During the recent General Election campaign the three major political parties were all criticised for the lack of attention they paid to environmental issues. This criticism was not confined to the 'usual suspects': although both Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth were prominent in their condemnation of the parties' failure to connect their industrial, energy and transport policies with the wider issue of climate change, it was the intervention of the Royal Society which particularly struck me. Founded in 1660, this independent scientific academy is hardly a hotbed of environmental radicalism, yet in a public statement its president and chief officers expressed their disappointment that biodiversity and climate change had not figured more prominently in the campaigns of the major parties.

Politicians' unwillingness to engage with environmental issues is not a new phenomenon, nor is it surprising. Those whose livelihood is dependent on a favourable verdict from the electorate every four or five years are hardly likely to be drawn to resolve problems whose likely impact seems to be still so distant, both in space and time. It is much easier to ignore retreating glaciers in the Antarctic than electors angry about the visual impact of wind farms in the Lake District or about potential congestion charges in Edinburgh.

Until recently, Christians have not had an especially good record on the environment. Thankfully, through the work of organisations such as Christian Ecology Link (www.christian-ecology.org.uk) that has begun to change. Christians are beginning to understand that our call to be stewards of God's creation is related to Christ's call to us to love our neighbour: our neighbour in the Amazon rainforest whose life has been blighted by deforestation; our neighbour in China whose village has been destroyed because of a massive programme of dam building; our neighbour on what were once the shores of the Aral Sea, whose water volume has shrink by some 60% because of irrigation schemes affecting its feeder rivers. If Christians take a lead on the environment, then who knows? Perhaps politicians will follow.