No free lunch in Australia's new era

OK. Tomorrow, please God, a new era begins in Australia, of paying our way for the resources we extract, and for what it costs to repair the mess we make of God's good creation. As I was taught when I grew up in conservative Killara, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Actually we humans get a lot for free, but we can't keep messing with nature forever.

The Future ain't what it used to be

I became a teenager a few months before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Then, although the future seemed limitless to us baby boomers, The Club of Rome had already published "The Limits to Growth", the following year Paul Ehrlich published "The Population Bomb", a few years later the West received its first oil shock, and unbeknown to almost everyone Roger Revelle, an American climatologist, was already measuring and correlating annual increases in atmospheric temperature and CO2 concentrations high above the mid-Pacific ocean. Before I'd left teenage-hood Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House's roof. Ronald Reagan had them removed. That symbolises for me the 30+ years we've lost in securing a well-resourced future for all the world's children. Now the future ain't what it used to be, and we are all in danger. I think it is now clear that my baby boomer generation, my parents' generation, and even you Gen Xers and Yers have taken resources from both our and the rest of the world's descendants to fund our own lifestyle. Ironically, however, we are learning that physical living standards, though important, do not by themselves a bright future make. Mahatma Gandhi rightly said that "The Rich must live more simply so that the Poor may simply live", but he of all people knew that "Man does not live by bread alone", and especially not by XBox 360s, Nike trainers and 64" Plasma flat screen TVs.

Ecomissiolog begins

Let's try this out!

I'm a Presbytery minister in the Uniting Church in Australia. My job's to care for ministers in Sydney's west, and the mountains to the west.

At the same time I'm passionate about the environment. I've recently completed a PhD in "ecotheology", looking at how we westerners have affected the waterways of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia's largest (by area) river system, and for some years I've been a presenter for The Climate Project. We presenters present versions of Al Gore's climate change slide show that formed the basis of his Oscar award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth".

And I'm passionate about helping in God's mission on planet earth. For several years during the '80s I worked in a leprosy hospital in south India, and I retain a love for that country, and for other "majority world" countries. I travelled to Jakarta, Indonesia for further training from Al Gore in January this year. In June my wife and I will visit East Timor with a view to helping there some day. And late this year I'll go back to India in my holidays to try to lend a helping hand there.

So, eco-missio-log. "Log", of course, is short for "logos", the Christian "word", which means "message", and also symbolises and names Jesus Christ.

That'll do for now. May God bless you and yours this Easter!

David Reichardt, ecomissiolog.