As a little boy growing up in the 1960s, I was thoroughly indoctrinated into the environmental movement which, even then, had become social orthodoxy. One of my first exercises in plagiarism was an essay on ‘noise pollution’ which I submitted at the age of eight. I phoned up an elderly neighbor, the redoubtable feminist Charlotte Whitton, who cheerfully dictated it to me. (Miss Whitton is mostly remembered today for her wit: "Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought of half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.”)

At school assemblies, zealots from Pollution Probe would try to terrorize us with images of a menacing environmental clock which was out there somewhere ticking until it would chime at the hour when human life would be expunged and wheezing rats would inherit the blackened planet. This was projected to occur around 1995 or so.

Like many children of my generation, not having gone deaf, and with scarcely an asthmatic rat in sight, I became an eco-skeptic, fueled in part by my wife’s uncle Gerry, an environmental scientist from California, who loved to skewer the simple-mindedness of Mother Earth’s self-appointed celebrity friends. Gerry would comment dryly that one of the greatest producers of greenhouse gases are cows. (280 litres of methane per cow daily to be precise). Earlier this year, the journal Nature published findings that forests may actually increase, rather that combat, global warming by producing large quantities of this greenhouse gas.

So I am surprised to find myself for the first time in my life genuinely worried about the environment. It is not that I am any less agnostic about its baroque and unspeakably complex workings. I leave my affirmations of faith to matters of religion. But in a debate between scientists about whether global warming is man-made or part of a natural cycle, prudence surely lies with assuming that the responsibility is ours.

On the face of it, the issue is primarily about the use of oil and gas. The Archbishop of Canterbury has drawn attention to projections that over the next 25 years the growth of the Chinese and Indian economies will result in a 60% increase in carbon emissions. The possible resulting increase in droughts in sub-Saharan Africa, and rising water-levels in the Indian sub-continent, would have an appalling human cost, a cost as always primarily borne by children.

He could be wrong. There is no scientific consensus on these matters. Predictably he has been attacked on this as silly, ignorant and alarmist. In Canada, the new Government has recently been lobbied by sixty climate scientists, all of whom are skeptics on global warming. Nonetheless , I think the Archbishop has done well to speak. With stakes as high as these, I will choose Chicken Little over Pollyanna any time.

The threat will need to be tackled morally if it is to be tackled in time. The forces of governmental inertia, the nearsightedness and selfishness of voters and corporations, the craven and supine posture of political leaders – all these are enormous obstacles. Who will save us from ourselves?

One might look to Ezekiel for the judgement we face:

Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture; and to drink of clear water, that you must muddy the rest of the water with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have muddied with your feet?

And to Babel:

And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

If the ruinous course our industrialized societies are taking is to be reversed, we will all need to recognize that we are creatures with God-given limits, not gods with a right to consume the heritage of our grandchildren. We need to repent and pray that God will deepen our conversion to help us live as stewards first and consumers second.

My prayer is that governments will legislate not just for this generation but for those to come, and undertake binding and effectual international commitments. There is still time. All that is lacking is the steady resolve which comes from a reasonable, religious and holy hope.