Guest post by Kyle Meyaard-Schaap
CHANCES ARE PRETTY GOOD that you’ve never heard of COP 21, but don’t despair—you’re not alone. Ask the average American what COP 21 is, and you’ll likely get some combination of blank stares and guesses about new reality shows on FOX (mental note: Google contact information for CEO of FOX).
It’s mostly only nerds like me who have heard of COP 21 and think it matters, but here’s why I think that should change—especially for Jesus-followers.
COP 21 stands for the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Okay, catch your breath… COPs are basically annual standing meetings where the world has agreed to gather together and to try to hammer out a binding agreement to do something about climate change. These standing meetings have occurred every year since the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change went into effect in 1994, hence December 2015 will see the 21st meeting occur in Paris. And this one has the potential to be huge, because the last global treaty on climate—the Kyoto Protocol—is due to expire at the end of the year.
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These meetings have almost always hugely disappointed, but there is good reason to believe that this one could be different. For the first time since global negotiations began, the US has shown a willingness to actually participate in the process instead of obstructing and walking away from it. In November of 2014, the US announced that it had reached an historic agreement with China to limit carbon emissions, thereby breaking the logjam that had, only a few months prior, made any sort of agreement between the world’s top two emitters inconceivable. A week after this announcement, the US again made headlines by announcing that it would contribute $3bn USD to the crucial Green Climate Fund. These announcements utterly stupefied experts, advocates, skeptics, and pundits alike, and unexpectedly resurrected hope for a global accord on climate.
And how fitting a term for it: resurrection. As a Christian, I follow a resurrected Lord; a God who refused to give up on a rebellious creation, but instead chose to enter its brokenness in order to wrench it around from the inside. A God who declares all things good and who is making all things new. There is no doubt that climate change has become one of the most divisive and politicized issues of our time, and perhaps especially so in the church. Christians have all too often allowed their discussions about climate change to be co-opted by ideologies of fear and division—but it does not have to be so. If we Christians allow ourselves to be directed not by fear or political talking points, but by our divine calling to be both stewards of Earth and lovers of neighbor, the common ground in the church on climate change becomes expansive. We can again begin to value the good creation of a good God and can take necessary steps to care for it and for the people that are degraded by its degradation. And even when all hope seems lost, we will not fear, for we are a people who remember well another time when all hope seemed lost. We are people formed by the knowledge that it is in the deepest darkness of the third-day tomb that God brings about his most unexpected purposes. We are a resurrection people.
What if the Conference in Paris at the end of the year, rather than joining the infamous ranks of Durbin and Copenhagen, goes down in history as something different? Paris: When the world, spurred on by the acts of good faith from the US, China and others finally came together and got serious about climate change. Paris: When Christians of all stripes put their differences aside and stood united in their witness to the reconciling power of the risen Lord of creation. Paris: When the reality of the resurrection was made palpable to a broken and groaning world.
Kyle Meyaard-Schaap is a third year M.Div. student at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. He is pursuing ordination in the Christian Reformed Church in North America. On top of his studies, he works at the Office of Social Justice for the Christian Reformed Church as Creation Care Coordinator, working with churches to educate themselves about the biblical themes of stewardship and creation care. He lives in Holland, Michigan with his wife, Allison.
