







































Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   70 
 

 

Global Development in the Anthropocene 
 

Richard Slimbach 

 

 
The best science available warns that human impacts on global ecological and climate systems pose 

an existential threat to organized human life. In light of what climate scientist James Hansen describes 

as our “apocalyptic” future, current models of “transformational development” and “integral mission” 

ring increasingly hollow. Genesis 2:15 instructs us to watch over creation and take care of it, yet the 

most popular evangelical development texts largely omit any discussion of environmental breakdown 

and climate change. In response, this essay highlights the harmful effects of our slow-onset climate 

emergency on the very people Christian development practitioners care most about: the world’s 

poorest and most vulnerable peoples. It argues in favor of a seven-fold course of action, on both 

individual and organizational levels, that could put Christians on the frontlines of efforts to secure an 

“abundant life” for all without destabilizing the critical natural processes upon which it depends.  

 

 
 

Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the last 50 

years is what MIT economists Abhijit Banerjee and 

Esther Duflo (2019) describe as “the pace of change, 

good and bad.” While world poverty has been halved, 

then halved again, the global development community 

is also witnessing what is perhaps the greatest threat to 

planetary shalom: rising concentrations of carbon 

dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.  

For nearly 250 years, humans have burned a 

hundred million years of sunlight stored in the form of 

coal, petroleum, and natural gas. The contemporary 

“fossil economy” (Pirani, 2018) has enabled the rise of 

a modern civilization, with startling achievements in 

wealth production, medicine, communications, human 

rights, education, and much else. At the same time, 

economic expansion and fossil energy consumption 

have continuously pushed atmospheric concentrations 

of CO2 upward—from 270 parts per million (ppm) in 

1750 to over 415 ppm in 2019. Incredibly, more than 

half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the 

burning of fossil fuels has occurred since 1990, as 

industrial production and consumption has exploded 

worldwide (Wallace-Wells, 2019a). 

Human activities within a fossil-fuel powered 

global economy have now dramatically modified the 

physical environment on a planetary scale. The earth 

has been pushed into a new era, the Anthropocene. 

Natural systems that have long sustained themselves 

now suffer under the strain of industrialized humanity. 

Forests are being decimated to make way for vast wheat, 

soy, corn, and palm plantations. Up to 1 million of the 

estimated 8 million plant and animal species on earth 

are at risk of extinction. Ozone smog blankets industrial 

cities in low- and middle-income countries, making air 

unbreathable for billions of people. More people, 

across more of the planet, are experiencing more 

extreme heat and drought than ever before. 

Permafrost—the frozen soil that makes up most of the 

Artic—is melting at an alarming rate. Glaciers are sliding 

into the sea five times faster than in the 1990s, with 

current losses doubling every decade. Trapped in the 

ice are 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon, almost twice as 

much as is currently suspended in the earth’s 

atmosphere. As the ice thaws and oceans absorb this 

C02 like a sponge, the delicate chemical balance of 

marine ecosystems will be radically altered. At current 

rates of thawing, sea levels are predicted to rise by four 

feet by the end of the century. Given that most of the 

world’s megacities are located in the coastal zone—as 

are its ports, power plants, naval installations, river 

deltas, and fisheries—the urban poor are especially 

susceptible to sea-level rise, storm surge, and flooding 

(Lu & Flavelle, 2019).  

This is a drama of a scale that we only used to 

encounter in mythology or eschatology. But now the 

science is indisputable. Standard models collated by the 

Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 

2018), the gold standard of climate science, warn that 

unless we achieve massive and immediate emissions 

reductions, each year, for the next 12 years, humanity 

will pass the point of no return. Average global 

temperature will rise to 3 or 4 degrees Celsius before 

the end of the century, producing catastrophic impacts 

for most living things. Raymond Pierrehumbert (2019), 

a lead author of IPCC’s report, warns: “With regard to 

the climate crisis, yes, it’s time to panic. We’re in deep 

trouble.” 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   71 
 

The evidence is compelling that even a 2-degree 

warmer world will supercharge every other problem 

that development practitioners care about: 

unbreathable air, water shortages, deforestation, 

infectious disease, habitat and biodiversity loss, falling 

food yields, resource wars, loss of life from “natural” 

disasters, deepening poverty, and safety-seeking mass 

migration. Without a stable climate, decades of 

progress in poverty reduction could stall or even be 

erased. Christian Aid (2006) recognized this fact 15 

years ago when it boldly reported that  

The potential ravages of climate change are so 

severe that they could nullify efforts to secure 

meaningful and sustainable development in poor 

countries. At worst, they could send the real 

progress that has already been achieved spinning 

into reverse. No other single issue presents such a 

clear and present danger to the future welfare of 

the world’s poor. 

Thirteen years later, their language is even more 

unequivocal: “Climate change is the single greatest 

threat to humankind in our lifetime… Forget making 

poverty history; climate change is making poverty 
permanent” (Author’s italics) (Christian Aid, 2019). 

The contemporary climate emergency presents 

Christian development practitioners and educators with 

a harrowing question: Twenty-five or 50 or 100 years 
from now—during the lifetimes of our children’s 

children—will the technological, economic, and public 
health improvements we rightly celebrate be undone by 

the increasingly threatening predations of ecological 
breakdown and human-induced climate change? 

This essay attempts a response. Following a brief 

synopsis of the inequities of climate change, it presents 

seven routes or pathways that Christian development 

practitioners from rich countries might take in order to 

address these inequities. The aim is to provide 

development practitioners and educators an 

opportunity to reassess their personal and 

organizational priorities and practices in the face of 

impending climate catastrophe. 

 

 
Figure 1: Fossil CO2 emissions by country (2017)1 

 

Mountains, Valleys and Pathways 
In the gospel of Luke, Jesus quotes the prophet 

Isaiah: 

Every valley shall be filled 
and every mountain and hill shall be made low. 

The winding roads shall be made straight, 
 

 
1 Author’s calculations based on European Environmental Agency, 2018; Richter, 2019; and Wikipedia, 2020. 

 
and the rough ways made smooth, 

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. (Luke 3:5-6 
 

In the lowering of mountains and the raising of 

valleys, the ground is leveled. Those with too much and 

those with too little have enough: the basic needs of all 

are satisfied. Humanity walks forward together on equal 

footing into a fully healed creation. Embedded in Jesus’ 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   72 
 

imagery of mountains and valleys is the indispensable 

question of how the energy and material consumption 

in the well-off world interacts with the present needs of 

the world’s poorest communities, and of future 

generations and other species.  

The average American’s annual carbon footprint 

(CO2e) is about 17 tons. To put this in comparative 

perspective, this is more than twice the amount of 

someone in Europe and China, 3.5 times the global 

average, and nearly 2,000 times that of a villager in the 

African nation of Ethiopia (0.1 metric tons per year). In 

fact, the bottom two billion humans emit almost 

nothing (European Environmental Agency, 2018). The 

poorest half of humanity are responsible for only 

around 10 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, 

but they happen to live in flood-prone tropical coastal 

zones and dry rural areas of poor countries that have 

few resources for meaningful adaptation. On the other 

hand, the richest 10 percent of humanity produce 50 

percent of the earth’s climate-harming emissions, but 

live in countries best prepared to withstand its worst 

effects. This is the basic injustice when it comes to 

climate: the world’s poorest and most vulnerable 

people must pay the high price for the energy 
consumption of those who are most secure.  

The consensus of the world’s leading scientists is 

that the maximum worldwide average ‘footprint’ must 

be brought down to about between 2 and 3 tons per 

head in order to reduce carbon emissions even by 80 

percent by 2050, and thus avert disaster (UNDESA, 

2011; IPCC, 2018). What follows are seven paths, amid 

the world’s mountains and valleys, that can help achieve 

that goal and heal a warming planet. Our discussion 

equates “development” with creational healing. Both 

terms bespeak a condition of enduring positive 

change—in individuals, in households, in local 

communities, and in ecosystems. Indicators include the 

meeting of basic needs (and more), sustainable relations 

with the natural world, justice for all groups (especially 

the most vulnerable), and the creation of 

psychologically and spiritually healthy persons in 

culturally diverse places. “Development” also says 

something about the capacity of economic and political 

systems to provide the circumstances for that well-being 

on a sustainable, long-term basis. 

 

1. Ecological Conversion  
With the advent of fossil-fuel powered society 250 

years ago, humankind embarked on an all-

encompassing life-mission: to conquer nature. Political 

economy became an endless contest of greed and 

power. Life values were replaced by technocratic and 

financial values. Fifty years ago, philosopher and city 

planner Lewis Mumford (1970) poignantly captured 

the reversal of basic values and conduct of life under 

capitalism. “There is only one efficient speed—faster; 

only one attractive destination—further away; only one 

desirable size—bigger; only one rational quantitative 

goal—more. On these assumptions, the object of human 

life, and therefore the entire productive mechanism, is 

to remove limits, to hasten the pace of change, to 

smooth out seasonal rhythms… and destroy organic 

continuity” (173). Mumford’s analysis signals the 

present ecological crisis as, fundamentally, a cultural 

and spiritual crisis. Modern industrial society has 

normalized a relation with the Earth that is essentially 

extractivist: It thrives on the domination, privatization, 

commodification, monetization, and commercializa-

tion of Earth’s bounty. Humans are not only separate 

from nature, but her lords and masters.  

In his 2015 encyclical titled Laudato Si: On Care 
for Our Common Home, Pope Francis summons the 

Church to “a profound interior conversion–an 

ecological conversion—whereby the effects of [our] 

encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in [our] 

relationship with the world around [us]” (No. 217). A 

central feature of this conversion is a personal 

rediscovery of our interdependence with the natural 

world, and our responsibility to it. In sharp contrast to 

the logic of extractivism, stewardship involves not just 

taking but also taking care. It refuses to regard the earth 

“as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere 

‘given’, as an object of utility, as raw material to be 

hammered into useful shape” (No. 115). Life values—

‘being,’ humility, self-restraint, compassion, service to 

others, care for the natural world—are no longer 

crowded out by the money/market values of ‘having,’ 

achievement, material affluence, personal comfort, and 

constant fun (Fikkert and Kapic, 2019). The intrinsic 

logic of social and economic organization considers 

quality of life (Genuine Progress Indicators) over 

standard of living (Gross National Product) (Cha, 

2013). 

The difficulty of achieving this type of deep, 

personal, and ultimately structural conversion to a 

caring relation for “our common home” can hardly be 

overstated. Modern society has largely severed the soul 

from the body, and the natural from the supernatural. 

The result for most of us is a state of spiritual confusion 

and psychological distortion. We naturally aggrandize 

ourselves at the expense of other people and the 

nonhuman creation, violating the natural processes of 

both. To satisfy a craving for continual stimulation and 

satisfactions, we mindlessly buy non-essential consumer 

goods produced by transnational corporations and 

marketed through gigantic retailers and megamalls. 

Their primary goal is not to prevent an overshoot of 

greenhouse gases or the diminishment of biodiversity. 

It is to maximize short-term profits for shareholders. 

Achieving this goal almost invariably involves the 

exploitation of both workers (through low wages and 

few safety regulations) and the earth (through extraction 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   73 
 

beyond ‘carrying capacity’). As global consumers, many 

of whom already feel empty and insignificant, we 

willingly cooperate with these stable, high prestige 

structures in order to project a fashionable and publicly 

rewarded self-image. Spiritual alienation and insecurity, 

in turn, fuels more exploitation, more production, 

more stimulation, and more consumption. Pleasure 

and profits assume primacy over people and planet, 

causing the earth to “groan in travail” (see Rom. 8:19-

23). 

Christian development practitioners and educators 

play an important role in engaging the Church, and the 

public, with a compelling, theologically-informed vision 

of humanity reconciled with both creator and creation. 

Ecological conversion suggests a ‘turning’ from an 

anthropocentric to a theocentric and ecocentric 

orientation to the world. It affirms the intimate link 

between ecosystems and ethnoscapes, and calls us to 

“hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” 

(No. 49). In that hearing, we become aware of our 

resource footprint (patterns of production and 

consumption) and how that footprint reflects a certain 

moral and spiritual character. Understanding why our 

“internal deserts” have become so vast prepares us to 

exercise moral leadership in protecting the world’s 

peoples from the effects of “external deserts” and other 

climate calamities. 

 

2. Decarbonization of the Global Economy 
Modern civilization has been indisputably 

responsible for a stunning array of political, economic, 

technological, medical and cultural advances. What is 

much more debatable is whether the basic design of 

industrial culture is survivable in the unfolding future. 

By 2050, according to UN estimates, the world’s 

population will grow from its current (2019) level of 7.6 

billion to 9.8 billion, with approximately two-thirds of 

the world's people living in urban areas. World cities 

currently account for roughly 75 percent of the world’s 

energy consumption and 80 percent of its greenhouse 

gases. They are, by definition, parasites on a vast 

hinterland where supplies of fuel, food, water, and 

materials originate. To produce the “wealth of nations,” 

they impoverish the ecosphere. Now add two billion 

more people in the next 30 years that the earth will need 

to feed, clothe, house, heat, cool, and transport. How 

will this explosive increase in energy demand be met?  

Again, global CO2 emissions need to fall from the 

current level of 37 billion metric tons (5 metric tons for 

every person on the planet) to a sustainable level of 2 to 

3 tons by 2050. There is only one plausible way to 

achieve this goal, and that is to decarbonize the entire 
global economy. In other words, aggressive action 

needs to be taken, by all countries, to create a 100 
percent clean-energy grid. Such a global development 

project would entail: 

Massive growth in energy efficiency and clean 

renewable energy supplies (nuclear, solar and wind); 

• Steady and dramatic cuts in the global production 

and consumption of fossil fuels (oil, coal, and 

natural gas); 

• Rising mileage, manufacturing and emissions 

standards, and carbon market prices; 

• Re-engineering every major sector of the economy—

energy, housing, industry, military, commerce, 

transportation, public space, water, agriculture/food, 

and waste cycling—to connect to a smart-energy grid; 

• Re-employing persons currently working in fossil 

fuel-related industries in low-emission, socially-

contributive sectors; and 

• Simultaneous reductions in wealth inequalities, 

social segregation, and human-earth disconnection.  

 

No words can adequately convey the magnitude, 

technical complexity, and social and political obstacles 

involved in such a sweeping decarbonization project. It 

would be unprecedented and herculean, “akin to 

changing the engine, the driveshaft and all four wheels 

of a moving car without ever stopping it” (Dyer, 2008, 

72). Consider what this might entail for just one 

province, Guangdong, in just one country, China. 

Reining in the province’s surging CO2 emissions would 

require closing most of its industries—garment and 

textile, food and beverage, construction material, 

electrical appliances, machinery, petrochemical, 

forestry and papermaking, pharmaceuticals, and 

automobile. This would involve unemploying most of 

its 40 million workers… an unthinkable prospect. And 

that’s just Guangdong.  

There’s no question that nuclear, solar, wind, 

biomass, and hydro power will ultimately replace most 

fossil fuel energy production. Unfortunately, climate 

stabilization is not simply a matter of unplugging coal 

plants and plugging in solar panels or wind turbines. 

Greenhouse gas emissions are produced across the 

entire economy, not only or even mainly by electric 

generating stations, which accounts for only about 26 

percent of global CO2 emissions (see figure below). 

That means that even if every coal, oil and gas-fired 

electric generating plant in the U.S. closed tomorrow, 

and were replaced with clean energy sources, we would 
still need to drastically suppress emissions across the 

rest of the economy in order to reach 2050 targets. 
A practical pathway to completely decarbonizing 

the earth’s economy is scarcely imaginable, much less 

feasible. Renewable power generation and large-scale 

storage batteries would need to be global in scale. That 

supply would then need to connect to highways, 

railways, and airports; to warehouses, shopping malls, 

office buildings, and houses; to mines, smelters, forges, 

and factories; to farms, ranches, forests, and fisheries; 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   74 
 

 
Source: IPCC (2014) 

and to facilities that process waste in the forms of 

packaging and discarded products. Currently, virtually 

all of that infrastructure, worldwide, depends on fossil 

fuels. In just one sector alone—transportation—

petroleum products are used to power the world’s 1.5 

billion cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes that haul 

people and freight. Every sector of modern life has a 

carbon footprint, and that footprint needs to be 

eliminated—completely. Currently, though, it’s doing 

the opposite: CO2 emissions in the U.S. alone rose 3.4 

percent in 2018, the largest increase in eight years, and 

will hit a record high once again in 2019. 

 

3. Urban Redesign  
Rural areas have long dominated development 

discourse. And in the next few decades, we will likely 

see a dramatic expansion of humanitarian aid in coastal 

and rural areas of the global South. Christian agencies 

will be called upon to assist in the areas of disaster 

preparedness, famine relief, economic recovery, and 

resettlement/sponsorship. These are critical 

ameliorative processes that serve populations most 

affected by environmental, climatic, and economic 

shifts.  

Nevertheless, the Great Transition to a steady-state 

global economy, if it is possible at all, will not be 

achieved in the world’s villages and hamlets. Just as we 

cannot hope to create a sustainable culture with any but 

sustainable souls, neither can a sustainable planet be 

achieved without sustainable cities. Cities are already 

the fundamental economic, political, and social 

organizing units of our time. And by 2050 they will 

house two-thirds of humanity. Even though cities 

occupy a mere two percent of the world’s landmass, 

they consume over two-thirds of the world’s energy and 

account for more than 70% of global CO2 emissions. 

That makes cities ground zero for ensuring human well-

being on a hotter and less stable planet. In the words of 

former UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson 

(2015), “Cities are where the battle for sustainable 

development will be won—or lost if we fail.”  

True, fertility rates are contracting in North 

America, Europe, Japan, and China. But across South 

Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, megalopolises are 

multiplying. The Global Cities Institute at the 

University of Toronto projects that, 30 years from now, 

Mumbai, Dhaka, Karachi, Delhi, Lagos, Kolkata, 

Kinshasa, Cairo, and Manila will all have populations 

between 24 and 42 million people. These places are 

already dominated by slums and beset with acute 

burdens on all of the systems mentioned above. The 

development challenge is to make cities more climate-

resilient and inclusive while meeting the basic life needs 

of burgeoning populations. This challenge is, 

fundamentally, one of urban design, planning, and 

policy making.  

The city is a complex system of systems, integrating 

land use, housing, materials, construction, 

infrastructure, manufacturing, trade, food, biodiversity, 

energy, water, transportation, and waste disposal. These 

are the “structures” that are heating the planet, and 

radically reducing their carbon footprint is the task of 

our times. That task is particularly germane to Christian 

development practice. Drawing upon the poetic 

imagination of Micah (4:1-5) and Isaiah (65:17-25), how 

might city systems be transformed to support the truly 

flourishing urban existence? 

The short answer to that questions is this: policy 

and planning. Policy affects the lives of millions of 

people with the stroke of a pen. Planning concerns, 

quite literally, the remaking of the human presence on 

earth. City officials in the global South are quite familiar 

with the “smart” design being done in virtually every 

large European and North American city. What they 

often lack is the national and international support to 

conduct the policy research and create the adaptation 

plans that adequately respond to burgeoning 

populations, weak governance, profit-driven land 

speculation, and widening wealth disparities. The 

Association of African Planning Schools is charting an 

encouraging path forward. Rather than simply 

mimicking the planning approach of Northern nations, 

its curriculum is based on a logic of “downward 

accountability.” Through experiential learning and 

practical problem-solving within grassroots 

communities, students learn how to listen to local 

residents and create channels of communication 

between those communities and municipal officials. 

This is also where locally-engaged congregations 

could play a critical role. To the extent they are 

energized by a shared vision of integral mission, they 

could help close the gap between what local authorities 

can do and what the urban poor actually need. Many 

churches are embedded in poor people’s communities. 

They are intimately familiar with local living conditions 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   75 
 

and health risks. They know from first-hand experience 

what adaptation policies and interventions are needed 

during times of crisis. Moreover, many congregations 

are often well-networked across urban areas, enabling 

“people power” to be mobilized and leveraged in 

support of more inclusive planning processes.  

All to say, local churches have the potential to be 

an effective “interface” between the state, which has the 

resources and technical expertise, and capable and 

energetic congregant-citizens, which are typically left out 

of policy-planning (Watson, 2009). What they need to 

learn is how and with whom to leverage their power on 

behalf of informalized and vulnerable majority 

populations. Public officials are, of course, the obvious 

and often most appropriate targets of direct leverage, 

whether through consultation, demonstration, policy 

advocacy, or popular education. At other times, indirect 

leverage may be the most strategic course. Foreign 

donors and development implementers can 

significantly support this community-driven process, 

whether through technical knowledge of best planning 

practices, disaster risk reduction, or climate change 

adaptation. 

 

4. Adaptive Development 
The development task becomes immediate and 

concrete as we consider the capacity of informal settlers 

in low- and middle-income nations to act in the face of 

climate shocks and stresses. Will low-income 

households be able to cope with an increase in the price  

systems withstand the next mega-storm? Will the most 

vulnerable residents—the young, the elderly, the 

chronically ill, the disabled—survive high winds, 

torrential rain, and protracted heat waves? Will they be 

able to bounce back in ways that reduce future risks?   

Cities in wealthy nations take resilience for granted. 

Most local governments ensure that residents live and 

work in code-conforming buildings; that they have 

access to all-weather paved roads and storm drainage 

systems; that public transport, piped treated water, and 

waste disposal systems are provided; that emergency 

services and early warning systems are in place; and that 

risk-reducing land use and climate action planning are 

prioritized. In cities of the global South, measures that 

build up accumulated resilience are often non-existent. 

City government have little technical and investment 

capacity to promote low-carbon and climate-resilient 

urban development. As previously noted, large sections 

of the population occupy land unrecognized by the 

government, in overcrowded and substandard 

dwellings, within settlements lacking access to basic 

public services like policing/rule of law, storm drainage 

systems, paved roads, and waste collection. In short, 

households have little resilience to stress or shock. 

These institutional realities significantly constrain 

urgent efforts to reduce climate-related hazards, either 

by radically reducing carbon emissions (“mitigation”) or 

by reducing people’s vulnerability to actual or expected 

climate-related impacts (“adaptation”). Extraordinary 

action is imperative on both fronts, and in strategic 

coordination with city designers, planners, and policy 

makers (IPCC, 2014; Global Commission on 

Adaptation, 2019). 

Potential synergies exist between conventional 

development agendas and various mitigation and 

adaptation interventions. Better climate models and 

datasets, for example, can inform pro-poor urban 

planning and critical infrastructure development. 

Improved mass transit can cut carbon emissions and 

connect urban poor residents to better jobs. Still, to 

achieve their full potential, mitigation and adaptation 

actions must integrate with each other (as suggested by 

the perforated line in the above table) across sectors 

(industrial, residential, agricultural) and scales of 

government (local, regional, national), and also 

mobilize the most vulnerable and underserved 

communities in plans to strengthen their adaptive 

capacity. 

Effective implementation also requires dedicated 

and knowledgeable leaders and strong governance 

structures, along with significant political commitment 

and investment capacity. Such enabling conditions may 

be difficult to imagine in many cities of the South. But 

any realistic prospect of broad-scale “adaptive 

development” (Agrawal & Lemos, 2015) or 

“transformative climate adaptation” (Chu, et al. 2019) 

will be thwarted without them.  

Easily overlooked in the global debate about how 

to pursue deep adaptation is the fact that considerable 

heating, sea level rise, and instability are already “locked 

in” due to rapidly thawing permafrost (University of 

Exeter, 2017). This suggests that it may be too late to 

avert uncontrollable impacts on human habitats and 

global agricultural, political, and social systems within 

the lifetimes of people alive today (World Bank, 2012; 

Ehrlich, 2013). Keeping the planet to 1.5 degrees of 

warming, let alone two degrees, would require 

immediate, transformative action. And as of 2020, no 

plausible plan exists to substantially reduce, much less 

phase out, fossil fuels. That leaves us to do all we can to 

help slow and reduce harms through both emissions 

cuts and adaptation action. Change doesn’t happen by 

itself. It results from the dogged efforts of passionate, 

empowered individuals and groups at the grassroots. 

They see something that’s wrong and, despite 

seemingly insurmountable odds, organize and agitate in 

ways that influence the powers that be. Christian 

development NGOs have a potentially vital role to play 

in helping to catalyze community-driven adaptive 

development, especially among the three billion urban 

dwellers who will live in insecure settlements by 2050  

 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   76 
 

 
Table 1: Mitigation and Adaptation Action

 

(Barbière, 2017). The following list suggests some 

possibilities:  

• Prioritize direct engagement with vulnerable urban 

poor populations in climate adaptation planning. 

• Enable grassroots awareness of climate science and 

lessons from best practices in the global South. 

• Promote more community-based, people-centered, 

and inclusive visions of urban development. 

• Foster data sharing and knowledge co-production 

between city governments, academic institutions, 

civil society organizations, church leaders, and 

urban poor community groups. 

• Provide training and direct technical assistance to 

municipal officials and community leaders. 

• Strengthen the social contract between government 

and informal communities. 

• Delineate guidelines and metrics for community-

level vulnerability reduction and livelihood-

protection. 

• Assist churches in organizing congregants and other 

community groups to neighbors, and local 

associations to partner with municipal governments 

in adaptation actions. 

• Promote grassroots (including church-based) social 

movements that advocate for climate action. 

• Support long-term science-policy-practitioner 

coordination. 

• Help establish funding pathways to channel external 

resources (e.g., private donations, multilateral aid, 

philanthropy) to specific urban adaptation 

programs. 

• Assist churches in organizing congregants, 

neighbors, other religious groups, local associations 

and municipal governments to act locally and 

regionally. 

• Provide pastoral services to refugees and internally-

displaced persons affected by climate change 

impacts, helping them to bounce back, both 

physically and psycho-spiritually, from tragedy, 

trauma, and loss. 
 

 

5. Institutional Contraction 
We can be encouraged by the number of cities, 

North and South, that are taking environmental 

constraints seriously, typically under the banners of 

“sustainability,” “resilience,” or “climate action.” Still, 

the painful reality is that global energy and resource use 

continues to steadily rise, not decline. As it stands, the 

world is on a path to nearly 3°C of warming by the end 

of the century, and even that assumes substantial 

emissions reductions in the future. Along with an 

increase of over two billion people over the next 30 

years, global income is expected to triple. But instead 

of being the solution, economic growth has unwittingly 

become a big part of the problem. That’s because a 

rising middle-class in Southern cities wants what their 

high-consuming neighbors in the global North have: 

iPhones and big screen TVs, refrigerators and SUVs, 

big box stores and air conditioners, processed foods 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   77 
 

and international travel experiences. Teenage slum-

dwellers in Lagos and Mumbai have no interest in 

staying “sustainable.” They look out at the city 

skyscrapers, or overhead at flying jets, and compare the 

material quality of their own lives to that of the rich. 

They won’t be convinced that having more doesn’t 

equal being happier. Meanwhile, the safety window for 

radically reducing global emissions is rapidly closing. In 

the short period of time left to us, it’s hard to imagine 

how the current system, based on price, profits, and 

market competition, could instigate a transition in 

energy use at the necessary or possible level.  

Equally dispiriting is the fact that, thus far, no 

government or major political party has been willing to 

shut down new fossil fuel production, switch entirely to 

renewable energy across the economy, or radically 

curtail non-essential air travel, manufacturing, or 

construction. Policy makers, industrialists, financiers, 

insurance companies, and bankers continue to be 

heavily invested in the fossil fuel economy. Populist 

authoritarian regimes are on the rise. Oil and gas 

infrastructure is being built at a furious pace. 

Petrochemical corporations continue to use 

undisclosed, untraceable “dark money” to buy their way 

to political power and prevent action against climate 

change, all the while enjoying tens of billions of dollars 

in federal subsidies (Environmental and Energy Study 

Institute, 2019). They also show little evidence of being 

willing to advance the initial capital and bear the project 

risk of a clean-energy transition. The necessary political 

will and policy support to build a global clean-energy 

economy is just not there. 

Given the scientific prognosis and the current 

political climate, we need to ask whether it’s possible to 
make poverty history without also making affluence 

history. In other words, can the interconnected 

problems threatening humanity and habitat be solved 

without an immediate, dramatic, and coordinated 

contraction in the rates of production, consumption, 

and resource use in rich nations? In the judgment of 

IPCC scientists, the answer is “no.” “Green growth” and 

incremental efficiency improvements are too little, too 

late to reverse trends in global emissions. The only 

feasible way to meet carbon reduction targets is to 

actively scale down or “degrow” the material 

throughput of the global economy. In essence, the 

global consuming class needs to stop converting so 

much of the planet into “product.”  

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal #12 asks 

countries to ensure, by 2030, “sustainable consumption 

and production patterns.” But what does that goal 

 
2

 The Union of Concerned Scientists (n.d.) estimate that, “every year, American armed forces consume more than 100 

million barrels of oil to power ships, vehicles, aircraft, and ground operations—enough for over 4 million trips around 

the Earth, assuming 25 mpg.” At present, the Pentagon burns more oil than 140 smaller countries. See also Neta 

Crawford (2019).  

actually require countries to do other than to say amen? 

Americans alone make per capita ecological demands 

that are about eight times the standard for global 

sustainability. One might insist, as a standard of fairness, 

that the U.S. and other rich countries be required to 

bring down per capita CO2 emissions to a sustainable (2 

-3 metric tons) level. The global class of high-consuming 

people (mountains) would “be brought low” (produce, 

buy, and use much less stuff), while the bottom two 

billion—the “under-consumers” of basic infrastructure, 

schools, health care, durable housing, jobs, and so on—

are “lifted up.” As the emerging economies grew, they 

would agree to switch from a carbon-emitting industrial 

base to carbon-neutral technologies. Rich countries 

would agree to support poorer countries through non-

fossil technology transfers and direct financial subsidies, 

even as they execute a similar transition. Christian relief 

and development organizations are uniquely prepared 

to make a solid ethical case for such a “just transition.” 

And yet it’s politically unimaginable that any reforms 

would be accepted that move significantly against the 

interests of capital, along with the livelihoods and 

consumer preferences of billions of people. 

According to The Carbon Majors Database 
(Griffin, 2017), 71% of total global GHG emissions can 

be traced to just 100 investor-owned corporations, 
mostly fossil fuel giants. What this means is that no 

“sustainable production” is possible unless gross 

polluters like Peabody Coal (coal), Saudi Aramco (oil), 

and Russia’s Gazprom (natural gas) are willing to accept 

immediate and major retrenchment or closure. But 

these are only the obvious first targets. Many other 

industrial sectors are fossil fuel-dependent and would 

need to undergo radical “degrowth”: oil refining and 

distribution, construction, agribusiness, auto and 

airplane manufacturing, travel and tourism, shipping, 

and synthetics production, to name just a few. Then 

there are the thousands of hugely profitable firms that 

produce and sell frivolous and mostly unhealthful 

goods to middle- and high-income people. 

Corporations like Pepsico (bottled water), Coca-Cola 

(sugary drinks), Starbucks (coffee), McDonald’s (fast 

food), Tyson Foods (factory-farmed chicken, beef, and 

pork processor), H&M (fast fashion), and Walmart 

(low-cost disposables) employ vast numbers of people, 

but generally at the expense of human and ecological 

health. And we still haven’t reported on the largest 

institutional consumer of oil products in the world: the 

U.S. Armed Forces.
2

 Substantially shrink or shutter 

these diverse institutions and tens of millions of people 

would suddenly be unemployed—or worse. But fail to 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   78 
 

do so and we will certainly face rising temperatures, 

extreme weather, and environmental collapse. “Absent 

a significant adjustment to how billions of humans 

conduct their lives,” writes Wallace-Wells (2017), 

“parts of the Earth will likely become close to 

uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, 

as soon as the end of this century.” The stakes for 

human development couldn’t be higher. Standing in 

our place in history, what would Jesus seek to do–or 

undo? 

 

6. Progressive Simplification 
 The foregoing has argued that without 

fundamental, systemic reductions in global material 

production and consumption (energy use), “overshoot” 

is inevitable. In the final analysis, installing solar panels 

and adopting a plant-based diet has little real impact on 

the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. Nor on 

the material realities of the world’s most vulnerable 

peoples and places. That’s because the vast majority of 

energy and resource consumption, along with pollution 

and waste production, is generated by institutions—

commercial, industrial, corporate, agribusiness, 

government, and military—not individuals. Institutional 

sin outstrips individual virtue, as well as the concerted 

action of the proverbial “small group of thoughtful, 

committed citizens.” 

But this fact shouldn’t lead us to conclude that 

individual actions don’t matter. Yes, there are powerful 

systems that are difficult to disassemble. Factory 

farming, fast fashion, car culture, and consumer society 

shape how we eat, dress, get around and spend. But we 

are also free to choose from possible options which, 

when taken up by enough people, drive system reform. 

The personal is political. We are the animal cruelty. 

We are the landfill. We are the weather. The needed 

public policy changes and industrial contractions wait 

upon the future, and so are presently nonexistent. But 

there are innumerable small-scale “solutions” that 

Christian development personnel can adopt—and 

promote—now. At a minimum, those of us who can 

afford fossil fuel-dependent comforts and conveniences 

can learn to meet basic needs for mobility, food, 

cooling, heating, lighting, and consumables with 

dramatically fewer resources. We can pare down to one 

car. Better yet, instead of driving a car, we can commute 

by bike. We can stop flying or fly much less. We can 

swear off junk food and cheap, trendy clothing. We can 

cut way back on heating and cooling, and retrofit our 

homes to conserve energy. Above all, we can establish 

a strict line of “enough” in our spending. “If we want to 

stop the impoverishment of land and people,” writes 

Wendell Berry (2013), “we ourselves must be prepared 

to become poorer.” This doesn’t mean we go back to 

riding horses, hunting and gathering our food, and 

living in log cabins. But it does mean we learn to need 

less, to waste less, and to make things last longer. The 

goal is progressive simplification—a relation between 

humanity and habitat that is inwardly rich, outwardly 

simple, and publicly contributive. 

Capping personal consumption is also important 

in moral terms. As individuals, we are personally 

responsible to do everything we can to mitigate the 

damage caused by being a consenting member of a 

civilization that wreaks havoc on the planet. Utilitarian 

philosophers like Peter Singer (The Life That You Can 

Save), Peter Unger (Living High and Letting Die), and 

William MacAskill (Doing Good Better) argue 

persuasively that every individual of even a moderate 

degree of wealth is morally obligated to use their 

resources to alleviate the suffering of others. John 

Wesley (n.d.), in his famous sermon entitled, “The Use 

of Money” also enjoined his hearers to “gain all you 

can, save all you can, and give all you can.” Anticipated 

what “effective altruists” would propose 200 years later, 

Wesley proposed a faith-infused way to put more of the 

world’s wealth and expertise where it can do the most 

good.  

Christian development practitioners need not be 

extremely wealthy in order to claim a spot among the 

world’s wealthy. According to the Global Rich List 

http://www.globalrichlist.com/, a $40,000 annual 

income easily places community developers, 

humanitarian workers, and other modestly-salaried 

NGO staff among the global 1% of earners. We may 

consider ourselves “poor” relative to the majority of 

other Americans or Canadians who are extraordinarily 

affluent, but we are rich compared to those who, by an 

absolute standard, are unable to meet their basic needs. 

Apart from encouraging simple living and 

generosity throughout their organizations, Christian 

NGOs can leverage their influence within local 

churches to support organizations and projects, 

including their own, that connect voluntary simplicity to 

high-impact global development priorities. There are 

over 65 million members of mainline and evangelical 

churches in the U.S. alone. Most of their giving goes to 

sustain church programs and select missionary 

enterprises, the majority of which lack performance 

standards and rarely undergo impact evaluations. This 

fact alone makes them hard to justify in terms of 

transformational development. Moreover, funds that 

are directed to humanitarian causes tend to be strongly 

biased towards Christian charities like World Vision 

and Catholic Relief Services. Are religious non-profits 

more cost-effective than organizations recommended 

by non-religious charity evaluators like GiveWell and 

GiveDirectly? They may or may not be. Still, the 

assumption persists within most evangelical churches 

that actors with an explicit Christian identity bring an 

indispensable moral and ethical dimension to 

http://www.globalrichlist.com/


Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   79 
 

development practice that is unattainable within non-

religious ventures. 

This claim is central to Christian development 

practice, and it deserves careful empirical 

authentication. But our more immediate concern is 

how to build a bridge between those who are absolutely 

poor (lacking the resources to meet their basic needs) 

and those who are absolutely affluent (having the 

resources, not just to meet their family’s basic needs, 

but also to take cruises, own timeshares, operate 

multiple vehicles, stay in fashion, and purchase the 

latest iThings). Although Christian NGOs might 

understandably view well-vetted secular development 

organizations as direct competitors for limited 

resources, a deep commitment to the ‘greater good’ 

might lead them to encourage congregations to support 

high-impact organizations and projects that address 

development priorities largely devalued within 

evangelical circles—issues like animal welfare, criminal 

justice reform, and climate change 

mitigation/adaptation. No-strings-attached cash 

transfers, in particular, simultaneously combat material 

poverty and climate vulnerability. The “luxury 

emissions” of the rich are reduced while essential 

“subsistence emissions” of poor people are raised. 

Money is moved from households that need it the least 

to households that need it the most. Mountains are 

lowered and valleys lifted up. Both rich and poor are 

able to lead healthier, more fulfilling lives. 

 

7. Collaborative Action  
There is a final path that the Christian develop-

ment community can take to help move the dial on 

climate change. Individual and institutional contraction 

and effective philanthropy are strategically connected to 

the great “moral multiplier”: political action. Here we 

consider how the “advocacy” arm of the Christian 

development community might campaign for 

infrastructural and policy changes that achieve both 

deep emissions reductions and deep adaptation. 

Wallace-Wells (2019b) sharpens the point:  

Buying an electric car is a drop in the bucket 

compared with raising fuel-efficiency standards 

sharply. Conscientiously flying less is a lot easier if 

there’s more high-speed rail around. And if I eat 

fewer hamburgers a year, so what? But if cattle 

farmers were required to feed their cattle 

seaweed, which might reduce methane emissions 

 
3

 These include charities like Christian Aid and Operation Noah, the Quakers, the United Church of Christ, the 

Methodist Church, the Church of England, the World Council of Churches, Union Theological Seminary, a number 

of Catholic religious orders, and many large Catholic institutions. Notably absent from the list of institutions 

disinvesting in fossil fuel energy stocks are evangelical colleges, evangelical megachurches, or large evangelical 

development agencies.  

 

by nearly 60 percent… that would make an 

enormous difference. 

Major reconfiguration of the global political 

economy will likely come about only as the impacts of 

unmitigated climate change become horrific. In the 

meantime, the Church is invited to “speak up for those 

who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all 

who are destitute” (Prov. 31:8), and to thereby change 

the context in which our energy and economic systems 

operate.  

Faith-based campaigning has begun to shape our 

political moment. To date, over 1,000 institutions have 

used their investment portfolios to divest from fossil 

fuel producers, with religious organizations 

representing the greatest share (29%).
3

 Secular advocacy 

groups have also organized masses of concerned 

citizens. Student campaigns associated with the Sunrise 

Movement and Zero Hour are demanding that 

politicians refuse to take money from the fossil fuel 

industry and prioritize the health of families and 

ecosystems. Rainforest Action Network and 

BankTrack advocate for banks to stop financing the 

expansion of the fossil fuel industry. The global 

Unfriend Coal campaign focuses on holding the 

insurance industry accountable for its role in climate 

change. As part of broader localism movements, 

Transition Town initiatives and nonprofit advocacy 

organizations like Local Futures seek to right-size the 

scale of human organization, with small cities and towns 

assuming greater control over energy, food, water, 

money, transportation, and waste cycling. More 

recently, the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement has 

called for thousands of activists to block roads and shut 

down transport systems in major world cities—not just 

for one day, but long enough to impose to paralyze 

commerce and force governments and business elites 

to respond to the climate emergency. These are all 

global movements, but they have inspired highly 

localized projects by smaller groups of people—from 

banning single-use plastic to stopping a pipeline or coal 

port.  

Rupert Read, one of the central figures in 

Extinction Rebellion, likes to say that what’s needed is 

a “revolution in consciousness,” something akin to 

Pope Francis’ “ecological conversion.” The collective 

revolution or conversion may visibly manifest in public 

actions, but it begins with people who begin to see new 

visions and dream new dreams. Something that was 

long tolerated becomes intolerable. The Jesus 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   80 
 

movement in the first two centuries embodied such an 

alternative imagination, the kingdom of God. 

Gatherings of Jesus-followers created new norms for 

organizing social life that became the seedbed for a new 

humanity grounded in faith-filled civil disobedience.  

Today, a rapidly growing network of Christians are 

breaking out of both denialism and despair in order to 

take serious climate action. Groups like Global 

Catholic Climate Movement, GreenFaith, Christian 

Climate Action, Young Evangelicals for Climate Action 

(YECA), A Rocha, and Interfaith Witness for Climate 

Action cite their Christian faith as the moral force 

energizing their work. They regard non-compliance 

with ruling authorities, along with their false values, as a 

crucial form of kingdom faithfulness. Their conviction 

is that the kingdom comes as the Church, energized by 

the Spirit and in solidarity with other persons of faith 

and conscience, goes out into the world informed, 

vulnerable, praising, and protesting, “always bearing 

about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of 

Jesus might be made manifest…” (2 Cor. 4:10 KJV). 

Standing in arm-in-arm solidarity with activists of other 

faiths or no faith, they exemplify a model of 

collaborative action expounded by British theologian 

and missiologist Lesslie Newbigin (1989) in his classic 

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society: 

The Christian will be eager to cooperate with 

people of all faiths and ideologies in all projects 

which are in line with the Christian’s understanding 

of God’s purpose in history… Every day of our lives 

we have to make decisions that we cannot take 

without regard to the others who share the story. 

They may be Christians, Muslims, Hindus, secular 

humanists, Marxists, or some other persuasion. 

They will have different understandings of the 

meaning and end of the story, but along the way 

there will be many issues in which we can agree 

about what should be done. There are struggles for 

justice and freedom in which we can and should 

join hands with those of other faiths and ideologies 

to achieve specific goals, even though we know that 

the ultimate goal is Christ and his coming in glory 

and not what our collaborators imagine. (181) 

 

Conclusion 
For decades, the Christian relief and development 

community has been committed to continuous 

improvement in the human condition. “Development,” 

once viewed as synonymous with modernization, 

economic growth and increased consumption, must 

now aim to obtain the maximum of well-being with the 

minimum of consumption (Schumacher, 1977, 42). 

The alternative, according to the IPCC, is a level of 

earth systems breakdown that leads to slow and 

agonizing suffering and death for billions of people. 

The climate crisis will not be solved with more 

philanthropy, more lobbying, more global summits, 

more awareness raising, better technologies, and the 

‘greening’ of transnational corporations. That’s because 

the root problems are inherent in what we value and 

how we think about and interact with the other-than-

human world. Whether by social or evolutionary 

conditioning, humans are simply incapable of 

sacrificing present benefits to forestall future costs. We 

might know the planet is facing an apocalyptic future, 

yet still refuse to believe it. We continue acting as if 

tomorrow will be just like yesterday.  

This essay has outlined seven potential pathways 

for community engagement, beginning with a biblically-

rooted, ecclesially-located and publicly engaged vision 

of a flourishing life. Taken together, they suggest ways 

to live out, individually and institutionally, the positive 

implications of that vision for the poor and the planet. 

Given the scale and complexity of the climate 

emergency, no one solution will suffice. There are 

some questions only governments will be able to 

answer—for example, about renewable energy 

infrastructure and massive C02 extraction—and 

Christian churches and development agencies ought to 

ratchet up their pressure on governments to act rightly. 

At the same time, and of equally importance, is keeping 

up pressure on our organizations, and ourselves. The 

Anthropocene was brought on by what humans are 

doing and, ultimately, because of who we are. Christian 

development practice will find its distinctive 

contribution to creational flourishing in its ability to 

transform both. 

 

 

References 
 

Agrawal, Arun and Lemos, Maria Carmen. 2015. 

“Adaptive Development.” Nature Climate 

Change, Vol. 5 (March 2015). 

The Association of African Planning Schools. 

Retrieved from 

https://www.africanplanningschools.org.za/ 

Banerjee, Abhijit and Duflo, Esther. 2019. Good 

Economics for Hard Times. New York: Public 

Affairs.  

Barbière, Cécile. 2017. “French Urban Development 

Expert: ‘In 2050, 3 billion People will Live in 

Slums’” Euractiv (March 6). Retrieved from 

https://www.euractiv.com/section/development-

policy/interview/french-urban-development-

expert-in-2050-3-billion-people-will-live-in-slums/ 

Berry, Wendell. 2013, Sept. 3. “Less Energy, More 

Life.” The Progressive. Retrieved from 

https://progressive.org/dispatches/less-energy-life/ 

Cha, J. Mijin. 2013. What’s Missing from GDP? 

Retrieved from 

https://www.africanplanningschools.org.za/


Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   81 
 

https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publicati

ons/GDP-Explainer.pdf  

Christian Aid. 2006. “The Climate of Poverty: Facts, 

Fear and Hope.” Retrieved from 

https://www.christianaid.org.uk/resources/about-

us/climate-poverty-facts-fears-and-hope-2006  

Christian Aid. 2019. “Climate Change: It’s Now or 

Never.” Retrieved from 

https://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/climate-

change-its-now-or-never  

Chu, E., et al. 2019. “Unlocking the Potential for 

Transformative Climate Adaptation in Cities.” 

Background Paper prepared for the Global 

Commission on Adaptation, Washington DC and 

Rotterdam.  

Crawford, Neta. 2019. “Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate 

Change, and Costs of War.” Watson Institute, 

Brown University. Retrieved from 

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imc

e/papers/2019/Pentagon%20Fuel%20Use,%20Cli

mate%20Change%20and%20the%20Costs%20of

%20War%20Final.pdf  

Dyer, Gwynne. 2008. Climate Wars. New York: 

Random House.  

Ehrlich, Paul and Ehrlich, Anne. 2013. “Can a 

Collapse of Global Civilization be Avoided?” 

Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological 

Sciences (March 7). Retrieved from 

http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2845.  

Eliason, Jan. 2015. Opening Remarks, Mayor’s Forum 

of the World Cities Summit, New York (June 9). 

Retrieved from 

https://www.un.org/press/en/2015/dsgsm874.doc.

htm  

Environmental and Energy Study Institute. 2019. “Fact 

Sheet: Fossil Fuel Subsidies: A Closer Look at 

Tax Breaks and Societal Costs.” Retrieved from 

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-

fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-

societal-costs  

European Environmental Agency. 2018. Emission 

Database for Global Atmospheric Research 

(EDGAR). Retrieved from 

http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/   

Fikkert, Brian and Kapic, Kelly. 2019. Becoming 
Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty Isn't the 

American Dream. Chicago: Moody Publishers.  

Global Commission on Adaptation. 2019. Adapt 

Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate 

Resilience. Global Center on Adaptation. 

Retrieved from https://cdn.gca.org/assets/2019-

09/GlobalCommission_Report_FINAL.pdf  

Griffin, Paul. 2017. The Carbon Majors Database. 

Retrieved from https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-

c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rac

kcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/o

riginal/Carbon-Majors-Report-

2017.pdf?1499691240  

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

2014. AR5 Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of 

Climate Change. Retrieved from 

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/  

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

2018. Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 ºC. 

Retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/  

Lu, Denise and Flavelle, Christopher. 2019. “Rising 

Seas Will Erase More Cities by 2050 New 

Research Shows.” The New York Times. Oct 29. 

Retrieved from 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/c

limate/coastal-cities-underwater.html  

Mumford, Lewis, 1970. The Pentagon of Power. New 

York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.  

Newbigin, Lesslie. 1989. The Gospel in a Pluralist 

Society. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 

Pierrehumbert, Raymond. 2019. “There is no Plan B 

for dealing with the climate crisis,” Bulletin of the 

Atomic Scientists, 75:5, 215-221. Retrieved from 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/009

63402.2019.1654255  

Pirani, Simon. 2018. Burning Up: A Global History of 

Fossil Fuel Consumption. London: Pluto Press.  

Pope Francis. 2015. Laudato Si’: On Care for Our 

Common Home. [Encyclical]. Retrieved from 

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclic

als/documents/papa-

francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html  

Richter, Felix. 2019. “The Global Disparity in Carbon 

Footprints.” Statista. 

https://www.statista.com/chart/16292/per-capita-

co2-emissions-of-the-largest-economies/    

Schumacher, Ernst. 1973. Small is Beautiful: 
Economics as if People Mattered. New York: 

Harper & Row. 

United Nations Department of Economic and Social 

Affairs (UNDESA). 2011. World Economic and 

Social Survey 2011 [The Great Green 

Technological Transformation]. Retrieved from 

http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/w

ess/wess_current/2011wess_chapter2.pdf  

University of Exeter. 2017. “Climate Change Impacts 

Already Locked In, But the Worst Can Still be 

Avoided.” ScienceDaily. Retrieved from 

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/1711161

05020.htm  

Wallace-Wells, David. 2017. “The Uninhabitable 

Earth.” New York Magazine. Retrieved from 

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-

change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html  
Wallace-Wells, David. 2019a. The Uninhabitable 

Earth: Life After Warming. New York: Penguin 

Ransom House. 

https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/GDP-Explainer.pdf
https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/GDP-Explainer.pdf
https://www.christianaid.org.uk/resources/about-us/climate-poverty-facts-fears-and-hope-2006
https://www.christianaid.org.uk/resources/about-us/climate-poverty-facts-fears-and-hope-2006
https://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/climate-change-its-now-or-never
https://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/climate-change-its-now-or-never
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/Pentagon%20Fuel%20Use,%20Climate%20Change%20and%20the%20Costs%20of%20War%20Final.pdf
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/Pentagon%20Fuel%20Use,%20Climate%20Change%20and%20the%20Costs%20of%20War%20Final.pdf
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/Pentagon%20Fuel%20Use,%20Climate%20Change%20and%20the%20Costs%20of%20War%20Final.pdf
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/Pentagon%20Fuel%20Use,%20Climate%20Change%20and%20the%20Costs%20of%20War%20Final.pdf
http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2845
https://www.un.org/press/en/2015/dsgsm874.doc.htm
https://www.un.org/press/en/2015/dsgsm874.doc.htm
https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs
https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs
https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs
http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
https://cdn.gca.org/assets/2019-09/GlobalCommission_Report_FINAL.pdf
https://cdn.gca.org/assets/2019-09/GlobalCommission_Report_FINAL.pdf
https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240
https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240
https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240
https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240
https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/
https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2019.1654255
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2019.1654255
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html
https://www.statista.com/chart/16292/per-capita-co2-emissions-of-the-largest-economies/
https://www.statista.com/chart/16292/per-capita-co2-emissions-of-the-largest-economies/
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wess/wess_current/2011wess_chapter2.pdf
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wess/wess_current/2011wess_chapter2.pdf
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171116105020.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171116105020.htm
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html


Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2), Winter 2020  

 
Slimbach, Global Development in the Anthropocene   82 
 

Wallace-Wells, David. 2019b. “Time to Panic.” The 
New York Times. (Feb. 16). Retrieved from 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/sun

day/fear-panic-climate-change-warming.html    

Watson, Vanessa. 2009. “Seeing from the South: 

Refocusing Urban Planning on the Globe’s 

Central Urban Issues.” Urban Studies, 46(11): 

2259-2275. 

Wesley, John. n.d. “The Sermons of John Wesley. 

Sermon 50: The Use of Money.” Wesley Center 

Online. Retrieved from 

http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-

john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-50-the-use-of-

money  

Wikipedia. Retrieved February 2020. “List of 

Countries by Carbon Dioxide Emissions.” 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by

_carbon_dioxide_emissions    

World Bank. 2012. Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C 

Warmer World Must be Avoided. Washington 

DC: World Bank. Retrieved from 

https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climatechang

e/publication/turn-down-the-heat  
 

 

Richard Slimbach is Professor of Global Studies at 

Azusa Pacific University, where he guides students to 

assume their fair share of responsibility for the fate of 

the poor and the planet. Slimbach is the author of 

Becoming World Wise (2010) and The Art of World 

Learning (2020). 

 

Author email: rslimbach@apu.edu  

 
 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/sunday/fear-panic-climate-change-warming.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/sunday/fear-panic-climate-change-warming.html
http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-50-the-use-of-money
http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-50-the-use-of-money
http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-50-the-use-of-money
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climatechange/publication/turn-down-the-heat
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climatechange/publication/turn-down-the-heat
mailto:rslimbach@apu.edu

