Product Description

Is our God too small?

* Do we truly acknowledge the biblical God, who is Creator and Sustainer as
well as Redeemer - a much bigger God than the one who cares merely about me
and my personal faith and behaviour?

* Do we really love our neighbours - the powerless one in a less developed
country as well as our friend next door?

* And what about our own family: are we stealing from our children and
their children - damaging the only world we have through global climate
change, never mind polluting our neighbours' environment, using up
non-renewable resources like fossil fuel, indulging in industrial and
agricultural practices that permanently harm land and water?

* We want to `make poverty history' - but are we squandering so much
capital that we are making this impossible?

This book offers a Christian approach to living now in the expectation that
tomorrow will come - a Christian framework for sustainable development,
written by some of the world's experts on the subject. It is a guidebook
for living in such a way that we will be better able to give a positive
account for our treatment of the talents entrusted to us, when we face the
divine Judge of all the earth.

The contributors are R. J. (Sam) Berry, Dave Bookless, John Bryant, Flavio
Comim, Joanne Green , Donald Hay, Sir Brian Heap, Margot Hodson, Sir John
Houghton, Sir Ghillean Prance, David Stafford and John Wibberley.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #598297 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From the Publisher
This volume offers a Christian framework for sustainable
development of the earth's resources. The contributors include some of the
world's experts on the subject. Based on the joint Christians in Science,
John Ray Initiative and Victoria Institute conference in 2005.

About the Author
R.J. (Sam) Berry, FRSE - Professor of Genetics, University
College London 1978-2000

Dave Bookless - Director of A Rocha UK

John Bryant - Professor of Cell Biology, Exeter University 1985-2002

Flavio Comim - Coordinating Lead Author of the Millennium Assessment
Project; Director of the Capability and Sustainability Project at St
Edmund's College, Cambridge

Joanne Green - Advocacy manager for Progressio; previously Senior Policy
Advisor on Water and Sanitation with Tear Fund

Donald Hay - acting Pro Vice Chancellor for Planning and Resources in the
University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford

Sir Brian Heap, FRS - Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society 1996-2001;
Master of St Edmund's College, Cambridge 1996-2004

Margot Hodson - Chaplain, Jesus College, Oxford

Sir John Houghton, FRS - Chairman of the Scientific Panel of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1988-2002; Director-General of
the Meteorological Office 1983-91

Sir Ghillean Prance, FRS - Director of the Royal Botanic Garden 1988-99;
Scientific Director of the Eden Project

David Stafford - Managing Director of Enviro-Control, Ltd

John Wibberley - Professor of Agriculture at the Royal Agricultural
College, Cirencester until 1989; Visiting Professor in International and
Rural Development, Reading University 1994

Excerpted from When Enough Is Enough: A Christian Framework for Environmental Sustainability by R.J. Berry. Copyright © 2007. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Extract from ... Chapter 4. Thoughts on the sustainability of the
non-human world - Ghillean T. Prance

Introduction

This book is about one of the most important issues facing environmentally
conscious Christians, that of sustainability. The concept of sustainability
has been seriously on the world agenda since the publication of the
Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987).
It was further boosted by wide-reaching environmental initiatives,
especially by the Convention on Biological Diversity and the other
achievements of the 1992 Earth Summit of Rio de Janeiro (such as the
Framework Convention on Climate Change, the excellent Rio Declaration, and
Agenda 21).

There have been various definitions of the concept of sustainability, but
the underlying idea is that present human needs should not be at the
expense of future generations. Perhaps we could learn from the woodland
Indians of eastern North America who consider the effects of
environmentally sensitive actions on the seventh unborn generation.
However, a glance at the use of almost any non-human resource shows we are
far from achieving this sort of attitude. Life in our society revolves
around a four- or five-year term of political office rather than the
long-term future. Moreover, the promotion of the sustainable use of any
resource almost inevitably results in conflicts of interest between the
promoter and those with a short-term interest to use up the resource and
get rich quickly (see Chapter 6). In the process of unsustainable use, the
few usually get rich at the expense of the poor. This involves explicit
ethical and moral questions and is surely where our Christian faith must
enter into the equation.

Dependence on the non-human world

In autumn 2005, the Eden Project in Cornwall opened a new education
building to demonstrate the services that plants and the environment
provide for us and the other organisms with which we share this planet. It
highlights plants at work in a closed environmental chamber, showing a life
support system taken granted by most people, where photosynthesis by plants
provides for the oxygen we breathe, the transpiration of plants influences
our weather, and plants remove toxic substances from our air and water. But
this system is our own life support system. The hope is that this exhibit
will stimulate more respect and care for these unheralded, uncosted and
essential services of the environment.

The living world provides us with much more than these basic services: we
have learned how to use it for shelter, food, medicines, recreation,
symbols of religion and too many other benefits to list here. We take all
this for granted without counting the true cost of abuse and unsustainable
use. Costanza et al. (1997) estimated that the total worldwide value of the
natural processes is $33 trillion. They calculated this on the basis of the
contributions from various ecosystems such as oceans, forests, grassland,
wetlands, lakes and rivers, cropland; and of processes such as pollination
of crops, climate regulation and biological pest control. At present we get
the ecological systems that sustain the Earth for free. But life on the
planet will be unsustainable in the long term if we do not protect these
services; at present we take them entirely for granted. We need to do
something to account for these benefits in our environmental regulations
and tax systems. ...