Fasting for Change

‘Blah, blah, blah’ says Greta Thunberg. ‘Yes, but they just talk and the problem is to get action on the ground’ says Prince Charles of world leaders gathering in Glasgow for COP26. Many fear that whatever happens at this meeting, it will not be enough.

The problem is that doing something and doing what is necessary to avert runaway climate change is not the same thing. What we have learned from scientists is that the planet is like a single human body with complex, interconnected systems of respiration and circulation that support life. This body has limits not determined by us. We have been pushing these limits and are now in a situation requiring intensive care. The treatment needed is exact or the patient will die.

To people caught in a fire it makes no sense to say, ‘Please stay there until we have agreed a policy to rescue you’. If a thousand buckets of water are required to put out the fire, it makes no sense to offer five hundred buckets.

What stands in the way of world leaders taking the decisions necessary to quench the fire? They are in a difficult position. If they do stick to the Paris agreement and commit to meeting its targets, people will be unprepared for the level of social and economic change this will bring. If they don’t, they will be vilified for failing the next generation and destroying the planet.

‘The economy’ is offered as a reason for not moving too fast. We can go some way towards addressing climate change as long as we don’t disrupt ‘the economy’. But the economy is not a fixed thing like a table, it is a complex system of human relationships that parcel out resources to meet human needs. It is this very system that will have to radically change if we are to address the climate crisis. We cannot continue with an economy based on continual growth and limitless consumption, because this is the very system that has brought about climate change in the first place.

We need to take a collective leap of faith, to make the decisions necessary according to science, trusting in our own ability to develop a new system for meeting human needs that is fairer and more in harmony with the natural world. How do we do this?

There are many highly intelligent, skilled people working on what this might look like. We have met some of them as finalists and winners of Prince William’s Earthshot prize. And we know, from international responses to Covid 19, that radical change within a short period of time is possible where there is political will. Closer to home I have learned everything I know about climate change and permaculture from my friend Steve Jones, founder of Sector39.

How can we support world leaders to make the right decisions during the COP26 summit? How can we signal our willingness to embrace the changes that will follow if they do?

I come from a Christian tradition in which there is a rhythm throughout the year of fasting and feasting. Fasting puts us in touch with our most basic human needs for food and water, giving us an opportunity to reconnect with our limits and reminding us of our mortality. Feasting celebrates the natural abundance that is also part of life when, as a society, we are living well and justly.

I propose a consumer fast during the 13 days of COP26 (31 October to 12 November) - a period in which we buy nothing except the bare minimum we need to survive, and in which we consume as little as possible, depending on our particular needs and health. The advertising that fuels our consumer society would have us believe that our needs are endless and ever changing. Our real needs, however, are quite simple: food, drink, warmth, shelter, love and support.

Perhaps places of worship could open their doors to welcome the fast, bringing people of whatever faith and none together to begin the process of building the local communities we will need to enact the required changes? Let us come together to tell our stories of how we got here, who we are now and where we hope to go, weaving ourselves a common narrative out of the threads of our differences that will enable common action. We need to learn how to think about our stories from other perspectives in order to see our own limits and the choices these reveal. Let us begin the work of creating a new economy to meet our real needs and the needs of our planet.

Perhaps, while we are fasting, those of us who do this out of choice might offer the resources we save to support those who are simply hungry and poor, moving us in the direction we need to go towards a fairer distribution of wealth? Perhaps places of worship might coordinate this giving?

Rather than waiting, like children, for our parents to make the right decisions, we might take the situation in hand ourselves and begin the process of change that we all know is necessary.

My own small contribution to this process is a dance theatre film, All Creation Waits, which is being screened in different venues during COP26. It re-imagines the story of St Francis and St Clare in our contemporary world in the midst of our climate emergency. It pays homage to the Pope’s encyclical on climate change, Laudato Si, which calls us all to action. It explores our present predicament as a love story between humanity, St Francis, and the earth herself, St Clare. How does this story end? That is up to us.

For information about the All Creation Waits tour (4-11 November) please visit www.clairehendersondavis.com.

Claire Henderson Davis