The utopian vision of a clean and green planet may be just round the corner if only we could get our act together. Co-operation between the G7 and many countries at the mammoth meeting in Paris this week produced much hot air and did little to reduce the global warming!
Peter Heslam has traced the pollution process from around 1780 when, thanks to steam power production moved from the weaver’s cottage to the factory.
The second industrial revolution came with the availability of electricity and the production of steel. This was followed with Henry Ford’s brainwave – the moving assembly line where work came to workers at the speed the boss dictated!
These three stages provided the wherewithal to expand (amongst other things) our system of education, developed democracy and produced the modern city. They also plundered the planet’s coal, gas and oil supplies polluting land, sea and air in their extraction.
Whilst these continue the next three development stages promise better things.
The computer age started some 60 years ago. This continues to evolve into ever smaller devices dramatically changing how things are done.
Next came the development of the internet with its great fount of knowledge rendering encyclopaedias redundant overnight! The dynamic of digital marketing is still in its infancy but is already transforming how we do business.
The factory is returning to the weaver’s cottage – this time however the cottage could be in Africa as working from home progresses!
And finally, the drive for clean power. One initiative, launched in June 2015, is the Global Apollo Programme. This is a call for a major global science and economics research programme to make carbon-free electricity less costly than electricity from coal by the year 2025.
Another is the plane “Solar impulse”. It left Abi Dhabi in March this year on a solar powered flight to circumnavigate the globe with 13 stops en route. It reached Hawaii in July and is undergoing repairs to the batteries. Its last leg of the journey was the world’s longest solo, solar-powered flight both by time (117 hours, 52 minutes) and distance (4,481 miles).
The drive for clean energy is on! Perhaps this is what was expected of us when our first parents were called upon to be stewards of all that was created, not to exploit it but to cause it to flourish (Genesis Chapter 1 verses 28 to 31).
Some would agree with Abraham Kuyper that God kept hidden the ‘discoveries’ of man until the time was ripe for them to be revealed. This controlled revelation was unfortunately shot through with greed and exploitation at the hands of sinner man.
Neither is it any accident that the great revivals of Christianity followed some of the darkest days of the industrial revolution. God’s hand can be seen in history. It is His – story!
The burning of fossil fuels to release their non-renewable energy is like man’s efforts to get right with God by his own efforts – doomed to end in a mess!
Solar energy, which comes to us from above, could be likened to God’s gift of transforming grace in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, imbuing us with all the energy we need to engage in our task of stewardship of all that he has created St Mark Chapter 16 verse 15).