BY ROGER WATSON

We have just entered the season of Lent, forty days during which we prepare ourselves for the zenith of the Christian calendar, the Easter Triduum, when we remember the torturing and execution and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. I know that this season is upon us because Easter eggs and hot cross buns are already on display at Tesco. Of course, I also know that it is Lent because I go to Mass in my local Catholic church.

This is a time when we are supposed to give something up for the duration or deprive ourselves regularly throughout to emulate the forty days of fasting—and temptation—that Jesus faced in the wilderness. This is a time of spiritual preparation; the fasting and deprivation in themselves are only part of the preparation. Some additional spiritual exercises, principally prayer, are encouraged. So far so good.

Then we have CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development)—the subject of a previous article in these pages in the middle of 2022—which gets in on the act and sees Lent as a time to exploit the good intentions of Roman Catholics for political ends. Contained in the hymn book that I was handed at Mass this Sunday, along with the parish notices and the Mass sheet, was the inevitable Lenten envelope from CAFOD. I normally discard these immediately, but I glanced at the envelope this year and saw that it was advocating a Family Fast Day on 3 March, the point of which is that: ‘you can help families around the world to cope with the climate crisis.’ Admittedly, almsgiving is encouraged during Lent and CAFOD is undoubtedly playing on that. The envelope, and I reproduce it exactly as it is presented, has printed on it:

£10 can provide four palm trees to protect Dristy and Rupali’s land from extreme weather caused by the CLIMATE CRISIS.

Dristy and Rupali are two ladies pictured on the envelope on their haunches doing something agricultural among green leafed plants. Their country is not specified but their dress suggests South Asia, where everyone needs our help. Precisely how four palm trees, or even four hundred, is going to protect their land from climate change is not specified nor is which aspect of climate change it is that is causing a problem. Are they getting hotter, colder, flooded, or hit by drought? These things are left to our imagination, and the minimalist message suggests that CAFOD knows well how it can play on the imagination, the ignorance, guilt and the gullibility of the average pew filling and well-intentioned Roman Catholic.

After all, we all know there is a climate crisis. The BBC, the Royal Family and Sir David of Attenborough remind us constantly. Witness the panic when temperatures reached 40 degrees Celsius in the UK last year. What used simply to be called ‘weather’ is now invariably referred to as ‘climate’; we are told to drink more, wear less and stay out of the sun (pretty much what most sensible people do anyway when it is hot); and the meddlers and modellers at Imperial College returned to their computers to enter garbage about changing climate and, in turn, got garbage out. Mirroring the COVID-19 pandemic when we all but expected to see piles of bodies at the ends of our streets, the warm weather was expected to put an end to many a granny if she didn’t take care and stay indoors for yet another prolonged spell. Yes, we all know there is a climate crisis.

But do we all know that climate change, certainly the crisis that is presented, the extent to which we are culpable and the extent to which we can address it is a disputed concept? We rarely hear the other side, without the perpetrator being labelled a ‘climate change denier’ (aka ‘crank’). Sensible, and very well-informed commentators on climate change such as Bjørn Lomborg are given no opportunity to air their views or even to debate on the mainstream media. Yet Lomborg, while sceptical about the causes and the extent of climate change, is a credible scientist who researches his field meticulously and supports his case with hard facts as his recent interview with Winston Marshall shows. Moreover, Lomborg is not a climate change denier, he merely questions—along with many—the wisdom of zero-carbon policies which are costly, damaging and for which evidence of effectiveness is scanty to non-existent.

But back to Dristy and Rupali who, I am sure, have a hell of a life living in a region where extreme heat, drought and then flooding have been regular features of life for centuries. If CAFOD could tell me honestly why they need palm trees (I imagine it is to maintain topsoil and prevent desertification) then I might just send them a tenner. But by both using a spurious issue to gain my attention and using Lent to push a political agenda, they have ensured that my money will go elsewhere. I would write to Pope Francis, but I’m afraid he is part of the problem.

Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.