earth watch
Raw sewage, clear streams – and the gospel of the King
Paul Kunert
This week sees yet another instalment in the UK water company saga. In 2023, untreated sewage was discharged for 3.6 million hours into our lakes, rivers and seas.
Only 15% of English rivers are in good ecological health. Who’s going to pay to have them run clear? To teem again with living creatures? Thames, Anglian, United, etc.? Their customers? Their shareholders? (Spoiler alert: As a veteran of a regulated industry, I’m sorry to say, it’s us, the bill-paying customers. Profiteers took advantage of a cheap sale and hands-off regulation to make super-returns. But they’re long gone, together with the cash. Poor policy and regulation time and again leaves customers to pick up the pieces.) And, moreover, what does the gospel of Jesus Christ have to say?
earth watch
How ‘nigh’ really is the end of the world?
Paul Kunert
Well, there you have it! The numbers are in! The award for the hottest year on record goes to… 2024! Beating previous award-winning 2023, it racked up an impressive 1.6 degrees hotter than the pre-industrial average. In fact, the world’s been on a record-breaking streak for some time now: the top ten hottest years occurred in, well, the last ten years.
But we won’t just look back on 2024 as yet another record-breaking year in a long run of unwelcome records. We’ll look back on it as the first year our world breached 1.5 degrees, the so-called ‘safe limit’ of heating.
earth watch
Why aren't Christians leading on climate change?
Paul Kunert
Donald Trump is now President of the most economically powerful nation on the planet and – the President-elect is self-avowedly no friend of God’s creation.
He has signed an order to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change and has pledged to roll back Biden’s clean energy law, the Inflation Reduction Act. And he’s doubling down on oil and gas: ‘Drill, baby, drill’.