MUCH has been researched and written about the impact of slavery. We cannot undo the past, but can we learn from its historic abuses and present-day aftermath? And might it be possible to identify future equivalents in advance, in an effort to moderate their effects? Forecasts about climate change suggest that we can — and should.
The story of the transatlantic trade in enslaved people is a scandalous tragedy. Millions were forcibly captured, transported, and compelled to live in cruel conditions, working for no wages.
Beyond these immediate outrages, slavery has left profound legacies for individuals, organisations, and the whole of Western society. Extensive research, notably by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership, at University College London, has systematically identified those who were compensated for emancipation under the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Through this, families and institutions are coming to terms with the origins and implications of their inherited wealth.
People of faith are as implicated as everyone else. The Church of England is grappling with the historic investment of some of Queen Anne’s Bounty in the South Sea Company, which was heavily involved in transatlantic chattel slavery. This has led to the contentious Project Spire, which seeks to offer funding for support in communities still adversely affected by the legacies of slavery.
Alongside this, the Church has been working to develop guidance about how congregations might respond to legacies in their local context, memorials to slave owners and traders, even buildings that were effectively funded through the sweat, tears, and blood of pressed labour.
Slavery will cast long shadows to which future generations must continue to respond. We have also become mindful of modern-day slavery and impoverished victims of people-trafficking.
But are there wider lessons to be learned by way of analogy to other contemporary issues? Indeed, might we even get ahead of the future, reversing the telescope of history by spotting the next legacy issue before it arrives, in an attempt to minimise or even mitigate its impact?
SLAVERY is all about cheap energy. It was the energy that built the great edifices of the ancient world, and which fortified the kingdoms that commissioned them. It was the energy that grew the sugar that itself fuelled the empires of early modern Europe. It led to untold suffering of the most vulnerable, as basic needs of justice and welfare were ignored. Institutions and individuals failed to acknowledge and alleviate these needs, because the whole of society was hopelessly addicted to the goods and services facilitated by this cheap energy.
To set this in the crude language of economics, the market for slave labour is inherently inefficient because it fails to price in the true human and ethical cost of consumption.
These stark terms invite comparison to our contemporary consumption of carbon, because fossil fuels are the cheap energy that has powered the industrial age. They have facilitated rapid economic expansion and growth: jobs, food, and opportunities for leisure. We have become hopelessly addicted to these fuels, because our entire economic stability and societal structure depend on the goods and services that they facilitate.
Once again, here is a market that is inherently inefficient, because it fails to price in the true cost of consumption. The true price of burning fossil fuels is a legacy cost, which we are dumping on our children, grandchildren, and their grandchildren.
Given this, how will our descendants view us in 100, or even 50, years’ time? I foresee a day when future generations will castigate today’s climate-change deniers and carbon-reduction laggards in ways not dissimilar to our own view of the slave traders and owners of the 18th century.
Like us, our progeny will be confronted by an evil that is all-pervading and long-lasting. No amount of hand-wringing will make the problem go away, and the impact will take generations to process. In an era in which some countries, companies, and political leaders are trying to step away from environmental targets (“greenhushing”), the stakes could not be higher.
DESPITE this bleak assessment, I remain an optimist. Advances in green technology are now being rolled out at scale. The UK is leading the way in decarbonising electricity generation, and the pace and scale of change in China is peaking global emissions. The day is also coming when the population of the world will tip, contributing, I hope, to a reduction in the overall demand for energy.
We will not get where we need to be, however, until all homes are heated by heat pumps or direct electricity, all vehicles are powered by batteries or hydrogen, and all unavoidable uses of fossil fuels are offset by equivalent carbon capture and storage. Countries and leaders tied to mantras about drilling oil and digging coal will find themselves economically behind the curve and ethically on the wrong side of history. As Private Eye succinctly put it recently, “Donald Trump doesn’t have to worry about what the weather will be like in 30 years — he’ll be somewhere hot by then — but many of the rest of us do.”
The expected and yet uncharted future legacy of climate change is the greatest practical problem and moral challenge that humanity has ever faced. It is also a profoundly theological issue. It is about sin. I am enmeshed: every time I visit the shops, every winter when I worship in a cathedral heated by two very large gas boilers, every time I take my summer holiday.
It is also about truth, an overwhelming scientific consensus that will not permit “alternative” facts that try to obfuscate reality or deny our moral obligations.
It is also about love for neighbour: the neighbours of the future whom we will never meet. Finally, it is about God: Christians are in the eternity business, and stand witness to our Maker’s timeless love for all creation.
The Revd Dr Kenneth Padley is Canon Chancellor of Salisbury Cathedral, and the author of Kingdom Buildings: Your church and churchyard as assets for mission (Canterbury Press) (Books, 8 August 2025). This article stems from a 2026 Lent Lecture, which can be viewed on the Salisbury Cathedral YouTube channel.
