Greening the Holidays--Regifting?

Jodi Newbern, the author of Regifting Revival: A Guide to Reusing Gifts Graciously, claims that re-gifting doesn't have to be tacky:

Regifting not only helps preserve your wallet and the environment, but – if you do it right – your friendships. Here are eight last-minute gift ideas you can find around the house that your friends won't find tacky.

Read more about re-gifting and get re-gifting suggestions in this Daily Green article.

Environment a Focus of Parliament of World's Religions

The Parliament of the World's Religions will include several environmental themes in their meeting in Melbourne, Australia, December 3-9, 2009. The complete list of subthemes for the meeting include:
Healing the Earth with Care and Concern
Indigenous Peoples
Overcoming Poverty in an Unequal World
Securing Food and Water for All People
Building Peace in the Pursuit of Justice
Creating Social Cohesion in Village and City
Sharing Wisdom in the Search for Inner Peace
Begun in 1893 and designed to promote peacemaking and Interreligious understanding, the Parliament will next meet in 2014 and is currently looking for a meeting site. Learn more at their website.

Google Maps Walking Directions

Perhaps it is a sign of the times, but those who walk to destinations whenever possible will be pleased to learn that Google maps has a "walking" option when searching for directions.
Here's how it works: Go to maps.google.com and choose the "walking" option. The travel time reflects walking speed instead of driving time.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.


Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Gore calls for Carbon-Free Grid in the US

According to an article in the New York Times, Al Gore has called on the United States to switch to clean sources for electric power by 2020. (See excerpt of article below.)
Dot Earth: The (Annotated) Gore Climate Speech
Former Vice President Al Gore said on Thursday that Americans must abandon electricity generated by fossil fuels within a decade and rely on the sun, the winds and other environmentally friendly sources of power, or risk losing their national security as well as their creature comforts.
“The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk,” Mr. Gore said in a speech to an energy conference here. “The future of human civilization is at stake.”
Mr. Gore called for the kind of concerted national effort that enabled Americans to walk on the moon 39 years ago this month, just eight years after President John F. Kennedy famously embraced that goal. He said the goal of producing all of the nation’s electricity from “renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources” within 10 years is not some farfetched vision, although he said it would require fundamental changes in political thinking and personal expectations.
“This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative,” Mr. Gore said in his remarks at the conference. “It represents a challenge to all Americans, in every walk of life — to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.”
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Go,Team Carbon-Reduction!

A New York Times article talks about Carbon Rally, a website that enables you to join forces with like-minded friends and family to reduce your carbon footprint. An excerpt is below:

I ended up at CarbonRally.com, a site that promised to make me feel good about what I do to save energy instead of feel guilty about what I don’t.
Or, as Jason Karas, the founder, put it, “We’re not going to make you upload your utility bills and measure your carbon footprint and learn fundamentally negative information like, here’s all the really bad stuff you do.”
CarbonRally, which began nine months ago with a single proposal to give up bottled water, now offers a few dozen ways that individuals — or teams — can save energy. For instance, keeping tires properly inflated on an average car that travels 12,000 miles a year will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 29.1 pounds a month.
The site offers an extensive explanation for its calculations. What leapt out at me was a statistic: a car with properly inflated tires will use 1.5 gallons less gas monthly.
That came out to $83.16 a year — or more, if gas prices rise. We needed a family team.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Sierra Club Praises RI IPL

By Ted Nesi PBN Staff Writer
NORTH KINGSTOWN – An interfaith group that is working to raise awareness about climate change was spotlighted today in a Sierra Club report on faith-based environmentalism.
Rhode Island Interfaith Power & Light, founded in January 2007 by a dozen of the state’s religious leaders, describes itself as “an interfaith ministry devoted to deepening the connection between ecology and faith.”
To date, more than 60 congregations have joined in Rhode Island Interfaith Power & Light, according to the Rev. Harry Rix, chairman of the board for the North Kingstown-based organization. The local group is a state chapter of the national Interfaith Power & Light.
Rhode Island Interfaith Power & Light’s activities so far have included free screenings of the film “An Inconvenient Truth” and the distribution of free compact fluorescent light bulbs, provided by Wal-Mart, to low-income households.
The Sierra Club report – “Faith in Action: Communities of Faith Bring Hope for the Planet,” released by the Rhode Island chapter this morning at St. Theresa Catholic Church in Providence – spotlights faith-based environmental initiatives in all 50 states. According to the report, 67 percent of Americans say they care about the environment because it is “God’s creation,” and organizers are looking to tap into that feeling to boost the burgeoning “creation care” movement.
“This report demonstrates that the call to care for the earth comes no matter what one’s faith background is,” Chris Wilhite, director of the Rhode Island Sierra Club, said in a statement. “We are inspired by Rhode Island Interfaith Power & Light’s leadership in working to protect the planet, and this report is our way of saying ‘thank you’ to the many people of faith working on creation care initiatives across the country.”
In Massachusetts , the report looked at the work of the Rev. Fred Small, a Littleton pastor who in 2001 founded the organization Religious Witness for the Earth.
Small’s group has planned environmental prayer services, circulated petitions, and testified at state and federal hearings. In March 2007, Religious Witness for the Earth held what the Sierra Club report describes as the largest anti-global-warming demonstration in the country’s history.
“I wanted to explore how to apply the lessons of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., to a challenge of comparable moral urgency,” Small told the report’s authors.
Rhode Island Interfaith Power & Light, a nonprofit organization founded in 2007 to promote deeper “connection between ecology and faith,” is a state chapter of the nationwide Interfaith Power & Light. For more information, visit riipl.org.
The Rhode Island Chapter of the Sierra Club is an affiliate of the nationwide nonprofit environmental policy and research group. For more information, including the full report, visit www.sierraclub.org/ri.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Congregations Making a Difference

The National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Programs is highlighting churches doing things to protect creation. Read about it below:

In May, the call went out for stories to be submitted of what local congregations were doing across the country to protect God's Creation. The response included more than 50 submissions, covering a wide spectrum of activities including Children's Ministry, Green Building, Food and Faith, Energy Conservation, Alternative Transportation, Recycling, Environmental Justice, and Comprehensive Program, with the winner of each category receiving a $500 grant to continue their work. To view a collection of the stories submitted, click here.
The Manassas Church of the Brethren in Manassas, Virginia, is the winner of the Children's Ministry category, with their Junior BUGS program, imparting the message of Creation Care to the children of their congregation. The Madison Christian Community, an ecumenical partnership between Advent Lutheran Church and the Community of Hope in Madison, Wisconsin, won the Food and Faith category for their restorative justice gardening, reaching out to inmates in local prisons to teach horticulture.
In the Green Building Category, St. Marks Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, California, was recognized as the Audubon Society's 'Greenest in the Nation', and built their new building with LEED standards in mind. For the Energy Conservation category, the award goes to First Grace United Methodist Church in New Orleans, Louisiana, for their work to conserve energy in their rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Katrina. "One of the most at-risk cities for the effects of global warming is New Orleans, and one of the biggest contributors is energy usage," says Sarah Fleming, one of the church volunteers.
Kern Road Mennonite Church, in South Bend, Indiana, has started the tradition of riding bikes to church, earning them the award in the Alternative Transportation category. "When one person starts something like this then the next thing you know you have a whole group of people," said Deanna Waggy, a church member. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, All People's Church has reclaimed a garden in an urban community, earning them the award in the Environmental Justice category.
For the Recycling category, Wesley United Methodist Church in Yakima, Washington, has kept more than 5 million pounds of trash out of the landfill through their community recycling program. And in the Comprehensive Program category, Maryland Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland, has, among other activities, reclaimed the wooded area around the church, and named environmental stewardship as a priority in everything the church does. "As our reputation for creation care grows, so has our congregation, which now attracts members from a 20-mile radius," said Bill Breaky, a church member. The church is currently preparing to install beehives at the rear of the woods. According to Breaky, "We look forward to the day when we can give jars of honey to visitors."
Congratulations to all our winners, and thanks so much to all of you who submitted stories for the contest, and keep filling us in on what you are doing in your congregations to better protect God's Creation!
Click here to send an email and tell about what you are doing.
To view a map and see what congregations in your part of the country are already doing, click here.

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Click here to view the YouTube page!

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Rhode Island Moves Toward Renewable Energy

According to this article in the Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, Rhode Island is going green. Read an excerpt below:

BY TIMOTHY C. BARMANN and KATHERINE GREGGJournal Staff Writers

State Rep. David Segal, D-Providence, answers questions from his House colleagues as his alternate-energy bill is debated.
The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch
PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island Senate last night passed a series of energy bills designed to encourage and embrace renewable energy projects, both large and small, in order to make the state less dependent on electricity produced by traditional fossil fuels.
The House of Representatives approved one of its own and started debate on another. But in this corner of the State House, the debate escalated into allegations the bill had been stuffed “chock-full” with so many “treats” that it had been turned into the legislative equivalent of a piñata, and then rammed through a House committee without the opportunity for public comment on the potential added costs to ratepayers.
The House will resume its alternative-energy debate today, with passionate advocates on both sides.
Supporters of the legislation said it would spark development of small-scale renewable-energy projects, foster private investment in large-scale wind and solar projects, stabilize electricity prices, and at the same time spur economic development within the state.
Environmental advocates, who helped craft the bills, said enacting the laws would thrust Rhode Island into the forefront of renewable energy development in New England.
The centerpiece of the legislation is a bill that would require National Grid to enter into long-term contracts with renewable-energy developers to purchase their electricity. That requirement would give assurance to prospective developers that there would be a customer for the electricity produced by the project. Such assurance, the developers have said, is needed to borrow money to build renewable energy projects.
On the House side, some legislators were not convinced the bills were a good idea, and suggested that the General Assembly should take more time to study the potential impacts, such as how the bills might affect electricity rates.
“These are very complicated subjects which tend to be overwhelmed by emotional appeals to the ‘need to do something’ about alternative energy,” said Rep. Laurence Ehrhardt, R-North Kingstown.
The most significant energy bill, which passed the Senate yesterday, requires National Grid to enter into “commercially reasonable” long-term contracts to buy renewable energy from developers who plan to build large-scale renewable-energy projects. The company would be required to buy at least 5 percent of the power it delivers to Rhode Island, and the contracts would last 10 to 15 years, or even longer with approval by the Public Utilities Commission.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

CT Legislature Passes Climate Bill

Both houses of the Connecticut Legislature has passed a sweeping new Climate protection bill. Governor Jody Rell has not yet signed it but is expected to do so. See the details below as reported by The Nature Conservancy:

Monday, the Connecticut State Senate, in a unanimous vote, approved Bill 5600, An Act Concerning Global Warming Solutions. Passed last week by the House, the bill will now go to the Governor's desk, and even though the recently announced state budget woes have thrown many initiatives into doubt, it appears the Governor will sign this bill.
The bill establishes a mandatory greenhouse gas emissions cap, requiring the state to reduce our emissions by 10% below 1990 levels by 2020, and by 80% by 2050. The legislation includes provisions directing state agencies to investigate and implement actions to achieve the caps.The bill also includes a provision, introduced by The Nature Conservancy, that directs the existing Governor's Steering Committee on Climate Change to establish a subcommittee, comprised of additional state agencies and outside experts, to assess the impacts of climate change on Connecticut's human infrastructure and natural communities, and to make recommendations for enabling our human and natural communities to adapt to the those impacts. Here is the link to the bill's language.If Governor Rell signs it, Connecticut will join 4 other states (California, New Jersey, Hawaii and Washington) that have established mandatory greenhouse gas emission caps, and 3 other states (Alaska, New York and Maryland) that have established state bodies to look at how to prepare for and mitigate the impacts of climate change on natural and human communities.
The emissions cap levels are in accord with the reductions that the Interplantetary Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), among others, have said are necessary globally if we are to have any chance of keeping carbon dioxide levels in the range of 450 parts per million (they're currently at about 380-390, up from about 260-280 pre-industrial). That 450 ppm level will create very serious impacts, but exceeding it will be catastrophic, according to many scientists.
The Nature Conservancy is on the Steering Committee of the coalition that introduced the legislation; the other members being Connecticut Fund for the Environment, Environment Northeast, Clean Water Action, Environment Connecticut, and Environmental Defense.
Legislators who warrant particular mention for their efforts on this bill include Representatives Pat Widlitz and Bob Godfrey and Senators Don Williams, John McKinney and Ed Meyer.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Miriam MacGillis at Mercy Center in CT

INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED SPEAKER COMING TO MERCY CENTER
Miriam MacGillis Will Provide Lecture and Day of Reflection

MADISON, Conn., MARCH 12, 2008 – Mercy Center is pleased to announce Miriam MacGillis, winner of the The Thomas Berry Award is providing two opportunities to learn more about sustainability and cosmology. Only One Future: Perspectives on Cosmology and Sustainability will be covered in a lecture on Friday, June 27 at 7pm and on Saturday, June 28 from 9:30am – 4pm will be a day of reflection facilitated by Miriam to allow participants to go deeper into the connection of cosmology and sustainability.& nbsp; Both events are fundraisers for the Mercy Northeast Ecology Project.

Drawing from the writings of geologian Thomas Berry and cosmologist Brian Swimme, Miriam will open perspectives from "deep time" into the seamless fabric of our planet's origin in the stars, and the intricacy of the memory woven into the DNA of the one single community of life. The unity of the whole provides the perspectives for our generation to re-vision itself in a new identity and purposefulness.

Friday night's lecture will provide an overview of this perspective with a sense of direction for ending the ecological and social devastation of our times. Saturday's Day of Reflection, a day of retreat, will be on the same themes of Friday's night lecture, but will provide more resources for the inner and outer transformation to which we are called.

Miriam Therese MacGillis is a member of the Dominican Sisters of Caldwell, New Jersey. She lives and works at Genesis Farm, which she co-founded in 1980 with the sponsorship of her Dominican congregation. She sees Genesis Farm as a learning center where people of good will are welcome to search for more authentic ways to live in harmony with the natural world and each other.

Miriam also coordinates programs exploring the work of Thomas Berry as he has interpreted the New Cosmology. Miriam describes herself as having been formed by the three rivers which have shaped the regions of New Jersey where she has lived her life. In 2005, Miriam was presented with the Thomas Berry Award by the Center for Life and the Environment, and in 2007 was named among the planet’s top 15 green religious leaders by Grist magazine.

Mercy Center is a spiritual retreat and conference center for human development. We seek to a center that runs efficiently and economically while incorporating more sustainable operations throughout our facility. As we educate ourselves, we also strive to provide workshops and events to help the community learn about local environmental concerns and connect with nature and offer opportunities for greater spiritual connections to Earth.

Registration is required. Registration for Friday night’s lecture is $10 and Saturday’s day of reflection is $65. Saturday’s retreat includes lunch. Register for this program online at www.mercybythesea.org or for more information please contact Betty Orosz at 203.245.0401 or betty@mercybythesea.org.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Greening Faith in Connecticut

The Stamford Advocate has an article about Connecticut IPL.
'Green Faith' aiding the Earth
By Lisa ChamoffStaff Writer

The first book of the Bible tells of God creating the Earth in six days.
While there is no mention of climate change, energy efficiency or solar panels in Genesis, that has not stopped some religious leaders from embracing the ideals of environmentalism that were once reserved for the crunchy granola set.
Earlier this year, the Vatican included pollution in a list of seven new sins.
"Environmental problems are getting obvious and worse," said Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener, director of the Interreligious Eco-Justice Network, a Hartford-based environmental advocacy group. "People feel that when they look outside."
One of the Eco-Justice Network's projects is Connecticut Interfaith Power and Light, which is part of a national campaign that promotes renewable energy, with more than 25 states participating.
Over the last two years, Connecticut Interfaith Power and Light has helped organize the program This Old House of Worship, which assesses the energy efficiency of churches, synagogues and other religious buildings. A new workshop will focus on homes.
"I think people are coalescing around it," Cohen-Kiener said. "We're building community with it."
Religious environmentalism is not new. The Interfaith Power and Light effort began 10 years ago. The New Jersey-based organization Green Faith has been around for more than 15 years.
But religion only recently began playing a major role, said John Grim, who teaches religion and ecology at Yale University with his wife, Mary Evelyn Tucker. They also co-founded the Forum on Religion and Ecology.
This partially stems from the efforts of religious leaders, such as Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, Grim said.
Religious groups and scientists also have started to express common opinions on environmental issues.
"There's a feeling of a shared ground now," Grim said. "They've put aside those differences and tried to realize that this common ground we share is this habitat we live in."
A conference at Yale University last month, "Renewing Hope: Pathways of Religious Environmentalism," drew dozens of people.
Yale Divinity School recently began offering a joint degree program with the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and there are many faculty members who work at both schools.
Willis Jenkins, who teaches social ethics at Yale, is one of three faculty members with a joint appointment. He teaches a class on the interaction between Christian theology and environmental problems.
While there are currently just four joint degree students at Yale, there are Divinity School graduates who work with faith-based environmental organizations, including Green Faith and Earth Ministry in Seattle.
Religious groups have found that the values they hold translate well to environmentalism, Jenkins said.
"Religious communities are much quicker to make the connections to human suffering," Jenkins said.
Locally, religious groups are latching on to the environmental movement. Various area churches have hosted screenings of former Vice President Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth."
Others are finding small ways to help save the planet.
Yesterday morning, members of the Northeast Community Church, a new non-denominational church based on Knight Street in Norwalk, teamed with environmental group Save the Sound to clean Calf Pasture Beach in honor of Earth Day.
Pastor Thomas Mahoney said this is the church's first specifically environmental project, but that members intend to organize other initiatives.
"We do believe strongly that we have a responsibility to care for creation," Mahoney said. "We believe that's pretty well outlined in the first book of the Bible, in Genesis. We're working through what that means for us as a community and how we implement that. We definitely feel that it's not just an environmental issue, but it's a spiritual issue."
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C.
Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Al Gore's New Slideshow

See it at the Huffington Post.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Maine Action!

Attention Mainers--Action is needed on the following proposal:

Help Protect Maine's Environmental and Energy Future...
Make Maine Homes More Energy Efficient!

We need your help to ensure that Mainers get money-saving, energy efficient buildings! LD 2257, An Act to Establish a Uniform Building and Energy Code in Maine, would comprehensively reform our state's building codes, including an energy code. It's good for the economy! It's good for the environment! It's good for families struggling to pay energy bills!

Please call or email your legislator TODAY and ask them
to support the majority report on LD 2257!

LD 2257 would establish uniform, predictable building and energy codes that tackle rising energy costs, help developers and builders, and make it easier to rehabilitate existing buildings. The energy efficient building code would save money for new homeowners from day one. In fact, a home not built to the energy code costs more to heat in one winter than it would cost to meet the code!

Maine's current optional system does not work: 85% of new homes built in Maine fail to meet the minimum energy standard, so Maine families are burdened with unnecessarily high heating bills.
LD 2257 provides options and flexibility for towns to implement the code, and towns under 2,000 are exempt from enforcement. If we don't pass an enforceable statewide energy code, Maine will continue to see skyrocketing energy costs and global warming pollution.

Contact your legislators to urge their support for the Majority Report on LD 2257. To find out who your legislators are, please visit here. If you know who your legislators are then please call them at these numbers:
To leave a message for your senator, please call (207) 287-1515 or (800) 423-6900.
To leave a message for your representative, please call (207) 287-1400 or (800) 423-2900.

Your message is simple: support the majority report on LD 2257.

To find out more about LD 2257 visit NRCM's website or contact Sara Lovitz at: slovitz@nrcm.org or 1-800-287-2345 ext 205.

TOWN AND CITY OFFICIAL SUPPORT IS CRITICAL!!!

We also need the support of town and city officials to help pass this bill! If you are a municipal official please sign-on to a letter to House and Senate leadership. Join with others who have already expressed their strong support for a uniform building and energy code that is long overdue! Sign on to this letter here. If you are not a municipal official please encourage any official that you do know to sign this letter.

Thank you for taking this important action today!

Harry Brown
Executive Director
Maine Interfaith Power & Light
www.meipl.org

P.O. Box 4834Portland, ME 04112(207) 721-0444 Contact Us
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Check out the National IPL Blog.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Courant Goes Green

The Hartford Courant has inaugurated a new "Green Living Section. Check it out here.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Presidential Candidates, Climate Change and Faith

This item comes from the national IPL Blog:

The League of Conservation Voters has pointed out a serious problem of priorities in the presidential debates thus far, to wit: out of 3201 questions asked of the candidates, only 8 have dealt with global warming.Interfaith Power and Light is doing something about that.In conjunction with Faith in Public Life and religious leaders from across the ideological spectrum, on April 13, the Rev. Canon Sally Bingham will be asking Sen. Hillary Clinton and/or Sen. Barack Obama a question on global warming! And she won't be the only one. In fact, the Compassion Forum is focused on just five important issues to folks of faith: domestic and international poverty, global AIDS, climate change, genocide in Darfur, and human rights and torture. Thus, climate change should get some due attention, and it is significant that this badly needed priority is happening in the faith context. Sen. John McCain has been invited, but not accepted yet."CNN will serve as the exclusive broadcaster of a presidential candidate forum on faith, values and other current issues at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Penn., on Sunday, April 13, at 8 p.m. (ET) CNN Election Center anchor Campbell Brown and Newsweek editor and Newsweek.com election anchor Jon Meacham will moderate what is being billed as The Compassion Forum, which will take place nine days before the Pennsylvania primary."Newsweek has an interesting article up arguing that no matter which candidate wins in November, environmental policy will be different:
The environment, which typically ranks somewhere around "regulatory reform" among voters' concerns, has emerged as a leading issue in this election cycle; last year more than three voters in 10 said they would take a candidate's green credentials into account, according to pollster John Zogby, up from just 11 percent in 2005. "It was clear starting all the way back in Iowa and New Hampshire that this campaign would be much more about the environment," says Dave Willett, a spokesman for the Sierra Club. "The questions weren't 'Do you think global warming is happening?' but 'How are you going to deal with it, what's your approach?'"

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Early Spring

Find yourself sneezing from seasonal allergies earlier than expected this year? That's because spring is coming earlier and earlier thanks to global warming, according to this AP story (read excerpt below.)

Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying.
"The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said.
Blame global warming.
The fingerprints of man-made climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year's authoritative report by the Nobel Prize-winning international climate scientists. More than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime across the country, in nearly every state.
What's happening is so noticeable that scientists can track it from space. Satellites measuring when land turns green found that spring "green-up" is arriving eight hours earlier every year on average since 1982 north of the Mason-Dixon line. In much of Florida and southern Texas and Louisiana, the satellites show spring coming a tad later, and bizarrely, in a complicated way, global warming can explain that too, the scientists said.
Biological timing is called phenology. Biological spring, which this year begins at 1:48 a.m. EDT Thursday, is based on the tilt of the Earth as it circles the sun. The federal government and some university scientists are so alarmed by the changes that last fall they created a National Phenology Network at the U.S. Geological Survey to monitor these changes.
The idea, said biologist and network director Jake Weltzin, is "to better understand the changes, and more important what do they mean? How does it affect humankind?"
There are winners, losers and lots of unknowns when global warming messes with natural timing. People may appreciate the smaller heating bills from shorter winters, the longer growing season and maybe even better tasting wines from some early grape harvests. But biologists also foresee big problems.
The changes could push some species to extinction. That's because certain plants and animals are dependent on each other for food and shelter. If the plants bloom or bear fruit before animals return or surface from hibernation, the critters could starve. Also, plants that bud too early can still be whacked by a late freeze.
The young of tree swallows — which in upstate New York are laying eggs nine days earlier than in the 1960s — often starve in those last gasp cold snaps because insects stop flying in the cold, ornithologists said. University of Maryland biology professor David Inouye noticed an unusually early February robin in his neighborhood this year and noted, "Sometimes the early bird is the one that's killed by the winter storm."
The checkerspot butterfly disappeared from Stanford's Jasper Ridge preserve because shifts in rainfall patterns changed the timing of plants on which it develops. When the plant dries out too early, the caterpillars die, said Notre Dame biology professor Jessica Hellmann.
"It's an early warning sign in that it's an additional onslaught that a lot of our threatened species can't handle," Hellmann said.
It's not easy on some people either. A controlled federal field study shows that warmer temperatures and increased carbon dioxide cause earlier, longer and stronger allergy seasons.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Dems on Global Cooling

In an article in Salon, an energy expert gives a favorable review to plans Clinton and Obama have put forward for dealing with climate and energy issues, and speculates on how their leadership styles might play out on the issue. The article is short on definitive conclusions, but heartening to those who hope a Democratic administration might bring significant change on the issue. Read an excerpt below:

The gravest threat to the American way of life is posed by unrestricted greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Global warming threatens to put the Southwest into a permanent drought, raise sea levels by 6 or more inches a decade, generate hundreds of millions of environmental refugees at home and abroad, wipe out half the planet's species, and increase average temperatures in the nation's interior 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit. And these impacts would likely get steadily worse for hundreds of years or longer.
No enemy, foreign or domestic, poses a threat to us that is so devastating, so irreversible. Top climate scientists tell us the threat might be all but unstoppable if the nation and the world don't take serious steps over the next decade to restrict GHG emissions. For all the urgent crises the next president has to deal with in the middle of the night, the most important calls he or she will have to make concern how to stop global warming.
We've seen that a President McCain is not likely to be the leader this country and the world need to maintain the planet's livability for our children and the next 50 generations. What about a President Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? Both would be a giant step forward. Unlike McCain, they have both put out detailed and comprehensive plans. (Obama's is here. Clinton's is here.) Although you wouldn't know it from the media coverage, these plans are more important to the long-term health and well-being of future generations than the candidates' healthcare or Iraq plans.


Before I look in depth at them, the first thing to make clear is that no president, not even a modern-day Lincoln or FDR, could possibly stop global warming even by their second term. The increase in concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases is primarily what determines how much humans will increase the planet's temperature. To stop concentrations from rising further, the entire planet will have to reduce total annual emissions at least 60 percent or more from current levels, including carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. Absent a World War II-type mobilization, that kind of dramatic change in the planet's energy system will take a few decades.
Even when concentrations stop rising, global temperatures will continue to increase for many decades because it takes a long time for the planet's temperature to come into equilibrium with any new level of GHG concentrations. Ultimately, by 2100, we will probably need net human GHG emissions to be close to zero, if not negative, to avert catastrophe. We can't stop global warming in the next decade.
Humanity's great challenge is to stop the warming before we cross key thresholds or tipping points, in which amplifying feedbacks in the carbon cycle start to seriously kick in and overwhelm human efforts to reduce emissions. A typical feedback would be the melting of the permafrost or tundra, which currently has locked away some 1,000 gigatons of carbon -- more carbon than the atmosphere is holding today.
If the permafrost stops being perma, that would release tens of billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, much of it in the form of methane -- a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. That, in turn, would speed the temperature increase and the thaw of additional permafrost. In short, passing such a tipping point would set the planet on an all-but-unstoppable path to high concentrations of GHGs, destroying the planet's livability for centuries if not millennia, according to the latest research.
So we must sharply reduce emissions even as the population keeps growing, and do it in a way that increases, rather than hinders, economic development, particularly in undeveloped nations already wracked by poverty, disease, dirty water, hunger and other scourges.
This necessitates deploying all existing or near-term clean energy technologies today as rapidly as possibly, while shutting down or capturing the emissions of at least half of the dirty technologies. At the same time, we must accelerate the development and introduction of the next generation of clean technologies, which can ultimately take global emissions as low as possible by century's end.
A mandatory GHG control system that establishes a price for carbon dioxide emissions, such as a cap-and-trade system, is necessary. Both Clinton and Obama endorse a cap-and-trade system, requiring an 80 percent reduction in U.S. GHGs by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, much deeper than McCain has so far endorsed and close to what is currently believed necessary for our country and planet. Recently, McCain has also begun waffling about just how "mandatory" his program would be. Voluntary caps don't work and must be rejected.
Yet cap and trade is not enough. The next president has a great many important calls to make:
Appoint judges who will uphold laws to reduce emissions against challenges from the big polluters.
Appoint leaders and staff of key federal agencies who take climate change seriously and believe in the necessary solutions.
Embrace an aggressive and broad-based technology deployment strategy to keep the cost of the cap-and-trade system as low as possible.
Lead a change in utility regulations to encourage, rather than discourage, energy efficiency and clean energy.
Offer strong public advocacy to reverse the years of muzzling and misinformation of the Bush administration.
McCain is unlikely to do any of these five things. Obama and Clinton are likely to do them all. In particular, at least from my perspective as a former Energy Department official, the most important news is that both of them understand the necessity of the technology side.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Check out the National IPL Blog.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

IREJN (Connecticut IPL) in the News

The This Old House of Worship conservation program is mentioned in this story about the departure of The Rev. Norman McLeod in the (Connecticut) Shore Line Times (excerpt below.) Godspeed, Rev. McLeod!

MacLeod, 60, did a lot of interfaith work in his tenure here, including the formation of the Guilford Interfaith Clergy group in 1997 with Rabbi Howard Sommer.The two clergymen instituted a series of programs on Guilford public television called Guilford Interfaith Conversation. And under his leadership, Christ Church hosted an ecumenical three-hour service every Good Friday, bringing together preachers from different Christian traditions and providing what he describes as "high quality music."Then there is the successful $2,000 grant he obtained from the New England Environment Fund toward the cost of seven area congregations to participate in This Old House of Worship Program."This 15 hour program will teach members of these faith communities, Jewish and Christian, to make their buildings more energy efficient and ecologically responsible," he said.He has been a member of the Committee on the Environment of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut for six years and has been a frequent column contributor on earth issues to Good News, the diocesan newspaper.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Our Mother Blog

Thought you might like to check out the National IPL blog. Looks great, doesn't it? Keep up the good work, IPL!

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Check out the National IPL Blog.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Religious Environmentalism Documentary

Renewal, a new documentary about the religious environmental movement, is available for early showings. Click here to visit the website.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/