Christian Climate Observers | Stories from COP29 & Around the World

Stump:

Welcome to Language of God. I’m Jim Stump. 

Hoogerwerf: 

And I’m Colin Hoogerwerf. 

Come with us to June, 1988. A hearing in front of the United States senate. 

[clip from James Hansen testimony]

Stump:

That’s James Hansen, a NASA scientist, who gave some of the first public warnings about climate change. 

Hoogerwerf: 

There’s a lot of places we could have started this story, but this one seems as good as any. As markers go, this is a good one to set off a chain of events that eventually led you and me and about 70 thousand other people to Baku, Azerbaijan.

Stump: 

If listeners don’t know where Azerbaijan is, then you’re in good company. I’m not sure I could have correctly identified it on a map before we made plans to go. It turns out it’s a small country on the Caspian sea, between Russia on the north and Iran on the South. The ‘where’ is easy. The ‘why’—why were we in Azerbaijan—is more interesting and a little longer. To begin that answer, let’s run the clock forward from that James Hanson testimony. 

Hoogerwerf: 

Right. Shortly after that testimony, the United Nations formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the IPCC—and the first report of that group was made in 1990. 

[clip from President George H.W. Bush speech after IPCC creation]

Hoogerwerf:

That of course was president George HW Bush. That first report of the IPCC stated that human activities were leading to an increase in greenhouse gases and predicted a rise in global temperatures and a rise in sea level.

Stump: 

Another 2 years go by and the U.N. gathers in Rio de Janeiro at what has come to be known as the Earth summit. Here’s President Bush again addressing reporters after the summit. 

[clip from President George H.W. Bush speech after Earth Summit]

Hoogerwerf:

Several things came out of the U.N. at the earth summit, and as a warning, almost everything that comes from the U.N. is some form of acronym—so two important ones. First, the UNFCCC.

Stump: 

That’s the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change which is a process that was created with the direct goal of limiting the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. 

Hoogerwerf:

The second acronym is COP—Conference of the Parties.  

Stump: 

The parties are nations that have signed on to that UNFCCC process. And the conferences are just meetings when they all come together. They do that annually in different countries and, except for a global pandemic, they have done it every year for 29 years. As of COP29 there were 198 countries signed on and invited to attend the conference. So that’s a COP. 

Hoogerwerf: 

There are a few other milestones that happened over the course of those 29 meetings that might have more name recognition. The Kyoto Protocol came out of the 3rd COP. And the Paris Agreement, which replaced the Kyoto Protocol came out of COP21 in 2015. 

Stump: 

That’s a whirlwind tour through 37 years and there’s some rich geo-political history that is entirely left out of such a brief summary, but for now it’s enough to connect the dots to our arrival in Baku in November of 2024 at COP29. 

[beeps of scanning entry badge and sounds of conference hall]

Hoogerwerf: 

We had the opportunity to attend COP29 with a group called the Christian Climate Observers Program—or CCOP—which has been bringing Christian leaders to COPs officially for the last 5 years but has roots going back to Paris in 2015. We were not the only representatives from faith communities at COP29 and not the only Christians to show up either, but we hope that our participation helped to show that faith communities care about these issues. Obviously everyone can’t respond to the climate crisis by attending a COP. For one thing, that would end up introducing a lot of new carbon into the atmosphere. 

Stump: 

Yeah, and even just the two of us flying to Baku is pretty carbon intensive. We do offset our travel with carbon credits but of course that’s probably not as good as just staying where we are. It’s a calculation we have to make all the time for everything we do, and most of the time, for little things, especially in a country like the US where we are pretty insulated from the effects of those decisions—of that carbon for example—we can mostly just ignore the calculation. But even if it does enter our minds, then we have to decide which competing values are more important: convenience, cost, experience, opportunity…

Hoogerwerf:

The news cycle around COP29 has mostly faded by now. We’ll give some of the basics of what happened in November, but we’re not really here to give a lengthy report on official proceedings of the 29th Conference of Parties of the UNFCCC. We’ll add some links to some other reporting from COP29 if you want to go deeper there. We chose to make the 56 hour trip to Azerbaijan because we thought we’d find something important in being with 70 thousand bodies, all trying to figure out how to solve the climate crisis.  

Stump: 

And what we’ve really been interested in is how Christians—especially American Christians—can respond to the climate crisis. After spending a week surrounded by people from all over the world, including many people of faith, we heard a lot of stories of hope and resilience. And we realized that their stories—of experiencing climate change and responding to it—helped us to better see the world as an interconnected place where our actions, behaviors, and decisions are connected to the suffering—and so also to the flourishing—of our neighbors around the world. 

Hoogerwerf: 

So we have several stories for you, from different parts of the world. From Central America, Africa, and the South Pacific, as well as some voices from closer to home. We’ll get to those stories in just a bit but we want to build a little more context by going back to COP and the official proceedings. 

Stump:

Right. A COP has several parts to it. The official negotiators work for two weeks on several different problems that have been laid out in previous COPs or in the months prior to meeting. Only a little more than a quarter of people at a COP are official party delegates doing the work of diplomacy in small rooms, and trying to come up with a document that every party can agree to at the end of two weeks. 

Hoogerwerf: 

The rest of the people at a COP are a mix of press and staff and official observers, which is what we were. Observers are welcome to watch some of the official proceedings, but not all of them. But there is also a huge room where special interest groups and all the different countries set up elaborate booths where they hold panels and presentations. That part feels like a conference or maybe like a world’s fair or something. You could go to a COP and never actually watch any of the official proceedings. 

Stump: 

But we were pretty interested in the high level stuff. Walking into the big room where all the countries have a little desk and microphone, with the UN flags up on the stage and all the translation booths in the back of the room, it kind of felt like there was actually a big mechanism of proceedings and bunch of important people trying to fix this problem that often feels so unfixable.

Hoogerwerf: 

Yeah I felt that too. Here was the whole world and all the combined power of national governments working on solutions. For a moment I felt like I could just stop worrying and let the real pros figure this all out. 

Stump: 

So we sat there in that big hall waiting for a session to start… and we waited, and waited some more. Until we learned that it was delayed and might be rescheduled for sometime between 2 and 6pm. Which it wasn’t. 

Hoogerwerf:

[sighing] Yeah. So it turns out that when you bring all the world governments together, things don’t move along very smoothly. Eventually of course some of those big sessions did happen. And there were a bunch of smaller rooms that constantly had meetings going of smaller groups. 

[Clip from COP Session: Thank you very much co-chairs, like others we’ve not had time to really read—]

A lot of this is pretty tedious. 

[Clip from COP Session: —Regrettably, we have also not had a chance to go through it with any detail—like others we have not had time to digest the text—]

Like one we went to where one speaker after another mostly just said that they hadn’t had enough time to actually look at the documents they were supposed to be commenting on. 

[Clip from COP Session: —this is a text that is still long and shared very recently—]

Tell us about some of the meetings you were following.

Stump: 

One of the funniest… well, funny in a sad sort of way… was this working group that simply had to agree on what to say in the report they were supposed to submit about what they had talked about over the last year. And because the COP works on a consensus model, any one country can veto any decision. So over several hours I watched them argue about whether to say in their report what they disagreed about. And one group of countries dug in its heels saying they wouldn’t agree to any report that didn’t at least acknowledge what the substantial issues were that they discussed, and the other group dug in its heels saying they wouldn’t agree to any report that did acknowledge that. So in the end, they couldn’t even submit a report. In the grand scheme of things, that was a pretty minor aspect of what happens at a COP, but it was a microcosm of how anything has to get accomplished.

Hoogerwerf: 

Each COP tends to have some specific goals and topics to focus on. People were calling this COP the finance COP. And the goal was to figure out how to find funding to do the work of climate mitigation and climate adaptation. 

Stump: 

Those are two words that describe two different stages of responding to climate change. Mitigation is essentially trying to stop climate change from happening. That would be things like using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels or changing how we build buildings so they are more efficient. Adaptation is some level of accepting that the climate will be different in the future and adjusting how we live, adapting to that new reality. That could be things like figuring out how to grow salt-water resistant rice in Bangladesh, or even moving entire cities from low lying flood zones to higher ground.

Hoogerwerf: 

Mitigation and adaptation cost money. The estimate on how much money was needed for developing countries to do the work of mitigation and adaptation was 1.3 trillion dollars per year. 

Stump: 

This COP had as its central goal, to agree on how much money developed nations like ours will contribute to that mitigation and adaptation fund. And 1.3 trillion dollars probably sounds like a lot of money to most of us. But there’s some helpful perspective. There are no trillionaires but there are a lot of billionaires (and if that’s any of you listening, you might head over to our giving page). The combined wealth of billionaires in the world is over 14 trillion dollars. So it’s conceivable that a fairly small group of individuals could come together and fund this for at least a few years without too much sacrifice. 

Hoogerwerf: 

And a trillion dollars is not out of the range of what governments work in. The U.S. alone made over 4 trillion dollars available to respond to COVID. And in 2023 the world’s combined defense budget was almost 2 and half trillion dollars. So although 1.3 trillion is a lot of money, it’s within the realm of possibility to solve a very big problem. It’s just what we decide is worth spending money on. 

Stump: 

We’re not going to build up the suspense more than needed here. The outcome of COP29 was that they set a goal of eventually getting up to $300 billion per year, less than a quarter of what is needed. 

Hoogerwerf: 

The developing countries were especially dismayed about the results. This will have real effects on people. 

Stump: 

There was a lot of dysfunction in getting to the result too. As I’ve already mentioned, it seemed like no one could work together. There were many countries actually trying to back track on results from previous years. A big part of this was that the U.S. election had just happened and everyone expected the U.S. to pull out of the Paris Agreement, which has now been announced.  

Hoogerwerf: 

But we told you that we weren’t here to report on the happenings of the official proceedings, so let’s get on to the stories of real people. 

Kalito: 

I am Reverend Michael Kalito, an ordained minister with the Reformed Church in Zambia.

Stump: 

Michael was a congregational minister for 11 years before joining a parachurch organization in Zambia which runs several programs around the country. 

Kalito:

And among the programs that we introduced was the Wise Green Church. It was because of the reality of the effects of climate change in Zambia. 

Hoogerwerf: 

So what are the effects of climate change in Zambia? 

Kalito: 

So the previous season, we suffered the worst drought, where people planted and when the maize—corn, you call it corn—but because maize, the time it was about to begin to tassel and produce baby corn, then a four month drought hit Zambia. And currently, as I speak to you, the country is food insecure. So there have been flash floods in some areas where the rains have rained far beyond expectation. Houses destroyed. There have also been abruptly extreme heats. Then also, for example, we have four seasons in Zambia, but currently see little and predictable. You find it’s a cold season, but the temperatures are above 35 degrees—

Stump: 

He’s talking Celsius of course. That’s over 95 degrees fahrenheit…in the cold season. 

Kalito: 

Which is—it was unheard of. Like sometimes in October, which is the hot season, at one time, it was 13 degrees.

Hoogerwerf: 

13 celsius is 55 fahrenheit. And yeah, I look outside at the Michigan snow and say that’s not so bad, but this during the hottest month of the year when the average temperatures are usually in the high 80s.

Kalito: 

So we can no longer, like, see, okay, the weather patterns have completely changed, completely changed. Then, for example, the rainy season, would expect the rainy season to start around the 24th October. But at times, the rainy season will start first January. So meaning the planting season, because by April, the rains will be gone.

Stump:

This is an important insight for us to hear from people in the developing world, and one we’ll hear over and over. Climate change is not just about temperatures getting warmer (which they are) and sea levels rising (which they are), but for people in the developing world, it’s more about the disruption of predictable weather patterns and seasons. Most of us in the developed world don’t directly depend on this, because our food production is conducted on such a massive scale that the risks are spread out and so far the outcomes even out. We might not get as many Michigan cherries one year because that crop failed, but we can just buy cranberries instead. But for small-scale farmers in the developing world who have to feed their families with what they themselves can grow each year, a single season of crop failure might mean the loss of home, land, or lives. Michael and his community are a tangible example of how the most vulnerable people are experiencing climate change.

Kalito: 

We’ve been trying to hide our heads in the sand that we are not affected. But the thing is, one, we are doing an awareness program because people cannot explain what is happening, but we want them to understand and explain to them say, this is happening because of this. It’s a climate change issue, so to bring about awareness and to help them understand. 

Hoogerwerf: 

The response doesn’t stop at awareness though. They have also started developing tree nurseries. 

Kalito:

So out of these nurseries, we started the tree planting. I know the effects might be not much, tree planting, but we are trying to say, if we try to replant a tree, then it will give—it will make a difference. 

Stump: 

When someone gets married in the church or when someone completes their bible classes or graduates from school they are given a tree to plant. 

Kalito: 

As they grow in their faith, they need also, we realize that they just need also to grow trees for the sake of the environment.

Hoogerwerf: 

Planting trees is an important part of the climate change solution. Trees capture carbon out of the atmosphere, turn it into wood which can be kept out of the atmosphere for decades or even centuries. And along with that provide lots of other important services…erosion protection, shade, food even. But in this case, it’s not just about the trees or carbon capture, it’s also about connecting people to the slow processes of growth and in turn to a different kind of theological idea. 

Kalito: 

There’s been some kind of theology which might not be the right theology, and the concept of saying there will be a time when we leave it, there’ll be a time when we go to heaven, and when we go to heaven, there’ll be no climate change, there will be no carbon dioxide, whatever CO2 emissions, and all that life will be better. So we are trying to move away from that concept of trying to run away from Earth and begin to push yourselves into heaven but realizing to say, “Okay, what needs to happen is we need to change our Earth now.” 

Stump: 

Of course that kind of theological conclusion isn’t confined to Zambia and it needs to be countered with the theological perspective that the Kingdom of God is not some faraway place. “The Kingdom of God is already among you” Jesus said. If that’s really true, then what we do right now, to this place, we are literally doing to the Kingdom of God. Our earth and our lives, and all the creatures here are worthy of care and preservation. 

Kalito: 

He has come to give us life in abundance and that life in abundance—you cannot only begin to hope for life in abundance in heaven because he’s come to give you life in abundance here on Earth. And how do we come to realize it? We come to realize it through changing how we’ve been handling, and of course, changing the concept of dominion. In Genesis, the Lord gave man to have dominion over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea. And one of the things is that, what does Dominion mean? That’s a question that we’ve been asking pastors. Because if God has dominion over us, he does not oppress us. But when you say we have dominion, people begin to oppress—Their concept of like getting a mosquito net, making it into a fishing net. Then you go into the river, use a mosquito net, you get everything along the way: small fish, frogs, what.

Stump:

That’s not giving abundant life to the water.

Kalito:

Not at all, not at all, not at all. 

[music]

Stump: 

Our second story also comes from Africa, just a bit north from Michael, toward the equator, in Kenya.

Omariba: 

My name is Rose Omariba. I’m the Kenyan Chapter Leader for Laudato Si Movement

Hoogerwerf: 

Rose’s trip to Azerbaijan started with something of a premonition. 

Omariba: 

I have two children, 15 and 13, and I used to tell them, I have a feeling this year I will board a plane, but I do not know the destination, so I started putting aside little coins.

Stump:

Rose had never flown before. Through a series of events she got introduced to the U.N. process and learned about the CCOP program and pretty soon she was accepted and had a plan to board her first plane. But she still had to pay the airfare which was not cheap.

Omariba: 

So it didn’t matter how much I said, if it means my mother selling all her cows for me to travel, so be it. And the few people that I knew that were very passionate Africans—and Kenyans are very negative when you are maybe you are fundraising for a trip or a travel to a conference. They are like, “how can we pay you to go and just have fun?” So I really didn’t fundraise. I used my savings, and my family also came in, and they were very excited that their sister is going to Bake, in a country that they’ve never heard of. And in fact, my whole family took me to the airport. 

Hoogerwerf: 

Rose didn’t just randomly apply to come to COP just to fly on a plane. She has founded a company that works on sustainable waste management and has been vocal about working toward climate solutions in Kenya for a long time. Not too surprisingly, the effects of climate change in Kenya are pretty similar to those Michael talked about in Zambia. That’s especially true for the Maasai people, where Rose comes from. 

Omariba: 

Remember, they are pastoralists. They depend on cows, sheep, goats. And in Kenya, we’ve been experiencing unpredictable weather patterns. We used to know the time for the long rains, the time for the short rains, the cold season, the sunny season, but nowadays we cannot predict. If you recall, this year in May, we had to postpone opening of schools for two weeks, because everywhere was flooded, even Maasai, even the posh areas of the country—Runda we call them—water had flooded in all the houses. So you find them like I remember, there is a friend Maasai who became sick, because all his 500 cows died. 

Stump:  

Before we go on we need to address a bit of science perhaps. These effects we are hearing about—droughts and floods and heat waves and unpredictable weather—no single event can be directly blamed on the emissions that come from the power plant that runs my lights…at least when my solar panels are shaded by the Indiana gloom this time of year. 

Hoogerwerf: 

But for many decades now scientists have been able to show that these kinds of changes are caused by human activities. That’s something a huge amount of scientists agree on. There’s a long conversation about how that science works and there are some really great resources on that, specifically from Katharine Hayhoe. If you’re interested, you could start with her Global Weirding series, linked in the shownotes. 

Stump: 

That science often feels abstract; you have to use a large sample size and generalize across a lot of data to produce reliable conclusions about what is happening. It’s hard, though, to feel much in response to generalized data. That’s why hearing from our neighbors around the world about their experience helps to make this problem, this crisis, more tangible and acute. And what’s clear is that our neighbors in Kenya are experiencing some profound hardships. 

Omariba: 

A lot is being done, and a lot needs to be done. In Kenya, we need to have a mixture of all that. And what really is missing? We have good policies, but the implementation, or the people at the grassroots, knowing.

Hoogerwerf: 

Doing the work of advocacy and organizing in Kenya has certain limitations. 

Omariba:

There are different offices in Kenya that you cannot access, because you are normally asked, “do you have an appointment, or do you even know who you are going to see?” But being here, I’ve managed to interact with them.

And now we exchanged personal contacts. It’s not even the official or the office contacts, but the personal contacts. And some of them were like, “when can you come so that we start thinking about how we develop your idea on waste management and the social enterprise?.”

Stump: 

Rose was certainly disappointed in the final outcome of COP29 and will feel those effects more than many of us. 

Hoogerwerf: 

We mentioned that glimmer of feeling we had at the beginning that maybe the U.N. was going to do what needed to be done and help solve this problem. And when it became clear that that wasn’t quite the case, there could have been a big swing into despair. But there wasn’t, at least for me, because of Rose and so many others who helped me realize we already have a group of people solving our problems. It’s just that it’s all of us. And COP wasn’t a failure because it brought these people together to share stories and meet each other and provide access for people who haven’t always had it. 

Stump: 

It seems like many of us in the developed world who take this problem seriously end up becoming discouraged and even thrown into despair, whereas people like Rose who are actually facing the realities of climate change every day respond differently and more productively.

Hoogerwerf:

It might be tempting to think we from the developed world, with our fancy technology and abundant resources, should be teaching those in the developing world how to be effective climate advocates. That’s clearly not always the case. We have a lot to learn from Rose’s wisdom and spirit and perseverance. 

Omariba: 

So what I can urge is the faith community. Let’s not really continue preaching the gospel of heaven, but preach the gospel of people getting converted here where we are seeing, let’s convert into what we are seeing, so that when we preach to people about the heaven that we do not know, we’ve already made our Heaven down here. 

Hoogerwerf: 

Our next story comes from Central America. 

Solano Miselis: 

Hello everyone. I’m Jocabed Reina Solano Miselis. I’m from Panama, from Kunadule people. This is an indigenous people in Panama and Colombia. 

Hoogerwerf:

The Kuna people are an indigenous group who come from the small islands off the Carribean coast of Panama. Alongside the same kinds of unpredictability we heard about in Kenya and Zambia, the people living on these islands are dealing with another problem. 

Solano Miselis: 

Each year, the level of the sea [is] increasing. And then we have the first island, displacement from the island to the mainland, because [of] climate change

Bishop Murray: 

I have seen people who lost their homes and their lives after a flood in times of the year where it should not be flooding. 

Stump: 

This is Bishop Julio Murray, also from Panama and previously the Archbishop of all Central America for the Anglican Church. 

Bishop Murray: 

I have seen the indigenous groups, the Kuna Indians, being displaced because the islands where they live are now under water, and we have seen how they suffer. The land of their ancestors, the land where they bury their ancestors, they cannot go back there, Not even to pray with them or pray for them, or even take flowers to the grave, because it’s underwater. And they have been displaced. They have lost their identity. If they were indigenous, now they are displaced and victims of climate change. 

Solano Miselis: 

And that challenge, a lot is not geographical only displacement. It means more than this. It means for us, for Kuna people, the relationship with the sea, we call the sea grandmother. In my language—because my language is not Spanish, I speak Spanish, but my language is Kuna—it’s called mubili. Mubili means great-grandmother. The sea is our great grandmother. And that is a close relation. 

Stump: 

This might sound a little funny to our ears to call the sea grandmother. The dominant culture in the US doesn’t have the same kind of connections to land and sea, and typically, the American practice of Christianity doesn’t have the same kind of geographical relevance. 

Hoogerwerf: 

That’s not to say that they should just do it our way. In fact, there’s probably a lot we could learn from other cultures and especially from indigenous cultures and how they have connected the practices of Christian faith to land and place. The way they understand how God works and how God relates to humans is through the specific place they come and the stories that have been passed down using place names and metaphors that make sense when, for example, the sea is all around you. 

Stump:

That seems to be how it was for the people we read about in the Bible, who were people deeply connected to a geographical place through generations of history and tradition. So when people are forced to move, besides simply the physical loss of land and homes and memories, there is a cultural and there is a spiritual loss that comes with that. That seems like something we should care about especially when we connect it with our own complicity. 

Solano Miselis:

And I believe the Christian people, we have to respond, to extend our voices as people [who] believe in the creation and in the Creator, and to maintain and to understand what shalom means, what justice means, what it means to live abundant life. And then I think some, maybe a practical way how we can do that is to share with the our churches what is happening because [of] climate change, what is happening in climate justice what is happening with indigenous people, what is happening around the world, and what is our participation in that, and what we can do as a Christian people.

Bishop Murray: 

So migration, flooding, droughts, those are the effects of climate change, and it’s real. And the most important to me is the fact that those that are mostly affected are the most vulnerable, and they are the ones that have the least to contribute to climate change, but they are the ones that are reaping the disaster and the effect of climate change. So I hope that our brothers and sisters back in the US could really adhere and make it their business to get the facts of what does climate change mean? What are the countries? What are the people? Because it’s not only infrastructure that is lost, it is people’s lives that are being affected. 

Scientists and people of faith, we are working hand in hand, because I do believe that we really can do better. We are the cause of what is happening, because creation care was given to us, and God saw that it was good. We haven’t been so responsible in taking care of that which was given to us as a stewardship responsibility. So I hope and pray people can be aware and let’s be part of the solution for we are really being part of the problem.

Stump: 

Our final story comes from another set of islands, these are in the South Pacific. 

Ieremia-Allan 

My name is Litara Ieremia-Allen. I’m named after multiple powerhouses and my different bloodlines, and really honored to hold those names.

Hoogerwerf: 

Litara holds the title of Miss Samoa.

Ieremia-Allan 

Which is a cultural platform for young Samoan ladies to express their cultural pride and be of service to their country. 

Hoogerwerf: 

The South Pacific Islands have been on the frontlines of climate effects. And I realize it can start to get a bit numbing to hear the litany of damages and suffering, but hearing directly from people in these nations reminds us that these are the stories of real people. 

Ieremia-Allan 

A lot of our low lying islands in the Pacific, we’re seeing sea level rise. A lot of them have been predicted in the next 50 years, they’re going to have to move their whole civilization off to bigger islands. So those are the likes of the Marshall Islands. We have a lot of youth delegates here being very vocal about them, specifically in the mobility space. We have our brothers and sisters from Tuvalu who have been very vocal about what they face. For us, we live on a bigger land mass, so what we face in Samoa is constant cyclones. We see flooding happening. We see constant changes of season timing. 

Stump: 

Cyclones are not new, and over time the people and cultures learned to predict and prepare. But the frequency, intensity, and unpredictability of the storms have become overwhelming.

Ieremia-Allan 

We get hit with one cyclone, we recover, and then we get hit with another one, and then we can’t recover, And then we get hit with another one. And so I’ve heard of specific examples in Fiji where one specific village has had to completely move because they have not been able to restore in time, because they’ve been hit with four cyclones in two years.   

Stump: 

Relocation, as we’ve heard, is already an anticipation for some island communities and it is going to become more common than it already is, and all predictions show that it’s going to start happening in more places, whether from extreme heat, sea level rise, increased storms or fires. Relocation will be an inevitability, already is. 

Hoogerwerf: 

And it also costs money. That’s part of what COP29 was trying to figure out how to fund. When people are forced to move, someone will need to build new cities and that’s important to think about. But we don’t want to reduce it just to a dollar amount and say it’s solved once we come up with the money. It’s not just a geographical or a financial problem. 

Ieremia-Allan 

When our oceans and our lands are impacted by climate change, it’s not just affects where we live. It affects everything about us. So when big parties talk about, oh yeah, we can just move, and we hear this whole idea of climate change refugees, right for us, it’s not just being removed, it’s literally removing our soul out of us.

[music]

Hoogerwerf: 

As we heard from Jocabed, for indigenous people and those that have a connection to the land through generations of history, relocation becomes a spiritual dislocation. 

Ieremia-Allan 

When you talk about a displaced people in the Pacific, you’re talking about losing our language, losing our connection to places that we count as family members, and also losing our connection with our elders because we bury them in sacred places. We intentionally keep them close to us. And I know it’s not very familiar for people living in urban areas in the West to bury your loved ones close to you. But for us, we bury our loved ones right outside our house as a means of keeping them close to where we live and where we’ve grown up. And so the impacts of climate change for us are deeply personal. Because 1.5—when we talk about 1.5 to stay alive, it’s not just a nice phrase, it’s literally our livelihoods.

Stump: 

In the United States we have been really isolated from this kind of perspective. We as a nation continue to contribute significantly to the problem, and have mostly been able to insulate ourselves from so many of the effects our actions have had around the world, though in recent years even those have become more obvious. Hearing these stories from fellow Christians around the world helps to make their stories our stories. We ought to feel some solidarity with them.

Ieremia-Allan

There is something in you that goes off in your gut when you are moved by something. And I would just want to encourage anybody who’s listening that God has given you a sense of justice. And so could I maybe ask, why is this so not personal to you? Why is it not a sense of wanting to do right by another? If you proclaim that you follow a higher power, could it be that you’re not connected? Could it be that you’re not educated enough in it? My challenge would be to make it personal to you if you feel removed, read about it, watch a video, visit the place, see it firsthand, and I guarantee you your gut will will tell you that there’s something wrong. So sometimes a lack of compassion comes from a lack of of exposure. So expose yourself to what we’re facing. 

Hoogerwerf: 

When we hear these stories from around the world it is clear that there is a lot of pain and suffering happening already. 

Nassanga:

I know a friend’s family. She’s called Irene. Her parents, her family lost their home due to the earth displacement and the slides. And right now they are currently living in a settlement home, not really so good, because they are really never good. So it’s just a way to survive. You just have to survive.

Hoogerwerf: 

That’s Nassanga Clare from Uganda. 

Wakio: 

Then you find, most of the cows, when you look at the cows, you can even count the bones. You can count, like, 1234, you know, the bones from the stomach. 

Stump: 

That’s Dorcas Wakio from Kenya. And of course there are many stories we didn’t hear too, for example from polar regions where they are also experiencing dramatic climate effects. Stories like these can sometimes have a paralyzing effect or lead to guilt and shame instead of providing energy for action. Those feelings often come out of a place of feeling helpless. The thing is, we are not helpless. Take the last two voices we just heard. Clare and Dorcas are both parts of incredible movements of action and advocacy, led by passionate people who are imagining a better future. Just like Michael, Rose, Jocabed and Litara. And there is a growing movement of Christians taking this seriously closer to home.

Hoogerwerf:

As a part of the Christian Climate Observers Program, we were lucky to share our days with a bunch of young Christians who took time away from school and work to come to Azerbaijan of all places and be a voice for this movement. The whole point of CCOP is to disciple and provide opportunities for these young people so they can bring what they learn back to their own communities. Here’s Lowell Bliss, one of the co-founders of CCOP. 

Bliss:

My experience of the COP is never the experience of the COP, it’s always the experience of these young people, you know, immersing themselves in the COP and I really want them to come away with the sense that Jesus is right there on their right hip. And he is going to take them into the Blue Zone of the climate negotiations. He’s going to take them into their emotions, what they’re feeling about climate change. All of them are very dear to him, and he intends to be a very active presence as they navigate out with what—you know, frankly, is we’re heading into a dark season, but they’re not going to head into it alone, you know. Jesus going to be right there with them. 

Stump: 

At the end of our week together at COP29 we found ourselves sitting on the floor in one of the big passageways in the Blue Zone with several other CCOP participants waiting for the official party delegates to come to final decisions. The staff all around us was beginning to dismantle the signs and the coffee and tea providers were cleaning up shop; it felt like things were drawing to a close. We turned on our microphones to hear what our new young friends thought about things. I think it’s fair to say we felt a kind of  helplessness there waiting for the official news we were all dreading, and yet we didn’t hear helplessness from these young Christians sitting beside us. 

Aislynn: 

None of us can solve it on our own—

Hoogerwerf: 

This is Aisylnn

Aislynn: 

—and it’s a mistake to put all of our faith in government, because I think ultimately there’s a lot of good work going on, on the ground, in different places, and I think each of us is capable of being a part of it if we make it a priority.  

Stump: 

And there’s Ned, a 19-year-old Brit who has been funding his climate work by working at a supermarket a few days a week. We asked him if he thought he’d make a living doing this work: 

Ned: 

I don’t know if I’ll make a living, but I’d like to make a difference somehow.

Stump: 

The first step, in his view, is to find places where this issue brings people together. 

Ned: 

We can’t afford for climate change to be an issue that divides along either political lines or along like based on what your views on social issues are. Because, you know, we need climate activists who are socially conservative or have strong religious views on all kind of issues. So, yeah, I would just say, just try and build those alliances with people who you might not normally agree with on other issues, and try and unite behind climate change, especially as a Christian audience

Hoogerwerf: 

Bea found inspiration in the resilience she saw from indigenous people, including people like Jocabed. 

Beatrice: 

Sitting in on some of the indigenous peoples panels and hearing their stories about the way that floods and droughts have destroyed their livelihoods and not just their livelihood so but these are places that are sacred to them and that hold history for them and are so connected to their families. For them, it’s so much more than like, losing a job, it’s losing identity and that has been heartbreaking to hear, but at the same time, they also are so generous with the fact that they have this, so much knowledge about how to fix this, and are so generous with it and are fighting to help build a better world.

Stump:

And finally, Katie, who is working toward becoming a priest in the Episcopal church. 

Katie:

One of the virtues that I think we all need is just the humility to recognize that in a lot of ways, we’ve profited off of a global system of injustice, and we’re in a much better position than other people, even as we also experience the effects. And so I think we need to adopt a spirit of lament and repentance for that. And of course, repentance, not only includes that lament in that pointing out of what’s wrong, but also that action towards an alternative. And that’s going to take a lot of creativity and a lot of compassion. It’s going to take strong listening skills, as statistically, most Americans are the least likely to feel the effects of climate change, so they’re going to need to be really humble and listen well to the needs of other people, make sure that they can prioritize those again, that compassion coming through there.

Stump: 

COP29 is over and nearly forgotten in the news cycle. COP30 will be in Brazil at the end of 2025 and the UN will take these questions up again. Maybe some listeners will even be inspired to apply to the CCOP program and bring their voice to Brazil. But there are things we can do right now. 

Hoogerwerf: 

There are decisions we make every day—little things like how much energy we use in our homes, how often we choose to drive instead of walk, bike or take public transit. There are bigger, harder challenges like changes to our diets or facing the temptations of consumerism. None of these changes that you make as an individual will change the weather patterns in Zambia or stop the sea levels from rising. But I wonder if that’s not the only reason to make some of those changes?

Stump: 

Yeah, I wonder if a little bit of suffering might be good for us too? I’m not suggesting that suffering for its own sake is good and should be sought out. But changing some elements of our lifestyle will involve some suffering — change is always hard. But I can’t help thinking that these changes might ultimately be good for us too. It turns out that living more simply, using less, buying less, wasting less, is actually pretty good for us. It is good for us physically and mentally, but it is also good for us spiritually. I really believe that. But I also want to be careful that we don’t somehow spin this into being primarily about us and what we get from these experiences and these stories from others around the world. I hope we might identify with them and form a kind of solidarity with them in the sense that we recognize what happens to us is not separate from what is happening to them. Increasingly we must all see that we are in this together.

Hoogerwerf: 

If we really do see the world that way, seeing all of humanity, maybe even other creatures, as in this together, then we have to take the sorrow and despair along with the hope and the joy. That’s a complicated place to be, but I think it’s better than living alone in despair or even some with a sort of false optimism. 

Stump: 

Right. It’s never so simple as to reduce a big event like the COP and our experience of it to one thing. I think it’s safe to say that the official outcome of the COP was not very encouraging to most of us, but there was tremendous encouragement from the people we met and the stories we heard. The more we all learn to live in that tension, the more we can imagine and then bring about a realistic future where we all flourish and live the abundant life Jesus called us to.

Hoogerwerf:

Language for God is produced by BioLogos. BioLogos is supported by individual donors and listeners like you. If you’d like to help keep this conversation going on the podcast and elsewhere, you can find ways to contribute at BioLogos.org. You’ll find lots of other great resources on science and faith there as well. Language of God is produced and mixed by Colin Hoogerwerf, that’s me. Our theme song is by Breakmaster Cylinder. BioLogos offices are located in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the Grand River Watershed. Thanks for listening.