Blackfriars Hall, with assistance from Visiting Fellow Dr Michael Oborne, Director of Multidisciplinary Issues of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), hosted a one-day colloquium in Oxford looking at ethical responses to climate change from a Christian perspective.

The colloquium, held on Saturday 17 November 2007, brought together eminent scientists, theologians, policy-makers and economists, to look at sustainable, practical, and virtuous ways forward in addressing climate change.

The colloquium looked at the ethical question in the Christian tradition; sustainability and ethical choice; climate change and development; and the debate over a suitable course of action.

Blackfriars’ Regent, Fr Richard Finn, O.P. said: ‘The conference is part of a wider policy at Blackfriars Hall to promote dialogue between academics from different disciplines and a wider audience who can together reflect on how the Christian intellectual tradition offers insight into contemporary public issues. The challenge facing churches, and society at large, is in giving urgent and sophisticated attention to new moral questions concerning the apparently competing goods of sustainability and economic development.’

Key themes analysed the problem of climate change and its impact on international economic development, and the difference between north and south, and rich and poor, the world dimensions of climate change.

The colloquium posed the question of how to deliver an efficient response to climate change through churches and national political engagement.

The Blackfriars colloquium was supported and sponsored by the MB Reckitt Trust, a charity trust funding projects concerned with Christian social thought and action, the Tablet, the Pastoral Review, the Von Hügel Institute, Cambridge, and the Justice and Peace Commission of the English Dominicans.