From God to Climate Change

The journey of Albert Garnier's 30-year mission in China to scientist son Ben's fight with the riddle of the world.

This is my story of my grandfather and father, and the divergent paths they took in respective 30-year-plus careers to influence seemingly unrelated world trends continuing to this day - one to contribute 'body, mind and spirit' to the extraordinary rise of China to become a world power and the other to detail the damage to Earth of human-induced climate change, decades before the rest of the world woke up to it.

Each career logically leads to a 'modern day' synopsis of their perspective of life based on their major achievements.

Alberto Giovanni Garnier, a Waldensian Italian who in 1948 became Albert John Garnier and a British citizen, was an influential Protestant (Baptist) missionary to China for 30 years. Between 1906 and 1936, Albert, or Chia Liyan (妏堙槶) as Chinese named him, was known to millions through his many radio talks and publications. In 1933, he was instrumental in founding a religious radio station in Shanghai, from which he frequently broadcast across China.

A noted linguist, the story highlights Albert's harrowing account of his imprisonment without trial on the Isle of Man during World War II even though he had been appointed a Censor to monitor war-time China and Italian mail services.

Benjamin John Garnier, his son, was a scientist. As a climatologist, over 40 years of research and thinking in New Zealand, Nigeria, United States, Canada and Italy he came to believe that the solution to the problems threatening Earth resided squarely in the three-part evolution of the human brain. Earth is going to end up a living hell if we don't learn how to ignore the destructive messages coming from the more primitive parts of our brains.

It is also the story of my relationship with Albert and Ben through 25 years of family separation. I never met Albert, although he constantly wrote to me through my teenage years after my father left his family stranded in New Zealand in 1950. It would not be until 1975 that I caught up with Ben and repaired our relationship.