The problem with Justin Welby’s environmentalism

There is an excellent religious case to be made for environmentalism. Roger Scruton ten years ago made the point that a ‘natural piety’ is inherent in most of us. Scruton argued this was a call to be responsible for the environment and urged us to love the earth and not to exploit it. This argument sweetly slips into theological terms. The earth is not there to satisfy as many of our crass secular desires as possible ,it is there to give us – and very importantly our descendants – the opportunity to be closer to God, be this moral, aesthetic or otherwise.

Justin Welby, nominal head of the Anglican communion, is undoubtedly on board with environmentalism. He made this clear in a keynote speech on Sunday at the Lambeth Conference. Unfortunately, if you expected him to put the religious argument for environmentalism at the forefront of his speech, you would be disappointed.