God Goes Green

Writing in USAToday, Oliver "Buzz" Thomas blogs:

Does the Bible actually advocate environmentalism? If so, might the movement become the next cause for religious Americans?

I used to marvel at how foolish an organism is cancer. It can't seem to pace itself. Left to its own devices, it will greedily consume its host until the host dies, thereby causing the cancer's own premature death.

Then, one day I had an epiphany. We're like cancer. Unable to pace ourselves, we are greedily consuming our host organism (i.e. planet Earth) and getting dangerously close to killing ourselves in the process.

The difference is that cancer has an excuse: No brain.

Consider that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued one of its most sobering reports to date. The hundreds of scientists and scores of nations participating in the project paint an apocalyptic future of flooding, drought, disease and food shortages. In the face of such a crisis, one might expect people of faith to flock to the cause of protecting the environment. After all, the theological issue appears a simple one. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. The world and all that dwell in it!" proclaims Psalm 24:1. The earth is on loan. God owns it, and we are God's caretakers or "stewards," according to the Bible.

Read the rest HERE

Prairie Climate Stewardship Network

A web site for the Northern Plains:

Prairie Stewardship Network recognizes that our response to climate change must be a cooperative one, involving all levels of society. We strongly urge individuals and families to take action in their personal lives, and our leaders in industry, agriculture and government to support scientific research, technological alternatives and policy initiatives to dramatically reduce global warming emissions.

We who live in North Dakota and the Northern Plains region are uniquely blessed with options that can both produce climate-friendly energy for the nation and sustain our rural livelihoods. North Dakota industry has helped pioneer the use of coal gasification technology both to produce energy while capturing and permanently storing the carbon dioxide emissions underground*. It has also initiated the planning and construction of new wind farms, and ethanol and biodiesel plants; these accomplishments demonstrate our economic and environmental potential in renewable energy. These developments hold great promise for reducing global warming and for reviving rural communities. Our Network promotes continuing concerted action at all levels in order that our region's potential is fully realized.

Prairie Climate Stewardship Network (PCSN) seeks to:

Increase public understanding of global climate change and climate stewardship;
Identify promising solutions and actions to reduce climate change and to revive the prairie's rural communities; and
Build public and private support for climate stewardship initiatives.

Opportunities, Resources, Challenges and Solutions, and other information on how people of the Northern Plains of North America are responding to the challenges of global warming. More HERE

Green Bishop speaks for the earth

UGANDA:
South Africa's 'green bishop' takes Christians to task on earth usage
by Fredrick Nzwili

May 30, 2007[Ecumenical News International]

South African Anglican bishop Geoff Davies stirred debate among church leaders and theologians attending an Ecumenical Water Network conference in the Ugandan capital when he asserted that Christians were making a mistake if they believed God only cared about humanity, while the rest of creation existed for the benefit of people.
"Everything God created is good and has value. We make a mistake of thinking God is only concerned about us at our peril," the former bishop of Umzimvumbu (which means "the home of the hippopotamus" in Zulu) told the May 21-25 conference in Kampala that discussed Africa's water crisis.

Davies quoted Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmentalist and first African woman Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, who says we cannot live without the rest of creation and that we are dependent on it.

Davies is currently executive director of the Southern Africa Faith Communities' Environment Institute and he said that human beings could not live separated from nature, nor see nature as an object to be exploited.

"If the natural environment does not survive, we won't," warned Davies, who shocked a congregation one Sunday, when he halted a service he was leading to tip a rubbish bag full of bottles, plastic and other junk onto the floor of Cape Town's St. George's Cathedral. "The reality is that we are now in the midst of the sixth extinction. There have been five previous ones, millions of years ago. The big difference is that this time, we humans are causing it," he said.

"We must remember water is an integral part of the natural environment and we must look after the totality of the natural environment, if we are to survive and if we are to have clean water," said Davies, who has been dubbed the "green bishop" by some of his peers.

His comments in Entebbe triggered strong reactions with some leaders agreeing with him while others stuck to the view that human beings were created to have dominion over nature and thereby had a right to use resources to live.

"The Church is being challenged to play her prophetic role in raising justice issues and viewing environment and water issues as part of faith," the Rev. Maritim Rirei, a Kenyan Anglican church leader, told Ecumenical News International during the meeting.

Rirei agreed with Davies that humanity is slowly destroying itself, by failing to take action to save the environment. "There's a need for a paradigm shift in the interfaith focus on environment, theological training and advocacy," he said.

The Rev. Canon Grace Kaiso, executive secretary of the Uganda Joint Christian Council said churches should lead the way in calling for responsible stewardship of the environment, because poor stewardship would undermine Jesus' mission of ensuring that people enjoy fullness of life.

Read it all HERE

NPR and Climate

NPR has an ongoing series about the earth's climate. Currently they are asking for your questions and input. The story follows:

NPR and National Geographic are taking a yearlong journey around the globe, exploring how the Earth's climate shapes people, and how people are shaping the Earth's climate.

We'll see how, in the distant past, climate change sparked the evolution of humans in Africa and guided our migration to new lands. We'll also look to the future to see how we might be able to slow climate change -- and adapt to it.

Click HERE to add your thoughts and questions.

The Growing Connection

Here is a site for a grassroots project developed by the UN and American Horticultural Society. A way to grow locally and support others around the world to improve nutrition.

The Growing Connection links people and cultures in a revolutionary campaign that introduces low-cost water efficient and sustainable food growing innovations hand in hand with wireless IT connectivity. It provides a sound educational foundation, and offers hundreds of families, both in America and abroad, a concrete opportunity to earn income and climb out of desperation. Perhaps most important, The Growing Connection engages people – a network of committed individuals - in an elegant solution to one of mankind’s fundamental challenges.

How does it work? School gardening programs and community gardens in the U.S., Ghana, Mexico and Nicaragua grow vegetables in an EarthBox system. that becomes a common growing platform for all participants. Students grow food, conduct horticultural experiments and share their lessons and experiences with each other using IT connectivity. Through modern IT installations, The Growing Connection participants in U.S.,, Ghana, Mexico and Nicaragua are directly linked. And importantly, they are also connected to sources of vital information and advice on growing food. Those once the most isolated can now grow, learn, and chose their own opportunities and destinies.

More HERE

The Theory of "Anyway"

From Georgia Interfaith Power and Light:

The Theory of "Anyway"
by Sharon Astyk

My friend Pat Meadows, a very, very smart woman, has a wonderful idea she calls "The Theory of Anyway." What it entails is this - she argues that 95% of what is needed to resolve the coming crises in energy depletion, or climate change, or most other global crises are the same sort of efforts. When in doubt about how to change, we should change our lives to reflect what we should be doing "Anyway." Living more simply, more frugally, using less, leaving reserves for others, reconnecting with our food and our community, these are things we should be doing because they are the right thing to do on many levels. That they also have the potential to save our lives is merely a side benefit (a big one, though).

This is, I think, a deeply powerful way of thinking because it is a deeply moral way of thinking - we would like to think of ourselves as moral people, but we tend to think of moral questions as the obvious ones "should I steal or pay?" "Should I hit or talk?" But the real and most essential moral questions of our lives are the questions we rarely ask of the things we do every day, "Should I eat this?" "Where should I live and how?" "What should I wear?" "How should I keep warm/cool?" We think of these questions as foregone conclusions - I should keep warm X way because that's the kind of furnace I have, or I should eat this because that's what's in the grocery store. Pat's Theory of Anyway turns this around, and points out that what we do, the way we live, must pass ethical muster first - we must always ask the question "Is this contributing to the repair of the world, or its destruction."

So if you told me that tomorrow, peak oil had been resolved, I'd still keep gardening, hanging my laundry, cutting back and trying to find a way to make do with less. Because even if we found enough oil to power our society for a thousand years, there would still be climate change, and it would be *wrong* of me to choose my own convenience over the security and safety of my children and other people's children. And if you told me tomorrow that we'd fixed climate change, that we could power our lives forever with renewables, I would still keep gardening and living frugally. Because our agriculture is premised on depleted soil and aquifers, and we're facing a future in which many people don't have enough food and water if we keep eating this way, and to allow that to happen would be a betrayal of what I believe is right. And if you told me that we'd fixed that problem too, that we were no longer depleting our aquifers and expanding the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, I'd still keep gardening and telling others to do the same, because our reliance on food from other nations, and our economy impoverishes and starves millions, even billions of poor people and creates massive economic inequities that do tremendous harm. And if you told me that globalization was over, and that we were going to create a just economic system, and we'd fixed all the other problems, and that I didn't have to worry anymore, would I then stop gardening?

No. Because the nurture of my piece of land would still be the right thing to do. Doing things with no more waste than is absolutely necessary would still be the right thing to do. The creation of a fertile, sustainable, lasting place of beauty would still be my right work in the world. I would still be a Jew, obligated by G-d to Tikkun Olam, to "the repair of the world." I would still be obligated to live in way that prevented wildlife from being run to extinction and poisons contaminating the earth. I would still be obligated to make the most of what I have and reduce my needs so they represent a fair share of what the earth has to offer. I would still be obligated to treat poor people as my siblings, and you do not live comfortably when your siblings suffer or have less. I am obligated to live rightly, in part because of what living rightly gives me - integrity, honor, joy, a better relationship with my diety of choice, peace.

There are people out there who are prepared to step forward and give up their cars, start growing their own food, stop consuming so much and stop burning fossil fuels...just as soon as peak oil, or climate change, or government rationing, or some external force makes them. But that, I believe is the wrong way to think about this. We can't wait for others to tell us, or the disaster to befall us. We have to do now, do today, do with all our hearts, the things we should have been doing "Anyway" all along.

Green San Francisco

Grace Cathedral and all sorts of institutions are going green in San Francisco. Click HERE to see more.