I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Noah. He is someone I can identify with. Mike likes to call me an eco-warrior - is it because I ride a bicycle? I like to think Noah was the original eco-warrior.

When I was a teenager, way back in the 1970s, I grew concerned about the environment. At the end of my road was the old A11. All the commuter traffic from Essex into London went along it, until they built the M11. Every day, on my walk to school, the cars would be nose to tail, pouring out their smelly exhaust over pedestrians. Remember, in those days, no one had linked global warming with carbon emissions. I was just concerned that I had to breathe those fumes and, even worse, the cars were burning up valuable oil, going nowhere. Even then, I'd worked out that there was only so much oil in the world and one day it was going to run out. It seemed a shame to waste what we had got.

So, I decided that I never wanted to drive a car. Or fly in a plane. I also decided to go to agricultural college to study one of the first environmental degrees in the country. At the same time, I became a Christian. To me there seemed no contradiction between Christianity and environmentalism. Indeed, being a Christian made me even more concerned about God's world and the need to look after it. It meant going against the flow - being part of the so-called 'God Squad' and being a 'flower picker' as the agriculturalists used to call us environmental students.

I'm sure Noah got called similar names, or worse, when he started building an ark. Imagine, you live in the Middle East - not renowned as one of the wettest places on Earth - and you start to prepare for a flood. What would the neighbours have said? 'He's completely out of his mind!' 'Who does he think he is taking up all that space with an ark?' 'What sort of God would flood the world? I think I'd rather drown.' It must have taken a huge amount of faith to build the ark when there was no sign of a flood and public opinion was against him.

Of course, there are parallels with the warnings we hear today about climate change. Those who talk about climate change are frequently dismissed as doom-mongers or party-poopers. Even though most people now accept that climate change is actually happening, we don't want to be reminded about the possible consequences. The most obvious parallel with Noah is the fact that global warming could eventually lead to a rise in sea level. Coastal regions around the world could flood, including parts of London and south-east England. After the exceptionally cold winter we've just had, the sceptics appear to have a stronger argument. 'You call this global warming' they say as we lie feet deep in snow!

But what relevance does the story of Noah have to the situation we find ourselves in today? If what they say about climate change is really true, is there any point doing anything at all? Don't we just have to accept our fate?

What Noah teaches us, above all, is the responsibility that we have for the natural world and the way in which our future is inseparable from the future of all living things. God told Noah not just to build an ark for himself and his family, but also for breeding pairs of all types of creature. Today, we understand that all living things are dependent on each other in, what we call, an ecosystem. Noah would not have had that understanding, but as well as building the ark, he followed instructions to collect male and female of every animal species.

Our lives have become separated from the natural world. We live in cities rather than the countryside; we work in offices rather than farm the soil. It is easy for us to forget that our lives are inextricably linked with nature. What is worse though, is not where we live or how we work - it is what we consume. We have lost sight of the responsibility that God has given us for care of the natural world. In fact, I would go further. We have lost sight of what it is to be truly human, in the way that God intended.

Modern consumerism has got completely out of hand. We now assume that we need to have a car, eat what we want when we want, change our clothes as fashions change, travel anywhere in the world that takes our fancy. When did those things become normal? Even when I was young, not everyone was able to do those things. Certainly, they didn't a hundred years ago. Now, we think we are lacking something if we don't have these things. It has caused us to lose sight of our responsibilities as humans and it has caused us to lose sight of our place in God's world.

There are those who argue we need to change our ways to save the planet. They say that we need to drastically cut our consumption. They point out that if the world's temperature rises 2 degrees, we will reach a point of no return, after which runaway climate change will happen and the human race will be doomed. It's a depressing thought, to say the least, and in the end it might be a counterproductive one. Individually, we think nothing that we do is going to make much difference, so we do nothing.

However, reading Genesis, there is reason to be more hopeful than this. In ch9 v11 God says, "I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut of by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." God has made a promise that life will continue, come what may. It may not be life as we know it, but life will not be destroyed.

So, does that relieve us of any responsibility? Not at all! The reason we need to change our behaviour, is not that it will save the world, though it certainly won't do any harm. No, the reason we need to change our behaviour is to rediscover what it is to be truly human and to live in a shared world with the rest of God's creation. In other words, to make our lives better. If, in the process, we begin to slow down or even reverse, the trend of global warming, so much the better.

After the flood, Noah went on to live to the ripe old age of nine hundred and fifty. Had he disobeyed God he would have died, along with his compatriots. He chose to follow God's instructions and recognised his interdependence with the natural world. In doing so, he not only saved his own life, he also helped to create a better world for future generations. So can we.

John Widdowson