Bishop won’t fly for a year
Stephen Brown, Ecumenical News International
Wittenberg, Germany (ENI) — For most of the 150 delegates who travelled to Germany for a gathering of church leaders in historic Wittenberg, the trip was a matter of a few hours, thanks to one of the many low-cost airlines that now ply Europe’s skies.
But for Anglican Bishop Richard Chartres of London, who has pledged to refrain from air travel for a year, as a sign of his commitment to the environment, the journey earlier this month meant a 1000 kilometre train voyage with changes in Brussels and Berlin.
“Travel takes rather longer,” Chartres told Ecumenical News International in Wittenberg, the town where Martin Luther instituted the Reformation. “I left Waterloo [in London] at 7.15 p.m. and arrived in Wittenberg at 9.30 a.m. the following morning.”
Chartres signed a pledge to refrain from all air travel for 12 months during a Stop Climate Change demonstration in London in October.
“I shall not flinch,” Chartres insisted, although he acknowledged the effects of his decision were, at times, “very inconvenient”. Still, “One useful result is slowing down a bit,” he noted. “I think it also focuses the mind on going to things that are really valuable.”
In 2006, Chartres was criticised by Michael O’Leary, chief executive of low-cost airline Ryanair, after the bishop was reported saying it was sinful to pollute the planet by catching a plane for a holiday.
But, the 59-year-old cleric said in Wittenberg: “I’m not preaching to other people. If one is saying ‘cut the carbon’ … one has to be very alert to one’s own footprint. This is a new way of being faithful, of walking lightly on the earth.”
In the meantime, Chartres’ staff have had to reorganise his travel arrangements.
“I’ve refused invitations,” he noted, referring to a request from the Norwegian government to attend an environmental awareness conference in Tromso, the largest city in Norway north of the Arctic Circle. “I can’t get there,” said Chartres, “not in the time I have available.”
He acknowledged doubts that he will be able to keep up his flight-free stance once the 12 months is over. “It comes at a cost, not just financial”, but related also to the efficiency “with which one can do one’s work”, Chartres noted. “But I shan’t go back to flying as much as I did before.”
Respect for the environment, Chartres said, is central to the faith, though Christians have sometimes been “slow on this issue”. His vision is that “every single church in some way or other … is going to be a place where energy is captured from God, the sun, the wind and transformed into energy for the common good.”
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For more on the de-motorization of the human soul see
De-Motorize Your Soul.
3 Comments
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I really admire Bishop Chartres for his stand – its a really practical way for a European to address global warming. For those of us in Australia it is slightly less practical however. 1000kms is less than the distance from Melbourne to Brisbane and we haven’t even left the country! Adelaide to Darwin would take two nights and two full days of train travel and the train ticket is well over $A2000(if you don’t want to sit up the whole way.
We want to care for our environment too – we just have to think of other ways of doing it! With most of the country suffering extreme drought and the water shortages hitting comsumers hard we know that global warming is a reality. Some of us are trying to think about how we can live more sustainably on our part of the planet but how we practically approach the questions is likely to be very different to our northern hemisphere cousins.
Good on you Bishop – great to see a prominent churchman taking such a practical stand!
Regards
Sue Bazzana
Sue Bazzana March 18th, 2007 7:31pm
I think he looks a little like Jack Nicholson.
todd stelmach May 2nd, 2007 8:30pm
No flights for a year? More “window dressing” … unless it develops a real, longterm change in how and why we travel. Hanging the word ‘sin’ on a family vacation … sheesh. On the word “greed” – sure – that I’d understand and that may have been the underlying meaning – I hope.
Grant July 16th, 2007 8:56pm