Chapter 10
Good Stewardship
In the Westminster Declaration the founders of the movement for Christian Democracy are careful to accept both their fallibility and human weakness. The approach does not moralise but is based on the needs of the whole person, spiritual as well as physical. It is also unambiguous in setting out how we perceive the truth; nowhere more so than in our attitudes towards the heedless plunder of creation the destruction of our own species; the animal kingdom; and the built environment. An approach to politics which measures political success in terms of the quality of our relationships with others and our relationship with the world around us could come to no other conclusion. When they come to assess how well we cared for the created world, future generations will judge successive governments to have been abject failures.
Political Will
In What Kind of Country?1 I talked about the enquiries undertaken by the House of Commons Environment Select Committee into the disposal of nuclear waste and acid rain which took place during my membership of that Committee, between 1983 and 1986. I warned then that we face an environmental catastrophe; that unless we urgently construct de-sulphurisation plants at our coal-burning power stations, fitted catalysers to our cars to cut carbon dioxide emissions, and recognised the dangers to human health from the nuclear industry, we would be poisoned by our own waste. Despite a succession of speeches from the former Prime Minister and the publication of the 1990 Department of the Environment White Paper, it is clear that 'Green' sentiment does not match political reality. Unless more resources are committed to public transport, and less to the private car; unless more resources are put into cleaning-up and conserving energy supplies; and unless every Department of State sees its prime responsibility as the promotion of environmentally sound policies, Britain's air, water, countryside,