The Bishop of Sheffield received the following written answer on 12th April 2025:
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield asked His Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the number of jobs in South Yorkshire that are linked to the net-zero transition.
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The Bishop of St Albans received the following written answers on 12th April 2025:
The Lord Bishop of St Albans asked His Majesty’s Government, following the publication in Environmental Research Letters on 31 March of Reconsidering the macroeconomic damage of severe warming, what assessment they have made of the finding that global warming will have a significant negative impact on the size of the global economy.
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The Bishop of Southwark spoke in a debate on the affordability of the net-zero emissions target on 3rd April 2025, advocating for continued pursual of the 2050 goal of net-zero emissions:
The Lord Bishop of Southwark: My Lords, this is a timely debate. I am very glad to be able to speak in it. I am reminded that the preacher in the Book of Ecclesiastes says:
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven”,
including—I dare to mention in your Lordships’ House—a time to speak and a time to keep silence.
For the Church, increased costs have a material effect on what we can do, but I am as reluctant as anyone else to tilt at windmills or turbines. Not only the scientific consensus about human activity and climate but the dramatic changes of one’s lifetime—expanding deserts, retreating glaciers, rising sea temperature, extreme weather events—lead me to believe that this is a situation where the option is not “when”, or even “what”, but “how”. As with other great crises, we must shoulder the burden, and it is a challenge to our political leadership to share this task. In the Church of England, we have an exceptionally challenging target set by General Synod of achieving net zero by 2030. The national Church has ring-fenced £190 million to support its churches and clergy housing towards this goal.
Continue reading “Bishop of Southwark emphasises importance of meeting environmental targets”On 3rd April 2025, in the House of Commons, Marsha De Cordova MP, on behalf of the Church Commissioners, gave the following answers to questions from MPs:
Project Spire
Katie Lam MP (Con, Weald of Kent) asked: What recent discussions the Church Commissioners have had with the Charity Commission on Project Spire?
Marsha de Cordova MP (Lab, Battersea): The Church Commissioners are engaged in informal discussions with the Charity Commission to consider what regulatory approvals may be required to progress this project.
Continue reading “Church Commissioners Questions: Project Spire, Christians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme, Lithium Mineral Rights, Eco Church Awards”The Bishop of St Albans received the following written answer on 13th March 2025:
The Lord Bishop of St Albans asked His Majesty’s Government whether they intend to scrap the Chalk Stream Recovery Pack.
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The Bishop of Norwich asked a question on government obligations under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species on 3rd March 2025, during a discussion on climate change:
The Lord Bishop of Norwich: My Lords, on this World Wildlife Day, the day that the United Nations marks the adoption of the CITES—the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species—and given that climate change is having an impact on rare and endangered species and the habitats that support them, making them rarer and more endangered, even extinct, and driving up their illegal value, will the Minister allow us to hear a little bit more about how His Majesty’s Government are working to ensure that their obligations under the CITES are met?
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On 26th February 2025, the Bishop of Norwich received the following written answers:
The Lord Bishop of Norwich asked His Majesty’s Government what progress has been made towards meeting the statutory environmental target of 16.5 per cent tree cover in England by 2050.
Continue reading “Bishop of Norwich asks about climate and environment targets”The Bishop of Norwich received the following written answers on 24th February 2025:
The Lord Bishop of Norwich asked His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the World Economic Forum’s top two global risks over the next ten years, namely extreme weather events, exacerbated by climate change, and biodiversity loss.
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The Bishop of Manchester asked a question on the impact of new oil projects on net zero targets, and a question on the viability of carbon capture and storage, on 12th February 2025:
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: Perhaps I might make it a bit wider, to avoid putting the Minister in a difficult situation. We have heard that there are a number of projects that have previously been approved to a certain stage and—at the risk of a pun—are in the pipeline. Have the Government made any estimate of the impact that schemes in this sort of pipeline will have on the UK being able to meet its net-zero targets?
Continue reading “Bishop of Manchester asks about net zero targets and biomass capture”
The Bishop of Norwich spoke in a debate on ensuring fines paid by water companies are used to repair damage to the sewage system on 6th February 2025, stressing the need for cultural change among water company leadership
The Lord Bishop of Norwich: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for securing this timely debate. It is a scourge on us all that sewage pollution is damaging so many of our watercourses and coastlines—damaging their ecosystems but also our enjoyment of them. I remember my first experience of such pollution when, as a young lad, I caught sticklebacks in my hands from the ditches around our Yorkshire village. One day, I went to my usual place of good stickleback hunting to find it putrid, with a storm drain leaking sewage and items—at the time, I did not understand what they were—floating in the ditch. The sticklebacks were gone for over a year.
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