|PIC1|Tearfund, the Christian relief and development agency, has called on MPs to pressure the government into doing more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at a new Carbon Dating event Wednesday. The agency also stressed the need for Christians to set the example by changing their own lifestyles.

The Carbon Dating event was organised by the Stop Climate Chaos coalition and saw numerous top politicians move from table to table in a bid to convince around 700 environmentalists that their parties could offer the best way forward in environmental protection and renewal.

Tearfund held a special prayer meeting with worship by one of the UK’s best known worship leaders, Andy Flannagan, to start the event which attracted top MPs including Conservative leader David Cameron, Menzies Campbell, stand-in leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Labour’s Environment Minister, Margaret Beckett.

Politicians, or the political ‘dates’, were challenged by supporters of Stop Climate Chaos representing a broad range of environmental, faith-based and international development organisations.

Tearfund challenged MPs to support the government and call on the UK government to take action internationally to ensure that carbon dioxide emissions peak by 2015.

Andy Atkins, Advocacy Director of Tearfund, warned that unless carbon dioxide emissions began to decline after 2015 – a ‘key moment’ – there will be “no chance that we can as a world avoid the most disastrous effects of climate change,” he told Christian Today.

|TOP|Mr Atkins also called on the government to take action at home by launching a carbon budget alongside the financial budget that would detail precise steps to carry through in the year following to reduce emissions by 3 per cent – the minimum cut needed to bring carbon dioxide emissions to controllable levels.

He also called on MPs to support action abroad for poor people, adding that wealthy nations had contributed to the climate problem already having a massive effect on poor communities according to reports from Tearfund partners.

President of Tearfund, Elaine Storkey, one of the event’s key speakers, emphasised that part of the solution to the climate change problem lay in the hearts of the people.

She stressed that people need to shift the focus away from the individual and individualism to relationships with each other, with God and with God’s creation.

|QUOTE|“We are here to love, to love each other, to love God, to love the climate,” she said. “We need to change all of our mindset away from the individual and back to love.”

She said: “When you begin to love God, each other, then we will have the will to stop climate change and take action.”

Tearfund is appealing for greater aid to the world’s poor communities to “help them adjust to the impacts of climate change that are already happening and to those that will come”, including action on health, water and agriculture, said Mr Atkins.

He also urged Christians to take the lead by getting engaged in the climate issue.

Mr Atkins told Christian Today: “We believe we have a God who created this world and we are harming that creation. We are a part of that creation but we are not the whole part.

|AD|“And we fervently believe that we have a responsibility to be good stewards of that earth and not to plunder it. So as Christians I think we have a right and a responsibility to engage.”

He continued: “So we think it is very important that we as a Christian development agency show that we are willing to engage in this debate to encourage ourselves and our own supporters to take action in their own lives as a matter of integrity if governments are to take that action themselves in the broader society.

“Christian integrity is vital in this. We are asking Christians to get engaged and show their integrity by campaigning, by asking governments to take action, but by taking action in their own lives as well.”

Members of Christian Ecology Link and Operation Noah also turned out to show their support for greater action from the government against global warming.

“We believe we are entrusted with God’s creation,” Ruth Jarman of the CEL told Christian Today. “The human race is failing in that duty,” she added.

“Climate change is because of lifestyles that are not in line with biblical principles, not considering the poor, people with less, not considering future generations,” she said.

She said it was a “Christian responsibility” to take care of the environment.

“We’ve been told to, commanded to care for the earth and look after creation,” she said.