first published in weblog eighty eight on Wednesday 29th March 2006

This week The Independent has been putting out supplements on Global Warming. Today it was the turn of its readers. There were two things that struck me. Firstly nearly all the letters, while well-meaning and sensible to the writer, were based on much ignorance. Secondly solutions to global warming fell into three categories: world government must do this, our government must do that and each of us must do our bit and turn off the lights.

The Archbishop of Canterbury was on BBC Radio Four the other day being quizzed about Global Warming and he took much the same tack…although it was good to see him insisting that the Anglican Church had a moral duty to address the problem instead of contemplating its collective navel by going on and on and on about women priests and homosexual curates. But Rowan Williams is missing an opportunity to make Her Majesty’s Church relevant again.

Neither the United Nations, nor David Cameron’s Conservatives nor The Man in the Street can solve the problem of Global Warming. It can only be addressed from outside the mindset…and the institutional structure…that created the problem in the first place. District Councils, County Councils, the Westminster Parliament, The City, Whitehall, Brussels, the World Bank, IMF and WTO, multinational companies…none of these can solve the problem.

But in sharp contrast to every other seat of power in the land Rowan Williams is blessed with an institutional structure that can solve the problem. In doing so, the English Church can act as a beacon for the rest of the world. Villages and urban parishes are capable of cleaning up their own local acts in a way governments can’t.

Parishes can reclaim the power to act on Global Warming within their own boundaries and in collaboration with their neighbours. The Anglican Church could lead the charge. The key to success is not global treaties or legislation or exhortation but working together in local communities across the land and across the world…village by village and parish by parish.

England's Climate & Energy Politics by William Shepherd