It's time for God to step in on climate change

The winds of change are blowing in California, where science is trying to recruit and unlikely ally

A ceramic figure is the only thing remaining at the site of this destroyed home in Fredalba, California. The dry Santa Ana winds roll into Southern California from the upper Mojave Desert, setting off car alarms and starting wildfires (Getty)

It is around this time of year that the dry Santa Ana winds roll into Southern California from the upper Mojave Desert, setting off car alarms, starting wildfires and – if you believe the stories – leaving madness in their wake. The Santa Ana winds even inspired a detective story by Los Angeles’ laureate Raymond Chandler, who wrote of nights when “every booze party ends in a fight” and “meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks”.

Were these “devil winds” also at work on Professor Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the University of California? Along with his colleague, Partha Dasgupta of Cambridge University (where a cold wind blows straight from the Urals), the professors have made a plea that shocked the science community. They’re calling for God to enter the debate on climate change.

Writing in the journal Science, the professors point out that “unsustainable consumption, population pressure, poverty and environmental degradation are intricately linked”, but that governments worldwide have so far failed to form policy accordingly. That much is consensus among campaigners, but Ramanathan and Dasgupta go on to propose an unusual solution. They call for “a massive mobilisation by the Vatican and other religions” to “help address common issues for the sake of a common good”.

Religion and the science of climate change might seem strange collaborators, but they shouldn’t. Even in wealthier, urbanised parts of the world, where we’re supposedly removed from the effects of nature, there’s a communal awareness of that “intricate link”. It’s the sort of folk knowledge that isn’t quite science and isn’t quite superstition either.

Ask any primary schoolteacher about the effect high winds have on the behaviour of small children, for instance. Or perhaps you’re one of those people who observed their moods getting bleaker in winter, long before the acronym “Sad” (seasonal affective disorder) was invented. More recently, science has found a link between climate change and conflict, and the coming winter will bring another chance for study if El Niño arrives as predicted. El Niño, incidentally, is Spanish for “the boy”, a respectful reference to the Christ child.

So often are science and religion pitted against each other that it can be a surprise when we’re reminded of the overlap. But Ramanathan and Dasgupta have a point. On the subject of climate change, both should be saying the same thing: we might not yet fully understand the awesome impact of climate on human lives, but we ignore it at our peril.

Groucho Marx got it right

Any Scots disappointed by Thursday’s vote can at least look to The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews for an example of radical change – and only 260 years late. The male-only R&A has just voted to allow women to join, for the first time in its history, and is also offering to fast-track membership for 15 prominent female golfers. Dame Laura Davies said she would “snap their hands off” if offered a member’s card, but I hope she takes note of the Groucho Marx example instead.

Groucho Marx famously didn’t want to belong to any club that would accept him as a member, but he did make an exception when it came to golf. At the height of his Hollywood career, one swanky club was so keen to have him join that – in the same magnanimous spirit as the R&A – it offered to relax club rules banning Jews. The only condition was that Marx must promise not to use the pool. The comedian is supposed to have responded to this “favour” with a further inquiry: “My daughter’s only half Jewish – can she wade in up to her knees?”

He did join a golf club in the end, but not the one with the anti-Semitic swimming pool. He took his membership fees to the Hillcrest Country Club, instead, founded for the Jewish golfers who were discriminated against elsewhere.

Best birth control method

When I was a teenager, reportedly fail-safe methods of contraception included doing it standing up, jumping up and down afterwards, and a can of Coke (which, I’m sorry to say, was not intended to be administered orally). Fortunately, we had Just Seventeen’s agony aunt to keep us (mostly) out of trouble, and while our sex education may have been lacking, at least our general education wasn’t. And the latter, say experts, is the world’s most effective form of birth control.

Why are we talking about contraception? Because a study published this week predicts, with an alarming 70 per cent certainty, that the number of people on the planet will not peak in 2050, as previously suggested. The population will continue to rise, reaching 11 billion by the end of the century. Babies are cute, sure, but in that quantity? They’ll put more pressure on the world’s already dwindling resources, leading to war, famine and all the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

At least there’s something very obvious and, more to the point, ethically uncomplicated to be done. Study after study, anecdotal evidence, and common sense all show that better-educated women have fewer children. Ensuring educational opportunities for girls in developing countries is therefore not only the right thing to do, but imperative for the survival of the planet. And unlike the Coke can method, it won’t lead to a nasty infection.

Sour taste of suffering

It’s been confirmed that Death Row Dinners, the London pop-up restaurant themed around the last meals chosen by prisoners about to be executed, will open – despite a storm of public outrage. And why not? When it comes to the capital’s bar and restaurant scene, crass indifference to the suffering of others is practically a licensing requirement.

At another burger bar in Hackney, customers are reminded that they’re making merry in the same room where the victims of domestic violence once sought refuge, because it’s named The Advisory after The Asian Women’s Advisory Service, which was there before.

And at a restaurant-bar called The Job Centre in Deptford, they’ve even kept the old jobs board as an interior design curio for the benefit of customers who’ve never seen the back of a dole queue. In establishments like these, every glass raised is a toast to the misery of others, whether the patrons chose to admit it or not.