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Good morning. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed to the point of despair about the environmental crisis. Last week, the media covered a report that air pollution might be damaging every organ in the human body. Species diversity is declining and ice caps are melting at an alarming rate. All this can make our individual attempts at healthy and sustainable living seem futile. The scenario confronting us seems apocalyptic, and it requires a fundamental transformation at the level of policy, economics and law. This calls for concerted international action by governments and corporations. But even so, for me, faith means recognising that each of us has a unique contribution to make, and we are more than the sum of our parts. I believe there’s a power of love which sustains the universe and works through us and with us to magnify our meagre endeavours and to amplify the good that we do. I like to think that’s the point of the New Testament story of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, when Jesus fed more than five thousand people with a small offering of food. If I offer to God what little I have, the good that it does can be multiplied beyond my imagining. We should never give up hope, because despair saps us of the energy we need to change things. So let me tell you a good news story. Sixty years ago the Thames was declared biologically dead. Today it’s one of the cleanest urban rivers in the world. I live on a houseboat on the tidal Thames and I swim in the river throughout the year, surrounded by the plop and splash of leaping fish and gazed upon by curious grebes, swans, herons and coots. Colonies of seals are breeding in the Thames estuary, and porpoises have been spotted as far upstream as Richmond. This transformation needed policy change and laws to control industrial pollution, but it’s sustained by armies of volunteers who gather litter and keep records of the river’s wildlife and ecology. The Today programme is listened to by over 7 million people every week. Imagine the impact we would have on our environment if every one of us picked up just one piece of litter a day, and resolved to avoid buying anything plastic one day a week. Such small changes won’t save the ecosystem, but they can be potent reminders of how, just because we can’t do everything, there’s no excuse for not doing anything. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”