Christmas Letter 2020 Martin and Margot Hodson

Martin and Margot Hodson's Christmas Letter for 2020

Dear All,

Everyone in the world will say that 2020 was a different year to normal, and we are no exception! We began the year extremely busy with numerous in-person speaking events (remember those?). The highlight was Martin’s weekend trip to Guernsey in early March supporting our friends from A Rocha UK with two speaking events on Saturday and three sermons on Sunday! But then quite suddenly everything changed, and words like coronavirus, lockdown, and social distancing dominated our lives. We have been very blessed by living in such a wonderful part of the world, The Cotswolds, and we can just walk out of our Vicarage into the amazing countryside. We also have a massive garden, and actually managed to grow quite a lot of food this year, a first for us.

Shill Valley and Broadshire Benefice

Margot’s parish work rapidly switched from quite formal services to online film making. And when we were allowed to we had some great open-air services at Alvescot where they have a large area of church land under a huge old oak tree next to a car park- a perfect setting. Towards the end of the year there have been tentative, very careful indoor services once more. Perhaps best of all though has been the development of a fellowship group from a Lent Course, and that now operates on Zoom.

Writing!

But with travels much reduced writing continued or even accelerated. Martin published three academic journal articles in 2020 and completed a two and a half year project as lead editor for “Frontiers in Phytolith Research”. That was a major job! 

Not long into the pandemic the Grove Ethics committee decided that they needed a COVID booklet. They needed it quickly- just three weeks. Working with our friends, Ruth Valerio and Tim Howles we made it with a day to spare, and “Covid-19: Environment, Justice and the Future” was published in July. 

We published our “A Christian Guide to Environmental Issues” back in 2015, and it sold fairly well, but was getting a little dated. So we approached our publishers, BRF, about a second edition, and they agreed. It needed a lot of work to update it, but the 2^nd edition should be published in April next year. Finally, at the same time, BRF will publish “Green Reflections”, a collection of the Bible reflections we have written over the last few years, and some new ones.

Holidays

Holidays? Well, we were very grateful to fit in one at a cottage in mid-Wales in October, in between various lockdowns. We did lots of walking, saw friends in a socially distanced way, and even watched a few films!

It has, of course, been a very sad year for many people, and we have shared in that sadness. In April the President and founder of JRI, Sir John Houghton, sadly died of COVID. He was a truly great man and we were fortunate to have known him. We know of many other cases, and the pandemic is very far from over. Let us hope that the vaccines really click in next year and that 2021 can be a big improvement on 2020.

Have a good Christmas and stay safe everyone!

Martin and Margot

IPBES, Zoonoses and Biodiversity

On 29^th October 2020 the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released a major report entitled “IPBES Workshop on Biodiversity and Pandemics”. This looked at the links between environmental degradation and biodiversity loss and the incidence of pandemics. These links have been known about for many years, but COVID-19 has really focused attention on the problem.

Ruth Valerio posted a link to the report on Twitter on 30^th October and Justin Thacker responded with three tweets:

What we're doing to the environment is atrocious, but we should be careful about linking everything to it. The evidence linking flu pandemics to environmental behaviour is not as strong as this report suggests. It is true that urbanisation and international travel increased the speed of transmission, but it's entirely possible it would have spread globally just at a slower rate without such factors. Flu pandemics are not the same as other zoonoses, and can occur without environmental degradation. The so-called Spanish Flu is evidence of that.

Ruth and I were co-authors of the recent Grove Booklet, “COVID-19: Environment, Justice and the Future”, and I wrote the section on the origins of COVID-19. So Ruth asked if I could reply. I pondered a few tweets, and decided it was too complex for that! So a short blog.

One thing to say is that the report is really good, bringing together a huge amount of literature in a logical way. So any criticisms should be seen in that light, and are certainly not intended to undermine the main thrust of the report (I am mindful of minute criticisms of the IPCC reports which were used by sceptics to try to say that the whole reports were rubbish). But Justin has a medical background and I am a scientist, and there is a place for discussion of these issues in a fair and open-minded way.

Firstly, I totally agree with Justin that we should not attempt to link everything to environmental degradation if the links are tenuous or do not exist. I have similar worries.

What does the report have to say specifically about influenza (flu)? There are 52 mentions of influenza in the report. It begins by stating, “The majority (70%) of emerging diseases (e.g. Ebola, Zika, Nipah encephalitis), and almost all known pandemics (e.g. influenza, HIV/AIDS, COVID-19), are zoonoses – i.e. are caused by microbes of animal origin. These microbes ‘spill over’ due to contact among wildlife, livestock, and people.”

It is the case that the origin of most influenza outbreaks, including the so-called Spanish Flu, seems tied to zoonosis, but in most of these events it is more likely that it was domesticated animals that were the source of the virus (particularly birds and pigs). I think if I were writing something with the title “Biodiversity and Pandemics” I would want to be clear about this. I would perhaps have a brief mention of influenza pandemics and outbreaks and then concentrate on the epidemics and pandemics that were caused by interactions with wild animals. In fact, that was the approach I took in our Grove booklet. The argument is strong enough without invoking influenza examples and muddying the water.

I would agree with Justin on his urbanisation point. COVID-19 would have spread more slowly with less urbanisation, and we can even see this at the moment in the UK where rural areas have lower infection rates than urban. I disagree though on international travel. The snag there is that a virus can spread around the world before it is properly recognised and a local lockdown can be arranged. Wuhan was probably an example of this.

So largely I find myself in agreement with Justin, but again I want to emphasise that the report is an important and useful piece of work. We can quibble about the details, but we should certainly not deny the main message.

Dr Martin Hodson

Book Sale 2020!

 

The Good News

We are pleased to say that the first edition of “A Christian Guide to Environmental Issues”, published in 2015, has almost sold out, and we will have a new edition in 2021. Bible Reading Fellowship (BRF) have agreed to us publishing a completely updated second edition in the spring of 2021. At the same time, they will be publishing a collection of our Bible reflections on environmental issues to be titled “Green Reflections”. We are very grateful to BRF for this opportunity.

 

The Books Under The Bed!

The Not Such Good News

The first edition of “A Christian Guide to Environmental Issues” was selling really well. Martin sold 30 copies on a visit to Guernsey at the end of February, and we were easily on target to completely sell out of our personal copies. I think you can guess what happened! Lockdown and then a whole lot of restrictions which meant all our face to face events were canceled. Soon people discovered Zoom, but selling books at Zoom meetings was much less possible. So we are left with a stock of about 80 of the first edition under our bed! What to do?

 

The Potentially Good News

After consultation with BRF, we have decided to sell off our remaining stock at £3 each plus post and package (they are currently £8.19 on Amazon). They will be great for you to give away to friends at church or maybe as stocking fillers at Christmas. Contact us at martinjhodson@yahoo.co.uk to make an order.