20 Nov 07

The colloquium discussed the ethical issues associated with climate change, such as its impact on the developing world Credit: Topfoto

Blackfriars Hall, with assistance from Visiting Fellow Dr Michael Oborne, Director of Multidisciplinary Issues of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), hosted a one-day colloquium looking at ethical responses to climate change from a Christian perspective.

The colloquium, held at Blackfriars on Saturday 17 November, brought together eminent scientists, theologians, policy-makers and economists, to look at sustainable, practical, and virtuous ways forward in addressing climate change.

A range of guest speakers included Professor Sir Brian Heap, a research associate at the Capability and Sustainability Centre, St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge; Professor Diana Liverman, Director of the Environmental Change Institute, Oxford; Professor R J Berry, Professor of Genetics at University College, London; Revd Dr Michael Northcott, Reader in Theology and Christian Ethics, at Edinburgh University; and Councillor John Tanner, Lord Mayor of Oxford.

The colloquium looked at the ethical question in the Christian tradition; sustainability and ethical choice; climate change and development; and the debate over a suitable course of action.

Blackfriars’ Regent Fr Richard Finn said: ‘The conference is part of a wider policy at Blackfriars Hall to promote dialogue between academics from different disciplines and a wider audience who can together reflect on how the Christian intellectual tradition offers insight into contemporary public issues. The challenge facing churches, and society at large, is in giving urgent and sophisticated attention to new moral questions concerning the apparently competing goods of sustainability and economic development.’

Key themes analysed the problem of climate change and its impact on international economic development, and the difference between north and south, and rich and poor, the world dimensions of climate change.

The colloquium posed the question of how to deliver an efficient response to climate change through churches and national political engagement.

The Blackfriars colloquium is supported and sponsored by the MB Reckitt Trust, a charity trust funding projects concerned with Christian social thought and action, the Tablet, the Pastoral Review, the Von Hugel Institute, Cambridge, and the Justice and Peace Commission of the English Dominicans.