O), released as a result of human activities, are known to be causing climate change.

Scientists have shown that levels of these three greenhouse gases were higher in 2019 than at any time in the previous 800,000 years and that these gasses have accumulated in the atmosphere over time as we have increasingly industrialised our world and increased our demand for energy (e.g. to heat our homes and work places and places of worship), products and travel.