A former environment secretary has called on all Catholics to respond to Pope Francis’ repeated calls to action on climate change.
Lord Deben, former chairman of the UK’s independent Climate Change Committee, told The Tablet: “The battle against climate change is a moral battle. The Pope has given us our marching orders and all of us must respond.”
He was speaking in advance of his lecture, “Gospel Imperative for Climate Action”, to be delivered on Friday at Ampleforth College, a joint initiative between the Catholic Union, the Ampleforth Society and Ampleforth. “The demands of Laudato Si’ are not optional extras that Catholics may take or leave as they wish. These are Gospel imperatives,” Lord Deben said. “We cannot love our neighbour and leave him to be scorched by the sun or destroyed by storm and floods. We cannot love the Lord our God and allow His creation to be destroyed by human ignorance and greed.”
Lord Deben has been a Conservative peer since 2010. As John Selwyn Gummer, he served as Secretary of State for the Environment under John Major.
Last week, he made a dramatic intervention in the High Court by providing a witness statement in support of Friends of the Earth’s legal challenge against the government’s climate strategy. The court is hearing three separate but related legal challenges to the government’s carbon budget delivery plan, brought by Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth and the Good Law Project.
The three organisations believe that the plan, adopted in March 2023, fails to properly account for how it would meet the UK’s domestic climate targets, as required under the 2008 Climate Change Act.
In his witness statement, Lord Deben provided evidence in support of Friends of the Earth’s case. He said that that when the Climate Change Committee had studied the full detail of the plan it was “unconvinced that the government’s programme would achieve net zero by 2050”.
The UK government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said in a statement: “While we cannot comment further on matters that are subject to live litigation, our long-term plans to deliver net zero in a pragmatic way will continue to lower energy bills, create jobs across the UK and reduce emissions.”
Lord Deben’s focus on urgency and effective strategies to address the climate crisis was echoed at last Saturday’s meeting of the National Justice and Peace Network of England and Wales. Around 40 diocesan representatives endorsed a call for systemic change and supported the key points of the 10-day “no faith in fossil fuels” vigil at parliament, organised by Christian Climate Action, which ended the same day. The key points include a call for the UK to move away from the use of oil and gas and reparation to be made for damage caused by climate change in the Global South. Network members were urged to lobby the Catholic dioceses still investing in fossil fuels to disinvest.
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