The Climate Crisis, Individual Change, and the Abundant Life

Building on last week's message about individual change, this is a reflection about how individual climate action relates to the abundant life promised by God

Last night I facilitated a discussion on the value of faith-based nonviolent direct climate action. Co-organized by myself and members of Last Generation Canada, a national nonviolent civil resistance campaign formerly known as On2Ottawa, it was an exciting evening of exploring with people of diverse faith traditions about what nonviolent climate action means, various forms of it, and the different roles (front-line, support, strategy, etc.) that people can take on. I will share more with you here once my mind has settled and begun to digest what I heard and learned. Suffice it to say that there are many people ready to take nonviolent direct action training (available through Last Generation Canada) and then get involved!

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One of the topics that came up was the value of civil disobedience which disrupts the status quo and interferes with people’s usual routines or sensibilities about what is right and proper, in order to raise the alarm about the climate emergency and the rapidly closing window for mitigation. There was a member of the group who felt very uncomfortable with the idea of blocking bridges and roads (especially in the wake of the 2022 Ottawa “Freedom” Convoy, a right-wing reactionary, violent protest that made international headlines). She expressed more comfort in promoting “care for creation” regarding how people can take individual actions.

As I stated last week here on Substack and elsewhere, no amount of individual action will reduce global heating and mitigate its devastating consequences if the fossil fuel industry does not end. That said, there is still a place for individual action; it needs to go much deeper than care for creation to become a foundational part of a radical discipleship of climate action.

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