Rowan Williams: The world is a gift from God - we must look after it

From a speech on the environment by the Archbishop of Canterbury, given at Lambeth Palace

For the Christian, intelligent, rational action in the world is the expression of a radical and - we believe - truthful "myth": the conviction that what we encounter is gift. This means blessing the world as God's self-communication and asking constantly how we use the matter of the world to reflect the underlying and sustaining act of God. This is why for the Christian the connection between ecology and justice is axiomatic.

For the Christian, intelligent, rational action in the world is the expression of a radical and - we believe - truthful "myth": the conviction that what we encounter is gift. This means blessing the world as God's self-communication and asking constantly how we use the matter of the world to reflect the underlying and sustaining act of God. This is why for the Christian the connection between ecology and justice is axiomatic.

To conscript the resources of the natural world into the struggle for power between humans is nothing new; but what recent decades have made clear is that this process has now reached a point at which the offence against the nature of things is no longer just a matter of moral and theological judgement. It has reached a point at which an offended natural order "rebels", and is no longer able to co-operate with undisciplined human will. The menace of radical climate change is only one instance; but the effects of irresponsible alteration of the ecology of life-forms in specific habitats show the same reality.

We should be able to see that offences against our environment are literally not sustainable. The argument about ecology has advanced from concerns about "conservation". What we now have to confront is that it is also our own "conservation", our viability as a species, that is finally at stake.

And, what is more, in the shorter term, what is at stake is our continuance as a species capable of some vision of universal justice.