I'm still looking at the Old Testament book of Ruth ahead of our church weekend away which starts tomorrow evening! It's amazing how a story that took place about 3000 years ago can still speak today.
So what have I been looking at this afternoon? My Carbon Footprint! How do you get from Ruth to Carbon Footprints you may be wondering. In Ruth chapter 2 we read about a guy called Boaz whose faith clearly touches every area of his life - including business and economics. In the Old Testament God gave laws which would ensure that the poor and the foreigner were provided for - for example when you harvested your wheat you were not to harvest right to the edge of the field but you were to leave a border so that the poor could come and harvest grain there in order to have enough to eat. Or when you picked grapes from your vineyard once you've been through it once you are not to go back and check that you've not missed any grapes - these were to be left for the poor.
So where are the Carbon Footprints you may still be wondering. For many of us who live in 'the west', the 'developed world', the 'first world' or whatever you want to call it, we make choices that have a negative effect on the world's poorest and most disadvantaged people. In 2000 world leaders made some committments aimed at halving world poverty by 2015 (called the Millennium Development Goals). This summer we are half way to 2015 - but we're not half way towards meeting many of these goals. Micah Challenge is one group that is continuing to encourage us to put pressure on our governments to fulfil their earlier committments. And one area of importance is the need to reduce domestic carbon emissions.
According to my visit to an online carbon footprint calculator (there are others - I just randomly chose this one) my personal carbon footprint is about 4200 kg CO2 per year - which is slightly below average. (Some of the values I put in to the calculator were guesstimates). The cost to offset this would be about £30 for tree planting in Kenya or hydroelectric projects in Brazil.
But what to do about reducing that footprint? First thing would be to get the bike back out of the garage where it has been since November!
Then we come onto the whole area of Fairtrade - but don't get me started - that's a whole other blog. If you want to talk re-cycling great - the wormery is going well. After almost 2 months the liquid fertiliser is now being used on the various vegtables growing in the garden.
