Explainer

Belief

Climate

Comment

Sustainability

13 September 2024

7 min read

Living sustainably doesn’t have to be a burden, here’s the case for action

How not to get hot and bothered about climate change.

Barnabas Aspray

Barnabas Aspray is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at St Mary’s Seminary and University.

A protester holds up a green sign reading: 'It's hard to be green. Kermit'.

Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

The fundamental tenets of Christianity show why Christians are called to love not just one another but all created things.

1. God is love.

2. God created everything.

Therefore, God loves everything he created.

3. God appointed humanity as the guardians of creation.

Therefore, a fundamental part of our identity and calling as human beings is to protect and sustain all that God created.

This lies at the basis of everything Christians believe and do. But a case can be made that is more basic still because it appeals, not to anything distinctively Christian, but to natural human wisdom. The climate crisis is not a Christian crisis. It’s a crisis for everyone who cares about their future and that of our planet. The climate crisis may be something unprecedented in the history of humanity, but the principles that are needed to resolve it are not new at all. Sustainability is not a new or particularly abstruse idea. It is something everyone understands as basic common sense. If I cut down trees faster than they can grow, I won’t be able to do that forever. One day I will cut down the last tree and then there won’t be any more trees, ever again. If I catch fish faster than they can reproduce, then one day I will catch the last fish and then won’t be able to catch any more ever again.

But it’s not only about foresters and fishermen. Since the dawn of humanity, we have been living sustainably – wisely preserving resources and using only what we can replace, so that we and our descendants can continue to live. This applies to everyone regardless of their profession. All of us, if we spend more money than we earn, are living in a way that cannot last for long. If we use resources at a faster rate than we can replenish them, we will run into trouble at some point in the future. Every person possessed of reason and common sense knows this intuitively without having to be taught it. Only someone seriously deluded, foolish, or with some kind of mental health problem fails to understand the need for sustainability in order to have any kind of future at all, let alone a pleasant future.

The call to live sustainably can lead us to feel burdened by a permanent sense of guilt, a feeling that we ought to be doing more than we are...

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We are burning fossil fuels at hundreds of times the rate they can be produced. We are producing plastics that cannot be recycled, meaning we have to dump them in landfills that are growing all the time. We are pouring carbon dioxide into the air faster than anyone can take it out. All of these things mean that there is a time limit on the kind of lifestyles we are all leading now. If we carry on in this way, then one day we will cross a line from which there is no returning. As Mark Scarlata has pointed out, the solution cannot be technological. Even if we find a way to balance carbon outputs with inputs, we are only kicking the can further down the road. Our inability to live within our means will simply resurface somewhere else later on. The problem is spiritual, not technical.

Everyone understands this at some level even if it’s the kind of truth from which we prefer to avert our eyes. The harder problem is to understand why this basic common sense isn’t proving effective. Why are we living collectively in a way that only a foolish or insane person would live, when most of us taken by ourselves are neither foolish or insane?

The problem, at least in part, is that we are all entangled in systems that make it very hard for us to live sustainably. If I am an ordinary Brit living in an ordinary town or city, and I need to buy toothbrushes or nappies or cucumbers or strawberries, I go to the local supermarket: and the only options available are made of plastic or wrapped in plastic that will not decompose for 500 years, and often brought here from the other side of the world using huge amounts of carbon emissions. Most of us are busy people with limited financial resources. We don’t have the time to find sustainable alternatives and often they are too expensive even if we can find them. The societal structures that we live in limit the choices we have. The call to live sustainably can lead us to feel burdened by a permanent sense of guilt, a feeling that we ought to be doing more than we are, but also an inability to see how we could be doing more given all the pressures, needs and constraints on our time and money.

Christians do not naively believe that God will sweep in and fix everything if we just wait. That would be to deny our responsibility, and it is not what hope means.

We are all culprits in part, since we all contribute to non-sustainable living. But we are also partly victims of forces beyond our control, large cultural forces that shape and determine our actions more than we can imagine. We have very little power over those structural forces and currently things do not look good. Common sense principles aren’t working. The climate crisis is only getting worse. So, what do we do?

It is at this point that Christianity has something special to offer to the problem.

First, Christians are never called to be defeatist or to throw in the towel. This is because we are called to an enormous hope, a hope that surpasses understanding, a hope that the world cannot understand because it stands over against all the odds and all the possibilities. This hope is rooted in the conviction that our God is God Almighty, that he has not abandoned his creation, and that he has power to save. He is a saviour. He is the God of our salvation. This is the God we believe in. The climate crisis may look bleak right now, but Christians need never despair or become indifferent. If we do our small part, we can trust that God is in control of what is out of our control.

Secondly, Christians believe that every human being is a free agent with the capacity to choose how he or she will act. Our freedom may be limited by the societal structures that shape and constrain our choices, but it is not destroyed. We can still make choices within those limits to buy and live more sustainably – anything from choosing a holiday destination within driving distance, to giving up beef (by far the worst food for carbon emissions). There is something all of us can do.

Thirdly, Christians believe in a God who transforms hearts and lives, winning them to the power of the gospel and to a new way of living that is free of the shackles that this world – the structures of society – puts on us. This transformation is slow – slower than we would like it to be sometimes. We feel the shackles still gripping us at times. We are not expected to change everything all at once, to become holy overnight. Nevertheless, God gives us the power to change our lives, and to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem. The way towards sustainable living is not to try to change everything at once, but to ask: what one thing can I change in my daily lifestyle that would make it more sustainable? And then once we’ve mastered that and integrated it so we no longer even think about it and it’s just a default, then we can ask: what’s the next thing I can do? All of a sudden what looks like an unimaginable height of transformation, when it is broken down, becomes a series of manageable steps.

Even if we do everything in our power, we cannot by ourselves avert a possible catastrophe. We are small players in a big game. Christians do not naively believe that God will sweep in and fix everything if we just wait. That would be to deny our responsibility, and it is not what hope means. Hope means the opposite: that we continue to fight to avert climate disaster even when it seems hopeless. Christians are called to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. We are called to live in such a way that, if catastrophe comes, it won’t be because of us – to live in hope that our actions are meaningful and worthwhile and that we are in the hands of a God who is far more powerful than the most powerful forces in this world.

Article

Assisted dying

Care

Comment

Politics

9 June 2025

5 min read

Suicide prevention groups are abdicating their responsibility on assisted dying

Not speaking out is a dereliction of duty to vulnerable people

Jamie Gillies

Jamie Gillies is a commentator on politics and culture.

Three posters with suicide prevention messages.

Samaritans adverts.

On Friday, Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill will return to the Commons for a second day of report stage proceedings – when MPs consider amendments. Third reading, when the House votes on the bill itself, is expected to take place the following Friday. Opponents of this controversial bill will be hoping that enough MPs feel uneasy about it to say ‘this far and no further’. They will need around 30 MPs to have changed their minds since a vote last year in order for a defeat of the legislation to be assured.

As politicians have weighed this issue, there’s been a conspicuous silence from one constituency you’d expect to have been outspoken: suicide prevention organisations. People might be surprised to know that Samaritans, perhaps the best-known suicide prevention charity in the UK, a cornerstone of prevention efforts since the 1950s, did not submit evidence on the bill before Westminster or a separate bill at Holyrood. Other groups like Suicide Prevention UK (SPUK) and Papyrus have also been silent. One has to wonder why, given the bearing a law change would have on their work.

Suicide prevention charities and their volunteer counsellors do incredible work. Over the years, millions of people in desperate circumstances have received life-changing support. Today, every person contacting a suicide prevention helpline is told that their life has value, and that there is hope in the bleakest of circumstances. Every caller without exception is also told not to harm themselves. But this couldn’t continue under an assisted dying law. A two-track approach would have to be devised, depending on a caller’s circumstances. A scenario helps to illustrate this point:

Caller: “I am thinking about ending my life”.

Adviser: “Please know that there is hope. I’m here to listen and I can offer support, so you don’t have to make that choice.”

Caller: “Well, I have terminal cancer you see…”

Adviser: “Oh, sorry, I need to put you through to a colleague. Your situation is a bit more, err, complex. You need to know your legal rights”.

Some proponents of assisted dying are quick to dismiss concerns about suicide prevention, arguing that assisted dying and suicide are wholly separate categories. However, this argument doesn’t hold water. Whilst campaigners use euphemistic terminology and employ Orwellian rhetoric about ‘exercising choice at the end of life’, and people ‘shortening their deaths’, it is clear that the bills they promote would permit suicide with the enablement of the state.

An assisted dying law would see doctors prescribing lethal drugs to certain patients which they can take to end their own lives. The dictionary definition of suicide — “the act of killing yourself intentionally” — has not changed. Neither has legislation giving expression to this idea. Logically and legally then, assisted dying involves suicide.

Samaritans is clear on this. A ‘policy brief’ on assisted dying published in November — the most recent statement on the issue by the organisation — begins by saying that it usually applies to terminally ill people and involves “assisting the person who is terminally ill to hasten their own death”, adding: “The act that kills them is performed by the person themselves”. Their death is a suicide, in other words.

You might assume an organisation that says, “every suicide is one too many”, whose stated aim is to see “fewer people die by suicide”, would be opposed to assisted dying - or at the very least concerned about it. However, Samaritans goes on to say that it does not “take a position on whether assisted dying is right or wrong, or on what the law should be on this matter”. Why? Because it “would involve making a range of judgements” that could compromise people’s “perception of our ability to provide non-judgemental emotional support”.

Samaritans and other suicide prevention organisations should be intensely interested in what the law says. The introduction of assisted dying in any part of the UK would mean suicides being condoned and enabled in healthcare settings for the first time — a radical departure from the existing approach. Professionals always counsel against suicide, no matter a person’s motivation for wanting to end their life. Every citizen is precious, and every life worth saving.

Prevention organisations must also realise that a change of this gravity will have a wider impact on culture. Research shows a rise in non-assisted suicides in countries that have introduced the practice. Sending a message that some suicides are permissible might make their prevention work harder. Organisations saying nothing in the face of all this is astonishing.

As noted above, assisted dying poses practical questions as well as philosophical ones. If the law changes, organisations will no longer be able to adopt a universal approach to suicide prevention. A call to a suicide prevention helpline from a terminally ill person will have to be handled differently to a call from a person who is not terminally ill. For some, suicide would be a healthcare ‘right’. How will organisations navigate this? Doesn’t it concern them?

There has been some advocacy from individuals engaged in suicide prevention, if not from organisations. In February 2024 psychiatrists wrote to The Times to warn that the Westminster assisted dying Bill would “undermine daily efforts to prevent suicide”, particularly among the elderly. Louis Appleby, the UK Government’s suicide prevention adviser has also spoken against a change in the law, arguing that it would harm efforts to drive down suicides.

Appleby explained, “once the principle behind suicide prevention has been set aside, once any part of the ground has been ceded — not only to allow suicide but to assist it — we have lost something we may not get back. There are countless causes of irremediable hardship, many reasons people may want to make despairing choices. Could they become exceptions to suicide prevention too?” This principled position is exactly what you’d expect from someone whose job is protecting hurting people, no matter their personal situations.

I’m loath to criticise suicide prevention groups as I deeply appreciate their work. However, by not contributing to the debate on assisted dying, they are abdicating their responsibility to shape a policy that would impact their mission, and the people they serve. A policy that would lead to state-sanctioned suicides and impact culture in profound ways. It’s terribly sad to see groups that fight to end suicides failing to stand against a policy that would harm their work. Failure to speak today may be viewed as a dereliction of duty in years to come.

With a final vote on Kim Leadbeater’s Bill days away, and the decisive vote on Scottish plans not due for months, there is still time for suicide prevention groups to enter the fray. I pray that they will.

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