One of the wonderful joys of my job is that I get to tell stories to children. Most of the time, the stories I tell stem from the Bible. Our church’s worship service has a time when we focus on addressing children directly. Since we worship in a hybrid fashion, with some people joining in person and some online, I have a group of children who come to sit on cushions in the front of the sanctuary but I also have an audience of children who are watching from home. With the online community, visual elements are important. I often bring objects into the sanctuary that might not normally appear in that place. Early last summer, when we were promoting Church Camp, I brought a canoe. I’ve had photographs enlarged to poster size and others projected on to a screen in the sanctuary. Because our worship leaders plan in advance, I have time to think about the stories and plan the 5 minutes or so that I have to tell the story.

On November 6, we had a guest preacher as part of our congregation’s climate revival. The preacher used a text from Isaiah and the story of the conversion of Saul from the book of Acts as focus for the sermon. Although Paul’s experience of being temporarily blind and his conversion from one way of life to another is dramatic and a good text to explore with older children, it seemed to me to be a bit complex for our youngest participants in worship. I decided instead to talk about the need to share the world and its resources with others since I knew that the topic would be front and center in the preacher’s message.

We have a large earth ball. It is a beach ball that is printed to look like the earth as seen from space. The ball is about 4 feet in diameter, so it gets the attention of children, who love to touch it and roll it. Some try to pick it up, though it is large enough that it is hard to grip.

I told the children that the ball represents the world and asked what would happen if we had to share it not only with the children in the room, and not only with all the people in the room and all the people watching online, but with all of the people in the world. I gave the example of when I was a child. There were seven children in my family. We had one trampoline. If there are seven who want a turn and each one gets 5 minutes, it means that each child has to wait a half hour between turns. That can seem like a long time. Then I told the children that if each person in the world got five minutes with the ball, the time between turns would be 66,570 years. Of course that number of years means very little to some of the children, except it is a very long time. Older children know that no person could live that long. Younger children know that it is a lot more than the 3 or 4 fingers they hold up when they are asked their age.

Here is the problem with the story I told the children: I based my quick estimate on a world with 7 billion people. That is the number world population reached in October of 2011. Sometime today, perhaps already, the eight billionth person in the world will be born. That means 76,080 years between 5 minute turns if you want to know. And, of course, if it only took slightly over 11 years to get from 7 billion to 8 billion, it is pretty certain that the earth would get far beyond its ability to sustain life for the numbers that would come from projecting 76,080 years into the future.

It took all of history up until 1803 for the earth’s population to reach 1 billion people. The next billion was added in 124 years. From there it took only 33 years to reach 3 billion. You can see the exponential growth.

Here is what is clear from the story I told the children and the bit of math I did to make my story: It is pretty clear that we’ve only got one chance for “our” turn. If we are going to make choices that make this world a bit better for others, the time to act is now. If we are going to consume less so that there will be more to share, the time is now. Waiting another decade means a billion more mouths to feed.

Every year since 1992, world leaders have met in United Nations climate summits to negotiate agreements on steps to limit global temperature rises. The summits are referred to as COPs, which stands for Conference of the parties.” COP27 is currently taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt and will continue through November 18. Participants in the talks are focusing on reducing carbon emissions, helping countries to prepare for and deal with climate change, and securing technical support and funding for developing countries. Scientists estimate that if global temperatures rise 1..8 degrees C above 1850 levels, half of the world’s population could be exposed to life-threatening heat and humidity. Half the world’s population is, as of today, 4 billion people. That’s a lot of victims. It is a lot of threat to life.

Of course, the high population is part of the cause of the rise in carbon emissions and global climate change. A 50% reduction in population would make a big difference. It is also a very hard way for the globe to recover. Mass starvation is already upon us. It is estimated that 20 million people have insufficient food in east Africa because of drought. Places with more temperate climates are already experiencing waves of climate refugees. The influx of refugees has resulted in a shortage of housing and medical services for refugees and increased prices for others.

I don’t know if any of the children remember the story I told about sharing the earth ball, but i can’t get it out of my head.