Spotlight: Thoughts and Resources on COP26

November 5, 2021

Dear friends,

As I reflect on the first week of the COP26 summit being held in Glasgow, Scotland, I’ve been thinking about the difference between surviving and thriving. Although there has been progress made, such as a commitment by many nations to end deforestation by 2030, there are also so many questions about how – and if – those commitments will be honored. Meanwhile, the thrumming anxiety of so many of us grows louder, as we are daily confronted by an already climate-changed world. And those changes are not evenly distributed, as we well know. It seems that the parts of the world experiencing the worst effects of climate change are often those given the fewest seats (if any) at the negotiating table.

So much of the political and economic rhetoric at COP26 is focused around surviving, and no wonder. We know that the goal of limiting the warming of the global climate to 1.5 degrees Celsius is slipping rapidly away and needs immediate and drastic action to remain a possibility. And yet, what about thriving, about flourishing? When we limit our imaginations to only surviving, we diminish our abilities to imagine a future that includes more than the bare minimum.

At The BTS Center, we’ve been talking about adaptation rather than mitigation, which goes along with thriving beyond surviving (with thanks to my colleague and BTS Program Consultant Peterson Toscano for the language and deepening my understanding of these concepts). Adaptation comes out of a truly theological imagination – believing that it is possible, even in a climate-changed world, to offer deep hospitality, to create structures of justice and equity, and to care for one another and all of God’s creation. We respond with suppleness and hope to the challenges at hand, rather than defensiveness, even though we understand that the way ahead will be hard and heavy, regardless of what happens at a national or international level.

There are many who are responding with imagination to this time and to COP26 in particular. Below you’ll find a poem written in response to COP26 by Rev. Maren Tirabassi, and here you can find a hymn, The Climate is Changing, written by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. Hannah Malcolm, who will part of a public conversation centered on her anthology Words for a Dying World (which will also include contributor Anupama Ranawana) has written a theological reflection on COP26. We hope you will read her words and then join us for the public event on December 16. And if COP26 is stirring feelings of grief for you, we offer the second of our series Lament with Earth in partnership with The Many on December 9.

As we touch in to the happenings at COP26, we hope you will join us in grieving, connecting, and imagining a future of flourishing together.

All the best,

Rev. Ash Temin

Communications Manager, The BTS Center

ash@thebtscenter.org

Words for the beginning of the COP26 Summit

(1 Samuel:3:10)

by Rev. Maren Tirabassi

As they gather in Glasgow

from countries around the world,

more than one hundred and twenty

leaders of countries

will speak the first day, today.

Speak, Earth, for your servants are listening.

For two weeks they will negotiate

ways to cut emissions in half

in the next decade.

Speak, Air, for your servants are listening.

They will name the disasters

of storm and wave, of fire and drought,

of extinctions and hunger,

of melting ice caps, warming water.

Speak, Oceans, for your servants are listening.

Perhaps, like the child Samuel

so long ago,

they will be confused

about the voices speaking to them.

So speak, tears, and speak, children.

Speak, creatures, and speak, trees.

Speak, morning, evening,

and the time in the night

when the light is near to going out.

Speak, Holy One of so many names,

at this Summit

and in all of our hearts.

Rev. Maren Tirabassi, a friend of The BTS Center, has been a local church pastor in the United Church of Christ since 1980 in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. She is the author or editor of twenty-one books. You can find more of her work on her website, and you can listen to a Fireside Chat from last December between Rev. Tirabassi and Allen Ewing-Merrill, Executive Director of The BTS Center, here.

Five days before the start of the COP26 Summit in Scotland, seventy two faith institutions came together to pledge divestment from fossil fuels. As Bright Now reported, it was the largest ever joint divestment by faith communities. The action comes amidst a growing understanding of the moral imperative of divestment, in which organizations remove their financial investments from fossil fuel companies.

As Rev. Fletcher Harper, Executive Director of GreenFaith, said: "In the midst of a climate emergency, fossil fuel divestment is a moral imperative. More and more religious groups – Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish as well as Christian – must continue to add their names to the growing list of divestment commitments, and must also lead the way by investing in ensuring access to clean energy for absolutely everyone – particularly the 800 million people who lack electricity."