Friday 30th August Sources: Prayer guide for the care of creation: Londoners Martin Riddiford and Jim “Sacred ” by Charles Reeves have devised a gravity- Eisenstein powered lamp to bring light to homes Green Health Watch magazine Prayers in remote parts of the earth. The Positive News about the GravityLight is powered by filling a bag www.edie.net with rocks and sand, and slowly lowering it towards the ground. Gears Environment transfer the weight into energy, If you would like to receive the prayer creating around 30 minutes of light. diary each month by email (free), please for each day of The pair hopes to sell the lights for email prayer-guide@christian- about £3.22 each to serve as an ecology.org.uk alternative to kerosene, which can take up to 20% of a household’s For further information and requests for August 2013 budget as well as producing prayer, please write or email: dangerous fumes. www.deciwatt.org Philip Clarkson Webb, 15 Valley View, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” Southborough, Saturday 31st August Tunbridge Wells TN4 0SY (Luke 12.34)

Creation Time begins tomorrow and Email: [email protected] “Man did not make the earth, and, though he had lasts until October 4th. It is a time for Website: www.greenchristian.org.uk prayer and action for all the churches. a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his Resources are available from Picture on front cover: Gate by Judith property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator Churches Together in Britain & Ireland Allinson (www.ctbi.org.uk ). In addition, open a land-office, from whence the first title deeds should Operation Noah has prepared sermon Christian Ecology Link Ltd is a company issue.” (Thomas Paine) notes and prayers for use during registered in England and Wales. Administrative Office: Creation Time, combining insights “Debt can endure for ever; wealth cannot, because its from bible passages with themes from 10, Beech Hall Road, Operation Noah’s Ash Wednesday Highams Park, London, E4 9NX physical dimension is subject to the destructive force of Declaration regarding . Company Registration No. 2445198 Registered Charity No. 328744. entropy.” (Frederick Soddy) www.operationnoah.org/creationtime tel: +44 (0) 845 4598460 [email protected]

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Thursday 1st August , and so few by reclaiming climate change can be reached at the benefiting from this except the “Money today is not like bread, fruit or common resources and protecting Paris summit in 2015. farmers; there are no patents, indeed any natural object. It is the sole natural and cultural treasures. “There royalties or licensing fees.” exception to nature’s law of return, is no money in it” is a phrase we constantly hear. Wednesday 28th August which says that all things ultimately Thursday 29th August return to their source. Money does not A new method of growing crops called System of Root Intensification (SRI) Only 10% of rural Haitians and less decay over time, but in its abstraction Saturday 3rd August from physicality, it remains changeless has dramatically increased yields of than 25% of city-dwellers have access or even grows with time exponentially, Why, in a world of plenty, does half many crops without the use of to proper sanitation, leading to high thanks to the power of .” - the world go hungry while the other hybridisation, pesticides, synthetic rates of cholera. Composting human half wastes enough food to feed fertilisers and GM technology. The waste prevents it from entering the Charles Eisenstein in “Sacred them? We pour vast resources into crops include rice, wheat, potatoes, water system, while the high Economics” wars, plastic junk and many other sugar, yams, tomatoes, garlic and temperatures of the compost kills off products that do not serve human aubergines. SRI demonstrates how cholera bacteria. Sustainable Organic Friday 2nd August happiness. Poverty is not due to a lack farmers everywhere can eventually Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL), of productive capacity, nor to a lack of dispense with expensive pesticides founded by Sasha Kramer in 2006, If I asked my bank “I would like £1 willingness to help. Many people and biotechnology in growing their now provides compost toilets to more million to buy this forest to protect it would love to feed the poor, restore crops. Farmers growing rice, instead than 24,000 people across Haiti, from logging. It won’t generate any nature and do other meaningful work, of planting clumps in waterlogged including over 14,000 people still living income, so I can’t pay you interest. but cannot because there is no money fields, now plant younger plants one in camps after the 2010 earthquake. But if you need the money, I could sell in it. Money utterly fails to connect by one 25 cm. apart in dry fields. Sasha Kramer says: “Our mission is to the forest and pay you back the£1 gifts and needs. Why? Careful weeding allows air to get to transform waste into resources. We million”, the bank would have to the roots. Yield increases of 30-45% primarily do that by taking human decline my proposal. But if instead I are now commonplace. Professor waste, which for most people is said: “I’d like £1 million to buy this Sunday 4th August Norman Uphoff of Cornell University disgusting, and transforming into forest, cut and clear it, sell the timber Be with us, Lord, when we go explains: “It is the exact opposite of something valuable. We turn it into for £2 million, out of which I will pay shopping. If we have little money, help the 1960s green revolution which said soil, and then we use that rich you 12% interest and make a tidy us to choose wisely and not to hanker you had to change the genes and the compost to do agricultural and profit for myself”, an astute banker after things we can’t afford. Make us soil nutrients to improve yields. That reforestation projects.” would agree to my proposal. content, in spite of the voices all came at a tremendous ecological cost. www.oursoil.org Money only goes to those who create around us inviting us to spend and in the 21st century must be new goods and services. This is why spend. practised differently. SRI offers so many jobs are to be had by millions of disadvantaged households converting natural resources into far better opportunities. Nobody is

2 11 mineral rights, oil reserves and Monday 26th August Help us if we are well provided with Tuesday 6th August patents. Only if rates of interest move If everyone worked 20% less instead money. Save us from self-indulgence New money is created by debt and, as into negative territory would this of 20% of people working not at all, and extravagance. Help us to such, has no theoretical limit. wealth begin to circulate and benefit unemployment would no longer be contribute to the needs of those who Therefore it is easy for economists to society at large. Intellectual property seen as an unmitigated evil and are hungry. Be Lord of all our lives, believe in the possibility of endless could be returned to the commons by people’s time could be freed up to including our money. exponential growth. But the real world shortening the terms of copyrights and contribute their gifts to society. When Amen. is not like that. Lost in the abstract patents. New sources of wealth such every economic relationship becomes Monday 5th August nature of money, we ignore the limits as the genome and cyberspace a paid service, we are left independent of the real world to accommodate the should be kept in the public domain, of everyone we know and become Before money was invented, gifts growth of money. Moreover, allowing their use only to those whose dependent, via money, on were the medium of exchange. Then technology constantly widens the list aim is to benefit society and the anonymous, distant service providers. money became a convenient means of things available on the market – planet. That is a primary reason for the of connecting gifts with needs. Finally now including intellectual property, decline of community in modern money became an end in itself – the gene sequences and water rights. one thing that is the measure of, and Sunday 25th August societies, with its attendant alienation, Charles Eisenstein describes an loneliness and psychological misery. exchangeable with, almost anything economic system that disallows profit- Father, we pray for all who work else. A billionaire, when asked “How by-owning, yet rewards the closely with the natural world: much is enough?” was stumped for an entrepreneur’s spirit that says: “I know For farmers and gardeners who grow Tuesday 27th August answer. The reason is that we have a way to use it better” and allows that our food; China, the world’s biggest producer of decoupled money as medium-of- spirit free rein. CO2, has drawn up a plan to cap its exchange from money as store-of- For scientists and technologists who value. Aristotle recognised in his probe the secrets of life; greenhouse gas emissions from 2016. Its National Development & Reform “Politics” that wealth-getting for the Wednesday 7th August For foresters who plants and harvest Commission has put forward the plan sake of accumulation bears no limits. “How” asks Eisenstein “can we build trees; to China’s State Council, but experts Increasing doses are required to dull communities when the building blocks indicate that the NDRC’s the pain of unmet needs, but no – the things we do for each other – For artists, poets and photographers amount can ever be enough. How who capture beauty for others to see; recommendations will be accepted. have all been converted into money? Failure to include China and India in many talented people sacrifice their Community is woven from gifts. Unlike For conservationists and all who guard the Kyoto Protocol was cited by the youth hoping for an early retirement to money transactions, in which no the precious heritage of the earth. US as a reason to justify its refusal to a life of freedom, only to find obligation remains after the themselves, at midlife, enslaved to ratify the treaty. China’s proposed cap transaction, gifts always imply future will increase hopes that a legally- money? gifts. Gratitude is the knowledge of

binding agreement on responses to having received and the desire to give in return.

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The Gift Circle developed by Alpha Lo Friday 9th August to give. Everybody I know has so people for time spent caring for the consists of a weekly gathering where Economists describe as “” much to give, and most of them feel elderly. people state one or more things they the costs of production that are paid they cannot because there is no would like to give and one or more money in it. Yet that is not because by someone other than the producers. Friday 23rd August things they want. Witnessing the A head of lettuce trucked across their gifts are unwanted. There is generosity of others, participants feel America from California is artificially much beautiful work to be done. The Greenbelt Festival of arts, faith more and more comfortable giving and cheap because the producer does not Money as we know it fails to connect and justice takes place at Cheltenham receiving. A sense of community pay the costs of aquifer depletion, gifts and needs. Why does everyone Racecourse from today until Tuesday. grows along with the knowledge that if pesticide poisoning, soil salinisation have to work so hard just to survive Its goals include: you give, you will be known as a giver, and other effects of his farming when such needs could be met by a and people will want to give to you in tiny fraction of human labour? It is To present and create a variety of art methods. Oil producers essentially forms – mainstream and challenging, return. operate with free insurance. They get because of the scarcity-inducing nature of money.” established and unknown, large-scale the profits, we assume the risks. In the and intimate. financial sector, the largest operators Thursday 8th August To explore the breadth of Christian can take huge risks knowing that they Thursday 22nd August Because loans carry interest, the will be bailed out if things go wrong. faith, be a catalyst for activism, and amount of money owed is always Externalised costs make activities Time Banks operate without money in encourage dialogue between people greater than the amount of money economical that are actually schemes based on credits and debits of faith and no faith. already in circulation. To make new uneconomical. Deep-sea oil drilling recorded electronically. People who CEL will be there in the G Source tent money to keep the whole system and nuclear power are examples. “I could not otherwise afford the services and need help to staff it for a minimum going, we have to create new goods keep the income and someone else of a handyman, babysitter, of 2 hours. Anyone who would like to and services, such as by selling pays the costs” reflects a mind-set physiotherapist etc. gain access to help, and be considered for a free something which was once free, like where your well-being is help from someone who might ticket, is invited to email Paul converting forests into timber, ideas fundamentally disconnected from otherwise be unemployed. A retired Bodenham at paul@christian- into intellectual property and social mine. In a , your good lady without a car can make beautiful ecology.org.uk giving into paid services. “The fortune is my good fortune and your wedding cakes. A wheelchair-bound imperative of perpetual growth implicit loss is mine too because you will have person who used to train police dogs in interest-based money is what drives correspondingly more, or less, to give. needs her house painted and can offer Saturday 24th August the relentless conversion of life, world puppy training. A retired schoolteacher If I depend on the gifts you give me, it When people are allowed to profit and spirit into money. Completing the used to teaching ceramics needs is illogical to enrich myself by from merely owning something, vicious circle, the more of life we garden maintenance and can offer the impoverishing you. without producing anything or convert into money, the more we need use of her kiln. Japan has a similar contributing to society, wealth is money to live. Usury, not money, is fareai kippu currency which credits hoarded and money ceases to the root of all evil.” (C. Eisenstein) circulate. Examples are land banks,

4 9 economy. 90% of the growth is after centuries of technological Saturday 10th August Forgive us that plants and wild expected to come from private advance, do we find ourselves Venezuela and Bolivia have creatures have gone extinct through vehicles, though improvements can be working as much as ever? And why do nationalised their oilfields, so not our relentless invasion of their homes achieved in cities which promote non- so many people live in daily fear of endearing themselves to investors in Forgive us that we have often valued motorised transport such as bicycles, scarcity? Why has the oft-foretold “age the oil industry. Foreign companies profit more than the care of your walking and new modes of public of leisure” never arrived? still operate the fields and profit from creation. transport. “Motorised traffic has The reason is that, at every the service of extracting the oil, but the significant adverse effects on health, Help us to repent of our ways and turn opportunity, we have chosen to ownership of the oil is no longer theirs. again to you, the only source of all life. contributing to respiratory and produce more goods and services What happens to the money depends cardiovascular diseases from air rather than to work less. We have on politics: it could go towards pollution and deteriorated safety in been helpless to choose otherwise, financing public works or, as in Monday 12th August cities, leading to more than 1.3 million largely because of the spectre of Alaska, the profits could be paid to deaths per year from traffic accidents.” unemployment, with the consequential residents as an annual payment. If the Research by the Green Alliance However, Belgrade, New York and collapse of the economy. So must we principle were extended to other reveals that £180 billion of investment Seoul have all won awards for for ever “kickstart the economy”, commons, such as forests and in infrastructure is at risk because of modernising public transport systems provide more jobs and create new oceans, this could make large uncertainty about the Government’s so as to improve energy security and goods and services, even when we amounts of money available for commitment to low-carbon quality of life. know that we are destroying our only various levels of government to invest developments. If all the £60 billion of home in the process? in public projects, in some cases low-carbon investment planned for the replacing taxes on income. next two years went ahead, it would Tuesday 20th August add 0.7% to GDP by 2015. Offshore “Most men would feel insulted if it was Wednesday 21st August wind projects alone are worth more than four times high-carbon projects. proposed to employ them in throwing Human beings, Eisenstein maintains, Sunday 11th August stones over a wall, and then throwing The president of engineers Alstom UK are born into gratitude: the knowledge Forgive us, Father for the damage we said: “We provided 700 new jobs [in them back, merely in order to earn we have received and the desire to have done to the earth. their wages. But many are no more low-carbon projects] last year, with give in turn. “Far from nudging Forgive us that rivers and seas have another 600 on the horizon. If the worthily employed now.” (Henry reluctant people to give unto others Thoreau) become polluted by the waste of our government delivers its Infrastructure against their lazy impulses, today’s civilisation. Plan, the outlook for jobs, growth and The history of technology is largely the economy pressures us to deny our skills will be bright. From the history of labour-saving devices. A innate generosity and channel our Forgive us that the air has been fouled by the burning of fossil fuels. electrification of railways to offshore bulldozer can do the work of 500 gifts instead towards the perpetuation wind, low-carbon investment can be a lumberjacks. A computer can do the of a system that serves almost no one. real British success story.” work of 500 old-time accountants A sacred economy is one that working with pen and paper. So why, liberates our desire to work, our desire

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Tuesday 13th August another 300 jobs. These two new wind Friday 16th August disappointed that tariffs for non- A report from Oxford University called farms will generate enough power for The EU Environment Committee has domestic installations had still not “Available power from tidal stream almost a million homes and provide placed a cap of 5.5% on the use of been published. It urged the turbines in the Pentland Firth” more than £4 billion of investment. food crops for biofuels and resolved Department to at least confirm which calculates that tidal turbines between Energy Secretary Ed Davies said: “We that biofuels resulting from technologies would be supported Caithness and the Orkneys could have provided certainty early to deforestation above a certain limit will under the non-domestic RHI. generate up to 1.9 gigawatts of onshore and offshore wind investors not be counted as a renewable fuel. electricity – almost half of Scotland’s and now see significant investment FoE comments: decisions being made that will benefit Sunday 18th August electricity needs. It would have to be a “It’s disappointing that a course hasn’t single joined-up scheme so that the UK economy for years to come.” Loving Father, bless the work of your been set to phase out the use of food church , that it may give: turbines do not cancel each other out crops for fuel. Instead MEPs have and the greater energy produced by Thursday 15th August chosen to cap it at a level that is even A sense of identity where there is spring tides could be stored and fed none; According to the European Wind higher than current use. It’s crucial back in at neap tides. Other tidal that when they vote again in stream projects are under Energy Association, since the A refuge to those who feel threatened beginning of 2013, 277 new wind September the current reforms are not by lawlessness or polluted development at Kyle Rhea and Islay, watered down any further.” while the Crown Estate has granted turbines have been installed across surroundings; leases of 14 other sites. Technological Europe, adding 1 gigawatt of capacity A place of belonging where people advances such as floating platforms to the grid. But since then orders have Saturday 17th August may know they are welcomed, are allowing more energy to be fallen off, with only one new project remembered by name and valued as extracted from tidal flows. reaching financial close. “Offshore A Renewable Heat Incentive for individuals; wind is a new industry that creates householders has been announced jobs, reduces fossil fuel imports and and will take effect next spring for new A faith that we are forgiven and Wednesday 14th August makes Europe a world leader with installations. The levels announced accepted in the Name of your dear are: Son, Jesus Christ. Planning consent has been granted huge export opportunities. The for the world’s biggest offshore wind installation rate shows what the Air source heat pumps 7.3p.per kWh industry is now capable of. But to farm – a 1,200 MW. array at Triton Ground source heat pumps 18.8 p. Monday 19th August Knoll off the coasts of Lincolnshire and attract investment, governments need per kWh The International Energy Agency in a Norfolk. Costing £3.6 billion, it will to provide a stable regulatory report called “A Tale of Renewed provide 1,130 jobs across the country. framework and the EU should set a Biomass boilers 12.2 per kWh binding renewable target for 2030.” Cities” warns that urban transport Permission has also been granted for Solar thermal panels 19.2p. per kWh energy consumption is expected to our biggest onshore wind farm at Pen The Renewable Energy Association double by 2050 despite improvement y Cymoedd in South Wales, creating welcomed the new tariffs, but was in vehicle technology and fuel

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