38 C in the Arctic yesterday, on 14.12.21

Dear all - to people whose email addresses I have after last night's Zoom.

Bob told us this figure at our meeting yesterday.  He is right.  I heard it announced on Radio 4 later in the evening.  This is really alarming.  All because of our prodigious consumption of finite fossil fuels that are changing the planet's climates for the worse.  Economic growth but ecological disaster.  I'm writing this with no heating in the house but wrapped up warm, as usual.  For the first time in 46 years, I had to fossil-fuel-free mow our tiny patch of lawn in November.  When I do have to drive, I'm driving so fuel frugally I'm getting nearly 80 mpg and, it will have to be my last car.

I proposed that Bob should take up the suggestion that we write an open letter to the WMCA Board for their meeting in January.  I think that was met with approval, with the letter being sent for checking by the rest of us, as Bob wanted.  And we gather to lobby and present the letter to Andy Street at the Board meeting on 14 January 2022.  It starts at 1100 hrs.  We meet at 1030 hrs at the venue to be announced by the CA who will confirm the date.  We must have XR there to provide banners and the band, if someone could invite them, I am suggesting.

THE URGENCY OF THE CRISIS

I am also asking that the letter from us all include our insistence that the CA abandon, immediately, the massive £500 m of greenhouse gases (GHG) for 10 Kms of the Wednesbury to Brierley Hill "bus on rails" tram extension (WBHE) on the 120 Kms Worcester to Derby mainline through Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and south Staffordshire.  There has only been preparatory work and no track laid, in over two years.  Any cancellation fees are easily worth paying because of the enormity of the blunder in wrecking the Black Country Mainline that is needed to take freight and passenger trains from the "at capacity" railway lines and stations in Brum.  What the TfWM/CA is doing is the most colossal oversight in putting light rail (LR), very light rail (VLR) and ultra-light rail (ULR) on a heavy rail line "of national strategic significance" (DfT letter, 8 March 2018), here:

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

 6 scandals on the 40th anniversary of the W Mid...

Best wishes

This I Believe

Faith is very much part of the problem when even Bible-believing Christians insist that when the Lord comes again He will make a new heaven and a new earth and all will be well. It leads to complacency and a carry on regardless mindset when our lifestyles - our numbers and our activities - are putting the planet's life support systems under such strain.

For them, catastrophic climate change already affecting the poor nations, together with the fast melting of the Arctic ice and, resource depletion just does not impinge upon the far greater issue of an eternity with the Lord. Everything else - even ecocide - pales into insignificance when compared with making disciples, of saving souls, winning all who are to be saved for the Kingdom in the end days. However, this is no longer an adequate response, in my opinion.

Not adequate because our extravagant lifestyles - and warfare, for that matter (Armageddon in the Middle East is biblical and essential and fully supported by the righteous of the Lord, who do so like to help things along!) - is seen as much amongst the Lord's faithful as it is amongst everyone else. There is no difference. Complacency - and scepticism that we need to change our behaviours - is as prevalent amongst the Lord's saved as it is amongst the rest. In fact, for the Lord's people, the certainty of His return takes away any urgency to do anything about over-filling the earth with humans and subduing it to leave less and less in the way of essential resources and habitable land.