We should not expect “the kingdom of God” that Jesus preached to be only in the heavens; Jesus preached that it is here, “in your midst”. The fact that Matthew’s gospel called it the “kingdom of heaven” should not mean that Matthew was talking about something different from what Jesus calls it in the other three gospels. It is the same thing. But while Matthew did not intend it to be different from what it is in the other gospels, people have taken it to mean that it is different: that it means what happens after you die. This is not the emphasis Jesus intended, but rather that we should pray: “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (note that in the original Greek there was no punctuation, so a comma between “thy will be done” and on earth as it is in heaven” is not original, and is misleading. Heaven is the model of how things are when God’s will is truly being done. But Jesus teaches us that God does not want for his will to be done only in heaven, but also on earth as well. The injustice of the current world order is something that a Christian cannot sleep easily with. Even more so in the modern world, where we understand how globalization has promoted our consumerist appetites, which are satisfied at the expense of the poor in developing countries.

A Case Study: Mining and Electric Vehicles

One case study, amongst many we could do, involves the relationship between mining and one of the solutions to air pollution being advanced world wide; electric vehicles. If we have stood against the injustice of human trafficking, (as we have done in our diocese), we should expect to apply the same principle when it comes to mining practices in the two thirds world, where human rights violations often are more common than labour laws would allow in Canada. Even here, there can be abuses, but labour and environmental laws are often checked more closely here, than they are in large parts of Africa, for one example among many.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, human rights groups like Amnesty International have documented the practice of children being used as miners for rare earth metals, and cobalt, gold, and many other critical minerals like copper, working under horrendous conditions, which cause disease and early death. Schools that once existed in Katanga province have been demolished so that children will have no alternative but to work as miners to survive. These facts must not be avoided by environmentalists and all who care for God’s Creation. In many cases, in fact, it has been environmentalists, along with human rights organizations, who have sounded the alarm bells about these mining abuses. After over a decade of working on this file, I consider that of the scores of reasons for not buying an electric car, the human rights abuse in mining of cobalt is the most significant moral reason for avoiding one. The other reasons have all either been solved, or else never were real to begin with.

Better Rules are Coming

As shocking to our conscience as these reports are, it would be a mistake to just quickly conclude that there is no hope of change. Human rights organizations have, following the “Blood Diamonds” scandal of Sierra Leone, since the early 2000s, worked on getting international mining companies to consent to checks on ethics abuses in metal sourcing. Since 2010 international companies seeking critical minerals have agreed to more stringent measures on ethical sourcing practices. These pressures have combined nicely with economic forces that just make it more sensible to obtain critical minerals on the same continent on which manufacturing will happen. (-see the Dec. 2022 news release on Canada’s commitment within the Sustainable Critical Minerals Alliance: https://www.canada.ca/en/natural-resources-canada/news/2022/12/countries-commit-to-the-sustainable-development-and-sourcing-of-critical-minerals.html)

This also has the benefit of cost cutting, because ore that is shipped fewer miles mean reduced shipping costs, and reduced emissions from shipping. While manufacturers do not always pass along their savings to the consumer in lower purchase pricing, there is at least a chance that competition may force them to. Especially with China in view, which now produces EVs cheaper and better than any internal combustion engine vehicle in the western world.[i]

Developments we should find encouraging here are many and varied. But because these are good news stories, they don’t make the headlines the way bad news does. Apocalypse sells.

1/ Better Metals Are Coming

The campaigns to require better battery metals, and to show proof that metals have not been obtained through human rights abuse have been at least partially successful.

(i) Cobalt out, → nickel or iron in.

Tesla, for example, no longer uses cobalt in their cars manufactured in Shanghai, their largest factory, since 2022. Other manufacturers also are moving to other battery chemistries. As of Feb. 28th, I see that Congo has paused all export of cobalt for four months, due to oversupply.^[ii] The news of alternative battery technologies that don’t need cobalt has been reducing demand for months; but now demand has dropped off a cliff. The Shanghai stock exchange posts the lowest price for cobalt on record. This may be a temporary market “adjustment”. It may also be a moment when the right kind of intervention could result in more fair mining practices and the return of education for children in Katanga.

The shift away from cobalt is driven partly by innovation. Nickel is replacing Cobalt. Since 2022, many of Tesla’s lithium ion batteries have already been replaced with the lithium iron phosphate chemistry, (LiFePO4) and other automakers make use of it too. The unprecedented pace of innovation is bringing less costly, more powerful, more fire-proof, and longer lasting battery chemistries into production every day.

(ii) Lithium out, → Sodium in.

Many companies are replacing lithium with sodium, which, being right beside lithium on the Periodic Table of Elements, shares some of the same properties. Sodium is even more common in the earth’s crust than lithium, and is easier to extract, making its use more environmentally sustainable. Every litre of sea water has 35 grams of salt (sodium chloride) in it. “This means there are roughly 38.5 quadrillion tons of salt in the oceans.” The supply of it is vast beyond our imagination! The abundance of sodium exerts downward economic pressure on the price of lithium, which has gone down considerably over the past year. Again, this should be good news for cutting production costs of making EV batteries. Hopefully, companies will begin to pass along the savings to the consumer in reduced asking prices. If competition works the way it was supposed to, this could happen over the next two or three years.

Petroleum, by contrast, is far more limited. Estimates of proven reserves suggest 1.6 trillion barrels of recoverable oil remain in the earth’s crust – orders of magnitude less than salt. (www.livescience.com/planet-earth/how-much-oil-is-left-and-will-we-ever-run-out).

Many futurists see salt as the element of the future. it is now clearer than ever that batteries with ever better, and ever more fire proof, and less costly technology are bound to happen. The pace of engineering innovation in the past five years has been moving faster in the field of battery technology than perhaps any field of science in human history. As long as nationalistic use of tariffs doesn’t close down the pace of innovation, the picture could be very hopeful.

(iii) Graphene in → all of them out.

In addition to the cobalt and lithium replacements we are seeing, also the long promised graphene batteries have recently announced breakthroughs that promise actual production models, though these are not as far advanced as sodium ion batteries, and the lithium iron phosphate batteries.

(iv) Solid state in → all of them out.

Solid State batteries have long been promised, but as of this year are now coming into production, in small quantities. Solid state has long been thought to be the “holy grail” of batteries because they cannot catch fire, even when punctured; they promise much higher weight to power ratios; up to five times higher than the best existing batteries today. Several companies are producing semi solid state batteries already this year, with many of the biggest car manufacturers announcing in 2024 that they will begin production of solid-state batteries with five times the energy density of existing batteries in 2025 and 2026. Toyota has long promised mass production of full solid-state batteries in 2027. Most other companies now have announced plans that rival Toyota’s, or else promise even earlier implementation. The exciting result is that we are now more likely to see EVs with range that exceeds the range of Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles in the near future. Several car manufacturers are saying their EVs will have one thousand miles of range within the next two years. Others promise 1,600 miles of range on a single charge. When that happens, the whole discussion of “range anxiety” becomes mute.[iii] A charge at a fast charge station once a month will be adequate; thus, also solving the problem of condo and apartment dwellers whose condos don’t allow EV charging.

Cleaner Mining is now here:

One piece of good news that is often overlooked these days is the fact that previous estimates of future emissions from mining and manufacturing are now rendered obsolete because of facts on the ground: the mining industry as a whole is latching onto the idea of zero emissions mining more rapidly than the car manufacturing industry has done. This is because the economics of it make immediate sense. Mine owners realize that any mining equipment that cuts underground emissions to zero greatly reduces the amount of money they have to spend on expensive, heavy duty HVAC systems. Air quality deep underground has always been a critical concern, as thousands of miners have died from toxic, and unbreathable air. If mining equipment could be emissions free, then the entire process of materials extraction and manufacturing any EV, or anything else for that matter, could also be made entirely emissions free.

According to the online journal Electric Autonomy, we are already there! Recent news releases have reported that Canada now has zero emissions mines in operation as we speak.  (see: https://electricautonomy.ca/automakers/2025-01-08/sandvik-autonomous-electric-loaders-canada-mine/

This fact on the ground is new in the last two years and makes obsolete all earlier estimates of how quickly we could get to net zero emissions. A similar upending of such estimates happened in November 2017, when Tesla unveiled its Semi truck. Up to that time, the most comprehensive study of environmentalist’s plans to get to net zero, Paul Hawken’s 2017 book Drawdown, had concluded that there was “no possibility of zero emissions long haul trucking” before 2050.

Conclusion

The future could be brighter than the apocalyptic scenarios often put before us; at least as far as the availability and workability of climate solutions is concerned. And because of this, I believe it is right for us to persevere in working towards the coming of God’s Kingdom right here “on earth, as it is in heaven” – just as Jesus taught us to pray. This is not a kingdom which, in Jesus’ own view, can wait until after we die. Why would Jesus talk about a kingdom that we can only see after we die? His preaching was always: “the kingdom of heaven is in your midst.”

Katharine Hayhoe, in her 2021 book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case For Hope and Healing In a Divided World, gives scores of signs of hope from her own experience and from around the world. In the midst of often dark and threatening reactions to her message, she remains hope-filled and joyful. As a Christian, this hope infuses her whole life, even though she must bear news from the world of science that is often foreboding. I recommend her work highly. Our lives should reflect, in ways small and large, His life in some measure. As far as environmental impact goes, she recently pointed hopefully to her colleague David Carlin’s study on best practices to minimize our carbon footprint. His research brings together 7000 studies looking at which actions matter the most to reduce household emissions. These top 10 apply for the average Western household, but there’s a lot of variability depending on individual situations.

1. Live Car-Free: Reduces emissions on average 2.04 tonnes CO₂e/year.
2. Switch to a Battery Electric Vehicle: Reduces emissions on average 1.95 tonnes CO₂e/year.
3. Avoid Long-Distance Flights: Reduces emissions on average 1.68 tonnes CO₂e/year.
4. Adopt a Vegan Diet: Reduces emissions on average 0.82 tonnes CO₂e/year.
5. Install Renewable Energy-Based Heating: Reduces emissions on average 1.60 tonnes CO₂e/year.
6. Implement Comprehensive Home Refurbishment: Reduces emissions on average 0.895 tonnes CO₂e/year.
7. Purchase Green Energy: Reduces emissions on average 0.37 tonnes CO₂e/year.
8. Use Public Transportation: Reduces emissions on average 0.98 tonnes CO₂e/year.
9. Limit Consumption of Animal-Based Products: Reduces emissions on average 0.35 tonnes CO₂e/year.
10. Practice Energy Conservation at Home: Reduces emissions on average 0.21 tonnes CO₂e/year.

This list should not be seen as a new “ten commandments”. If you can’t get to your work without a car, then you would have to let go of #1, but #2 is still possible, and more and more affordable and practical each year. If you can’t do #4, you can do #9. These are all possible measures, and the more people who do them, the closer to God’s wisdom we will be living, and thus to God’s Kingdom.

However, any scheme of “do’s and “don’ts” can get us bogged down into a new kind of legalism, and a “holier than thou” attitude. And even if you exercise Christ-like humility in regard to these things, many people may not receive it as such. So, as in all things, the most important thing of all is our attitude. Do we want to know the truth? Truth, not only in the realm we call “spiritual”, but also in the realm we call “physical”?

Where a person’s personal identity is at stake, people often choose what reaffirms the picture of their personal identity that they are comfortable with, rather than allowing God’s Word to change them. Even many Christians are vulnerable to this temptation. To live hopefully is to seek out reasons to see and enjoy positive, life-giving changes and improvements in the tasks of stewardship of God’s Garden. To find reasons to hope that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Among the greatest enemies of humanity is the human tendency, which in German is called schadenfreude: the tendency to want your enemy to fail! It applies even to people we don’t really know, but to whom we are not yet inclined to like. Schadenfreude has a corrosive effect. One could say that social media, in general, uses schadenfreude to push a certain political agenda much further than it would ever get without that appeal to rage and hatred against perceived enemies. Indeed, it is why some politicians employ “rage farming” techniques in their campaigns, with devastating effect.

So then, much more than your ideas about any particular remedy proposed by environmentalists, whether it is vegetarianism, solar energy, or electric cars, or electric anything, we can say that what you want to be true is even more dangerous than what you believe to be true, when schadenfreude is in the driver’s seat of your life. The advance of disinformation on the internet has accelerated the pace of lies and half-truths, exponentially. AI driven algorithms now find out not just what you want to buy, but also what you want to believe, and feeds that to you. This helps explain the rapid rise of neo Nazi, and extremist groups in many countries of the world, and also, sadly, for an increasing number of Christians who have fallen for their propaganda.

Over against the desire to “expose” the evils of electric cars, (largely energized by schadenfreude), we should, instead, aspire to have a discerning, transformed and renewed mind. Saint Paul says: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind….“ (Romans 12:2). Pray for it! When the Holy Spirit moves us, we discover, as we read in 1^st Corinthians 13:4:

“Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.”

The spirit that is urged forward by schadenfreude rejoices in hearing of wrongdoing or failure. This is the appeal of all gossip. The book of Proverbs warns us against the love of gossip in Proverbs 11:13, Proverbs 16:28 and Proverbs 20:19, Proverbs 21:23 Proverbs 26:20. That warning is reinforced in Paul’s letters. St. Paul writes in 1^st Corinthians 13:7:

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…”

All of this, however, is not a call to be naïve. In Matthew 10:16 Jesus says to his disciples:

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”

He is saying we should not throw out our internal lie detectors. In fact “discernment of spirits” is a spiritual gift, which Paul, in 1st Corinthians 12:8-10, encourages us to desire. Basic discernment is something all Christians are called to develop. Hebrews 5:14 teaches that mature believers, through practice, learn to distinguish good from evil. If we practice daily the disciplines of prayer, Bible reading, and listening to “the still small voice” we naturally grow in wisdom, and also discernment.

This is all a call to love: love that never allows hope to die. To always be open to new possibilities, to renewal. For the best of things to break forth. To never rejoice in the failures of others. Never give up hope. Pray for it!

[i] Tariffs may keep Chinese cars out, but what if “protecting” north American cars using tariffs merely ends up making them less competitive in a rapidly changing market? This could, inadvertently, cause the collapse of the very industry tariffs were designed to “protect.” Protecting obsolete technology has never worked out well; as witnessed by the buggy whip manufacturers by the 1920s.

[ii] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-24/congo-suspends-cobalt-exports-for-four-months-amid-oversupply?embedded-checkout=true

[iii] We have not even opened discussion of how much range one needs. People who own an EV and use it often report that they don’t need much more range than their average daily commute, which for most people is no more than 70 kilometers round trip. But all recent EV models have at least 350 kilometers of range, and 480 to 600 kilometers range is becoming more common today.

The post Waiting in Hope: Part 2 appeared first on Dialogue.

If “nature”, or “the Creation” as the Bible calls it, is nothing but dead matter and non-intelligent energy, then why would it “wait with eager longing” for anything at all? It wouldn’t.

Paul describes a more helpful response than is common in today’s world. It is neither bravado, nor cowering in fear. Hope is trust that God will make sense out of our actions, even if the results of this action are not seen quickly (see verse 24). Earlier in Romans, Paul wrote: “endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:4).

Thus, all our responses are fitting for bearers of the gospel; “good news”, not a counsel of despair, or anger, or hatred. The source and model of hope is Jesus himself. The good news is that Jesus has come and has fulfilled all the hopes written in the Law and the Prophets. Jesus said: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Matthew 5:17.) He does not cancel them, but fulfills them, he “fills them up” – that is, he fills up the original intention of what the Law and the Prophets were truly getting at.

Since we believe that the Old Testament spelled out clearly our mandate to “till and guard” the garden, the understanding of the continuation of that mandate is suggested strongly by St. Paul’s message that “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.” That is: those who show themselves by their conduct to be true offspring of the Holy God. From them we shouldn’t expect to find any greed or selfishness in the way they do their work. Paul isn’t talking about multiple Messiahs here. His epistles spell out clearly that all who follow Jesus are “sons” (or daughters) of God; but there is only one Messiah.

Jesus trusted that the church would be the epicentre of God’s kingdom. Yet He did not at all limit the Holy Spirit to the confines of a church or Temple. The Acts of the Apostles disrupts any neat patterns for the order of events for belief, water baptism, and baptism in the Holy Spirit. The Bible gives us reasons to expect that signs of hope will crop up in places where the church does not expect to find them.

Today there is an increasing sense of hopelessness. An increasing number say: ‘everything we do to make the environment better only ends up making things worse.’ Many among them are ‘Generation Z’ in their 20s. Despair is in the ‘zeitgeist’, the spirit of the age. The counsel of despair is the natural human tendency when sources of hope decline. Also, there is increasing backlash against all experts, and with every wave of bad news there is an equal and opposite backlash against bad news bearers, as if they were the cause of bad news. People will generate reasons for “shooting the messenger” in such a time. St. Paul wrote in his first letter to the church in Corinth: “What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” (1 Cor. 15:32)

He recognized that despair doesn’t lead people to more or better action, but rather to inaction and self-destructive behaviours. The resurrection of Jesus gives all a hope for new life to come. In the verses following he compares the resurrection body to a plant growing out from a seed.

I see several reasons for the sort of hope that can and should guide our own individual choices, and way of life.

The ground of hope is God, not technology. Any technological change that merely tinkers with the 20th century’s ways of doing things will not move the needle enough to make the kind of difference we need to see. If all we do is exchange one technology for another, without challenging any fundamental ideas about how we choose to live our lives, then even a massive technological transformation is unlikely to help, ultimately. However, this is not a reason for despair, as some would make it out to be. Instead, we should see it as a challenge to our current assumptions and values. If we are ready to change those basic assumptions and values (and this is what New Testament Greek calls metanoia, ‘to change your mind’, usually translated: ‘to repent’) then we may stand a chance. There is good reason to hope that ‘Gen Z’ finds better ways to live in cities, and makes that the ‘new normal’. In the next article I will go into more specific detail, with examples that give us added hope. Biblical hope is better than simple optimism, and it is better than ‘making lemonade’ out of life’s ‘lemons’ there is a God-given creativity that inspires some to do that, and do better!

Next issue: Part 2 specific reasons for hope.

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A crucial factor to consider before spending any money, is your minimum set back temperature during the week in winter. During the pandemic we realized that any church where the building is not used 163 out of the 168 hours in the week, (think rural churches) then 97% of the heating bill comes from hours when no one is present in the building and human comfort is not an issue. 94% if you have a mid-week meeting. But even with four midweek meetings the lion’s share of your heating bill comes from hours when no one is there. 

A brief survey revealed a range of setback temperatures in churches of our diocese, ranging from +5° at St. Matthew’s, Marlbank, +6° at St. Philips, Milford, (the nave of Church of the Redeemer, Rockport is not heated during the week) to +15° at several urban churches, with an average of +10.5°. While those responsible for church heating plants often maintain it’s necessary to keep heat at +10°, the reasons are not always clear, or appropriate in context. 19th century churches were not heated at all during the week. Many had organs, but no damage resulted. It may be that weekly heating for Sunday services dried the air enough to prevent mold buildup. Mold can grow when there is excess moisture buildup: at around +6°. St. Philips, Milford heats with electric baseboard heaters, which produce dry heat. For them a +6° setback temperature has caused no damage over the past twenty years, nor has +5° caused damage at St. Matthew’s, Marlbank.   

In summer 2020 at St. Luke’s, Camden East(my parish), a professional energy auditor performed an audit producing a detailed 20 page report with pictures, and clear information. By winter’s end 2021, we had added insulation in basement doors where there had been gaps allowing cold air entry. Following quotes from three companies and an electrical panel upgrade (with help from a young electrician who donated his time), we installed a five-ton cold climate heat pump May 2, 2023, for $11,783 installed. Our unit uses the building’s existing hot air ducts, by inserting the hose from the outdoor unit into the existing plenum of the old oil furnace. Night temps were -2° to +5° then, allowing us to test how well the new unit worked. In May-June furnace oil consumption dropped to zero. 

Another advantage of heat pumps is that they are also air conditioners in summer. We were happy to use it for cooling during a funeral on one particularly hot day in June!

Fossil fuel use is both warming the climate dangerously and getting disastrously expensive. Baseboard electric and radiant heaters are relatively inexpensive to buy, but raise monthly electricity bills, (though still less than furnace oil or propane). Cold climate heat pumps (air source) strike the best balance between economical decarbonization of church heating/cooling and the easiest way to finance it. 

Heat pumps come in both ductless and ducted varieties. For churches with air ducted heating systems it makes sense to use them and insert an air source heat pump. For buildings with hot water radiators water source heat pumps are the most efficient solution. The type called “Geothermal” requires extensive digging of trenches and are still very costly. A less expensive alternative is air source to water heat pumps. One brand called “Arctic” has a good reputation for its relative affordability and adaptability to your existing hot water heating system.

Government rebates for homeowners aren’t available for churches, but prices of cold climate air source heat pumps have come down so much that rebates make less difference now.

We invite you to start a church “green team” to research best practices for your context. Then start a fund raiser towards better Creation care!

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