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In this and next week's column, I will try to make the case that the Christian church is the best hope for the renewal of the environmental movement. But first we have to recognize that that movement seems to have run out of steam, at least here in Canada.

There is never a shortage of bad news in the world. Stories of horrific events in Syria and other war zones pour out of our digital devices. The economy, according to reporters, always seems to be on the brink of another major setback.

If there were a contest for the most distressing news in recent months, my vote would go to a feature story in Maclean's magazine. Overtop the photo of David Suzuki, the headline declared that environmentalism has failed.

Just for clarity: Environmentalism is a movement with the goal of preserving the natural environment from human activities that are destroying the ecosystems of the planet. What it has failed to do is to become a force strong enough to improve the global environment. In spite of the successes of the movement's early years — the cleaning up of many rivers and freshwater lakes, the reversal of ozone depletion, and the reduction of car emissions per unit of distance travelled (not the absolute reduction of car emissions, which are a lot higher than in earlier decades) — in spite of those positives, the environment is in greater trouble than ever.

The reason that I vote the failure of environmentalism as the most alarming news of the past year is that the degrading of the environment will result in the slow killing of many people. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, there is going to be more extreme heat in many parts of the world, raising the number of heat-related deaths, though cold-related deaths may decrease. Rising temperatures mean more droughts resulting in food shortages. They also mean more forest fires. Air quality will drop, since rising temperatures increase the impact of air pollution, which is also increasing around the planet. This will increase the number of deaths from respiratory and allergy issues. There will be many drownings of people who live near coastlines as sea levels rise due to the melting of glacial and polar ice, and due to the increase in the number and intensity of tropical storms. These storms are driven by heat in ocean water as well as the heat in the atmosphere.

Why do we have so many environmental problems? In the end we can't just blame government or manufacturers, or the environmental movement, or even the oil industry. We have to look inside. We all want to hang on the fantastic lifestyle that is based on fossil fuels. We love our travel, the array of foods flown in from around the world, the freedom to drive anywhere we want, and the countless gadgets produced in plants that run on electricity from coal and oil, gadgets brought to our doorstep in gasoline-powered delivery trucks. We love making money in our sleep while our investments grow in value, growth based on the availability of cheap oil. We love our heated homes, malls and college.

It's like an addiction. It's not that we don't know how to change. There are plenty of things we could do. But really, who wants to travel less and have less stuff? We believe that our happiness depends on such things.

Is there any hope that we can change before the climate change we are causing destroys the planet further? I don't know. But I do think there is one strategy we should consider. We should consider partnering with the Christian church to change the world — and specifically, to renew environmentalism.

I think that the Christian church offers the best hope for the changes that have to be made. This will sound very surprising to some. But nevertheless, I believe that there are several key aspects to Christianity that make it the ideal basis for making changes that favour the ecosystems of our planet and likely saving the lives of millions of people. I will discuss those aspects in next week's column.
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