Climate change

I’ve started watching David Attenborough’s latest documentary series, ‘Seven worlds, one planet’.  The first one deals with Antarctica and shows how warmer ocean temperatures are melting the ice caps in that region at an alarming rate. One graphic illustration of the problem involved a colony of walrus. Each year this colony comes to a particular rocky outcrop in Antarctica to breed. There are thousands of them, so some hardier individuals struggle their way to the top of the hill, some 80m above sea level, to get away from the crowd. The island is normally covered in ice, so when the walrus are ready to return to the water, they go to the edge of the cliff and slide down the icy slope into the ocean. Unable to identify that things were different this year, they threw themselves off the cliff, only to tumble to their death. At the end of the show there were some 200 bodies lying on the rocks below.

Climate change is affecting each one of us too. I was watching the weather news today in Victoria, Australia, and a number of towns in the state had their hottest November day on record. This seems to be happening with monotonous regularity. If you look over weather data for things like temperature, rainfall, wind gusts etc. the record extremes are now mainly contained in the last 10-15 years, rather than being evenly distributed over the last 100 or so years. Weather patterns worldwide are becoming more extreme.

Many scientists and naturalists like David Attenborough are very concerned about the damage to our planet and what the future holds. Despite this, first world nations are unable or unwilling to reach any agreement about reducing our carbon footprint in an endeavor to slow down climate change. Third world developing countries don’t see this as a priority as they struggle to improve living conditions for their people. It feels like we’re on a runaway train rapidly approaching the end of the line.

But don’t despair! God has promised He will intervene before it’s too late. Get out your bible and read Isaiah 35 to see God’s plans to reverse the damage and improve conditions on earth. It will take you no more than 5 minutes and it might just change your life.