COP-26 climate conference poses ‘big questions’: Derry Bishop

Dr Donal McKeown said this week: “It is easy enough to be angry about what somebody else is doing in the rain forests on the other side of the world. It is easy to be upset about the orangutans and the snow leopards. But we can fail to notice the little ones in our towns and cities who are being crushed by the system and circumstances.”

He added: “Do we simply jump on slogan-led bandwagons, or do we have a distinctive prophetic voice?

“The turbo-charged economic system is not just damaging the equilibrium of nature, but it is also crushing millions of little people. Can we discover a language that defends not just the environment but also the tens of thousands of children who die each day of preventable diseases and the ten million who are prevented from being born each year?”

Bishop McKeown said that, in the Derry Diocese, a group of “dedicated and passionate parishioners have been working on a diocesan strategy to encourage us all to live simply so that others can simply live.”

“We hope to publish that soon. It will mean cutting out waste so that both human society and nature can live in a life-giving harmony,” he added.

The COP26 summit aims to bring global climate change under control. The world is warming because of emissions from fossil fuels used by humans, like coal, oil and gas.

For COP26, 200 countries have been asked for their plans to cut emissions by 2030.