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Good morning. Opening my newspaper yesterday I was quite put off eating my breakfast kipper by the picture of the open jaws of a huge great white shark heading my way. Apparently the creature was tagged by a group of marine biologists a year ago off the coast of Florida, since then she’s been to Bermuda, north to Newfoundland and now she’s heading across the Atlantic in our direction, however she still a thousand miles away so there’s no need to panic. But the journey of the white shark is just another indication that something is going on with the climate. Patterns are shifting in the atmosphere and in the oceans. We don’t have to tell the people of Somerset this as they try to put together their lives after the floods caused by the second wettest winters on record. Meanwhile my same daily newspaper reports that the drought in California is now in its 14th month and draconian water rationing controls are being put into place. Opinions differ to the cause of all this although most scientists claim that human intervention has some part to play and it’s been estimated that it will take a thousand years for the earth to recover from the damage already done. Something must be done and there are indications that with determination something can be done. With the ban on CFC gases in aerosol cans the growth in the hole in the ozone layer protecting the earth from cosmic rays has been halted. Then we’ve seen in Britain how clean air acts have eradicated the smog that used to regularly engulf our cities and the same could be done in Beijing. Then it’s reported that Indonesia’s highest Islamic clerical body has issued a fatwa instructing Muslims not to engage in the destruction of threatened species and the tropical forests, the lungs of the planet. Something like catastrophic climate change must have been there very early in the history of humanity because there are stories of a great flood in many faith traditions. The version in the bible ties it to the punishment of God on a sinful humanity, but Noah and his family, together with members of innumerable species, are rescued in an ark. And when the rain ceased and the floods began to subside we read that a rainbow appeared as a sign of God’s covenant. And I find it of interest that this wasn’t just a covenant with Noah, representing humanity, it was a covenant with all the creatures which were with him, because we live in a web of interconnectedness. In the covenant God promised not to destroy again, but of course humanity might. Some see humankind today as a kind of cancer eating up the resources of the globe and threatening its life. But the earth owes us no favours and the truth might be that if we fail to care for the earth, it will take of itself by making us not welcome.