We Stepped it Up!

I joined a demonstration in Simsbury, Connecticut (I'm the face pictured above the "it" of "Step it Up"), while our Director, Andrea Cohen-Kiener, Stepped it Up with Board members and lots of others in Hartford. Check out more events here.

Various Connecticut demonstrations were covered in a Hartford Courant article.

"In another time everybody marched on Washington. This is a national march happening in a thousand places all over the country. That's pretty amazing," said the Rev. Tom Carr of First Baptist Church in West Hartford.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Time to Step it Up!

It's not too late to be part of this historic demonstration in favor of cutting greenhouse gas emissions! To join a demonstration go to the Step It Up Website. If you have completed or plan to complete an action today, post a picture and report at their reporting page. Also, be sure to check out Step It Up's Next Steps campaign--this event is intended to be the beginning of a vital movement.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Bill McKibben: Climate Crisis Long Time Coming

In an article in Salon, environmental writer and climate activist Bill McKibben tells how some nations heeded earlier warnings while others (such as the US) ignored the signs that "humans had grown so large in numbers and especially in appetite for energy that they were now damaging the most basic of the earth's systems -- the balance between incoming and outgoing solar energy." He goes on to explain, "...if world leaders had heeded the early warnings of the first IPCC report, and by 2000 had done the very hard work to keep greenhouse gas emissions from growing any higher, the expected temperature increase would be half as much as is expected now. In the words of the experts at RealClimate.org, where the most useful analyses of the new assessment can be found, climate change is a problem with a very high "procrastination penalty": a penalty that just grows and grows with each passing year of inaction.

The only really encouraging development is the groundswell of public concern that has built over the last year, beginning with the reaction to Hurricane Katrina and Al Gore's movie. In January, a few of us launched an initiative called StepItUp07.org. It calls for Americans to organize rallies in their own communities on April 14 asking for congressional action. In the first few weeks the Web site was open, more than 600 groups in 46 states registered to hold demonstrations -- this will clearly be the largest organized response to global warming yet in this country. The groups range from environmental outfits to evangelical churches to college sororities, united only by the visceral sense (fueled in part by this winter's bizarre weather) that the planet has been knocked out of whack. The IPCC assessment offers a modest account of just how far out of whack it is -- and just how hard we're going to have to work to have even a chance at limiting the damage. "

Bill McKibben was the keynote speaker at the annual IREJN Sacred Trust Forum in 2004. For info on this year's Forum, visit our website at www.irejn.org.

The website for Bill McKibben's April 14 Climate Change demonstrations is www.stepitup07.org.
IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Walk for the Climate

Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue
March 16 to 24, 2007 - Northampton to Boston
A moral call for swift, bold, and comprehensive political action to address global warming

2006 was the turning point for public awareness of global warming.
2007 must be the turning point for action.
Author and activist Bill McKibben invites you to join the Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue, Northampton to Boston, March 16-24, 2007. Read his letter here.
You can walk for an hour, an afternoon, a weekend, or the whole nine days. You can walk as an individual, a family, or a team from your community, school, or congregation. You can be of any faith or none.
We'll call for swift, bold, and comprehensive political action to address global warming. By the time we get to Boston on Saturday, March 24, we expect the largest global warming demonstration in the history of the United States.
Don't miss this opportunity to make climate change history.
Blessings,
Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian

Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb

Rev. Fred Small

Co-chairs, Religious Witness for the Earth

The Interfaith Walk is sponsored by Religious Witness for the Earth.
“Education for a sustainable future enables people to develop the knowledge, values, and skills to participate in decisions that will improve the quality of life now without damaging the planet for the future”

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.