A Political Theology of Climate Change
Michael S. Northcott
SPCK £19.99
(978-0-281-07232-3)
Church Times
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£18 (Use
code CT643)
THIS is a hugely important book. It is about the end of a
habitable earth, and how to avert that.
Why, though many climate scientists use apocalyptic language
about dangerous global warming (summer Arctic ice will disappear
for the first time in two million years), is climate change such a
low political priority?
Why, since burning coal is such a threat to life, and reduction
in fossil-fuel dependency so urgent, is humanity planning to build
another 2000 coal-power stations?
Why is the UN search for emissions targets so unworkable? Why
are governments powerless to take action? Why, though the G20
agreed in 1999 to end fossil-fuel subsidies, has nothing
happened?
Michael Northcott addresses such contradictions in the course of
his important book on political theology. It is wide-ranging,
immensely erudite, and powerfully argued, in conversation with,
among others, Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant,A. N. Whitehead,
Alasdair MacIntyre, Augustine, William Blake, and (surprisingly)
Carl Schmitt.
Climate change calls in question many assumptions of our
post-Enlightenment rationalist culture of scientific materialism
and free-market economics, in which body and soul, nature and
culture, science and ethics are forced apart. It questions the
supposed "objectivity" of science in Bacon's mechanistic world,
which leads to a view of humanity detached from nature, and driven
to exploit it. Climate change discloses the illusory assumption of
(morally blind) neo-liberal capitalism: that human flourishing can
be achieved by the "corporately sustained engine of economic
growth", when the chief cause of environmental catastrophe is
burning fossil fuels: they need to stay in the ground, and
low-carbon energy should be developed instead.
Humanity once understood itself as being interdependent with the
natural order; now human action is the primary cause of damage to
the planet on which all life depends.
Climate change crosses national borders, and so puts questions
to unrestrained global corporations. Northcott argues for a
recovery of the nation state as the proper authority to regulate
extraction and emissions within its borders. The nation state under
God needs to acknowledge the stark reality that it is constrained
within ecological limits, as well as moral boundaries. Reducing
climate damage will require sacrifices of consumption and economic
growth.
Northcott has given us the benefit of his life's work so far. It
is not easy bed-time reading. The style is dense in places, and it
is sometimes repetitive. But its message is vital, and life-giving,
and should inform the Archbishops' Council's new environment
working group, and the Ethical Investment Advisory Group, as well
as individual Christian disciples and local Christian churches and
communities - and the UK Environment Secretary, and Secretary of
State for Energy and Climate Change also.
Northcott has written political theology. Apocalyptic is
understood in terms of judgement from God - the unveiling of the
true inter-relationship between God, humanity, and the earth. He
criticises Locke's political theology for detaching human values
from their intrinsic derivation from the Creator. The "end of
history" is nature calling time on the freedom of the wealthy to
raid the planet for resources to sustain industrial civilisation,
while forcing increasing numbers into poverty of diminishing food
and water.
The nations are accountable to God for maintaining the
connection between nature, society, and the sacred. The fulfilment
of history is in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and
the gift of the Spirit. The meaning of nature lies in the messianic
gift of suffering love, the recovery of compassion and grace. The
vision that drives Northcott's political theology of the present is
of the divine future in which ultimately the whole of restored
creation worships God - and the centre of that worship is a Lamb on
a throne.
Dr Atkinson is an assistant bishop in the diocese of
Southwark.