Revolutionary Eco Action

Speaking during a Zoom meeting of Dorset clergy and community and charity representatives organised by Bishop Karen, Bishop Nicholas said:

"There is a climate and ecological crisis. We are in an industrial revolution on the way to becoming carbon neutral. New technology that will help us to be carbon neutral. The technology is moving quickly and developing all the time."

He said that the Church had a particular contribution to the morality and spirituality of responding to the environmental crisis and to building community to address the issues. Likening our approach to climate action to the 12 steps used by alcoholics anonymous to bring people to sobriety he said: "I’m Nicholas and I am carbon-dependant."

Talking to the group that included Dorset West MP Chris Loader, the Bishop said that the Church of England’s National Environment Programme was seeing the Church engage, not just with worship and teaching and a strong faith voice, but through community action, ethical investment and the decision by General Synod, endorsed by our Diocesan Synod, for the Church to be net zero by 2030.

The meeting also heard about local engagement with climate action, how agricultural students at Kingston Maurward College near Dorchester had challenged their governing body to be carbon neutral by 2025, and how a community garden project in Poole, that saw a small patch of land turned into a veg patch tended by the local community and run by the church, was reconnecting a neighbour with the environment and each other.