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But we should also be concerned about the rest of creation. We were put in the Garden in Genesis 2 to care for creation and to look after it. That was the mandate God gave to the first humans. We need to look at the integrity, the stability, and the continuation of the rest of creation very seriously.

You were a student at Oxford along with other future Christian leaders, like theologian J. I. Packer and Regent College founder James Houston. How did that experience influence your life work?

At the end of the '40s, Oxford was full of people who had just come from the war. I was very green by comparison with the men who had been through the war years. The Christian Union actually grew to be quite strong and was well guided by some of these ex-service people with mature faith. It had a great influence in helping me mature as a Christian.

I've tried to relate my science to my faith. Many people feel they're opposed to each other, but they're not at all, because the science we do is God's science. In science, we're trying to find out just how the universe works, how God has made it.

Parallel to knowing God as Creator is knowing him also as Redeemer, as the one who sent his Son into the world to die for us and to rise again from the dead and to become our living Lord. And one day he will come back to earth to renew creation. There's a future for creation clearly taught in Scripture—a transformed creation. In the meantime, we're meant to look after creation on his behalf, as stewards for the Lord who is at present away.

You've worked with scientists, governments, and business. Most people think business is the least willing to recognize global warming. Is that your experience?

Some of the very big businesses in the world recognize the problem. Take companies like British Petroleum and Shell, two big oil companies: They have no doubt it's happening. Lord John Browne, chief executive of bp, gives lectures on climate change a bit like I do. He also says that it can be tackled and that we have to tackle it urgently. Browne is trying to grasp the opportunities that come from that. Shell is doing something very similar. Both are working hard on solar energy and other things.

In the last five years, bp has been trading carbon dioxide emissions within the company [with some operations that need to produce carbon dioxide "buying" carbon credits from other parts that can adapt and emit less]. And just by doing this, they've saved over the first four years, I think, half a billion dollars. This demonstrates the possibility of real savings within an industry.

The great shame is that the United States government is failing to grasp the opportunity. And that is creating big problems for people around the world. It's creating problems for China and India, whom we need to help very much to get their energy from non-fossil fuel sources as far as possible. If people saw the United States really picking up this problem, we would benefit enormously both in this industry and in the view which people around the world take of the U.S. I think the U. S. would rise in people's estimation, and it would make the problem very much easier to solve.

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April 2006, Vol. 50, No. 4