Greening Glastonbury Connecticut

This article about faith communities making a difference for the environment appeared in the (Vernon, CT) Reminder News on May 6, 2008:
Glastonbury’s religious leaders are collaborating on a new green scheme with a strident environmental message.

The Green Action Calendar is the brainchild of retired Reverend Gordon Bates, a member of the First Church of Christ, Congregational and chairman of the National United Church of Christ task force on environment and energy.
Under the scheme, each of Glastonbury’s participating faiths and congregations will be allocated two-month slots during which they will promote environmental themes through talks, events, sermons and educational programs.
The First Church of Christ is leading the way through June and July, focusing on the themes of water conservation, organic lawn care and environmentally friendly transport. Buckingham Congregational Church picks up the campaign during August and September, when it will encourage Glastonbury citizens to avoid using pesticides and insecticides . In October and November St James Episcopal Church will promote energy efficiency, and as the year draws to a close, Congregation Kol Haverim will encourage the town to enjoy a green holiday season.
Bates says that, if successful, 5,000 of Glastonbury’s citizens could be reached through the program. The message, he says, is an urgent one. ”We don’t have a lot of time to play around with this… There are environmental dynamics that are irreversible, once they meet a certain point, and we are very close to several of those tipping points.”
Climate change is already a reality in Connecticut, said Bates, referring to the state’s increasingly warm summers and mild winters. “Less than 60 years ago the Connecticut River would freeze enough that they could drive wagons across it,” he said, adding that now we are in a very different era.
Of the new scheme, Rabbi Craig Marantz of Congregation Kol Haverim said, “We are very privileged to have a strong inter-faith , inter-congregational reality in Glastonbury. The clergy are friendly, and the congregations are friendly, and we find ways to interact. This is yet another chapter in the story of that relationship .
“From Jewish perspective, we are always obligated to preserve our environment . So, whether there is a specific environmental crisis or not, we have to take care of our planet,” he said.
The Connecticut Audubon Society is also supporting the Green Action Calendar . Judy Harper, director of the society’s Center at Glastonbury, thinks that churches have a dual role to play. “First of all, they touch an awful lot of people. Second, they have pretty big buildings,” she said, which could be the focus of sustained efforts to cut fuel bills through insulation , changing to energy efficient light bulbs and recycling.
Harper continued, “It pleases us as the environmental community to know that the churches are involved, because stewardship of the earth is pretty basic to almost every religion. For a long time it wasn’t their highest priority, but now I think they are realizing that they have a piece of this action too,” she said.
The project’s coordinator, Bates, said that his passionate advocacy of environmentalism began when we saw his grandchildren growing up. He said, “To change your whole lifestyle for something that may not happen for years and years only begins to register when you reach my age, and you are thinking increasingly about your children and grandchildren and even the next generation down. You ask yourself, what kind of world do they have a right to have? What kind of earth resources will be left for them?” We know we are running out of fossil fuels, he said, but, “that only begins to register to the average person as increasing gas costs.”
“Its been the American dream to have anything you want whenever you want it, in as much quantity as you want it, regardless of the cost to anyone else. That dream has the danger of becoming a nightmare for us and the world, if we are not careful – and so far we haven’t been very careful,” he added.
Bates commented that everyone has a role to play in protecting the environment . It can be as straightforward as swapping light bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs. He said, “That one simple step, if the majority of people would take it, would have an enormous impact on electricity demand.”
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/

Free Movie

Free copies of "Green: The New Red, White and Blue" are available for showing by congregations while supplies last. Apply to receive a free DVD while supplies last through the national office of Interfaith Power and Light.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 22 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htm

NY Faith Communities Combat Climate Change

A story in the Poughkeepsie (NY) Journal talks about how faith communities in the Hudson River Valley are working on the issue of climate change.

Well before "An Inconvenient Truth" captured the nation's attention on national television, houses of worship all over the Hudson Valley screened it, while forming environmental committees and adopting environmental policy statements.
Some of this work was inspired by the Hudson River Project, the Garrison Institute's ongoing exploration of spiritual and values-based dimensions of Hudson River regional environmentalism, which produced a sign-on statement of environmental shared values and action items for local congregations.
It's part of a broader trend in which congregations and faith-based groups everywhere are becoming aware of a spiritual or ethical imperative to model and teach environmental responsibility as a way of "caring for creation" in the face of looming threats to our ecological future, especially climate change.
Implementation has to start somewhere. Houses of worship can fairly easily change their incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescents, turn down thermostats, insulate heat ducts, get a Energy Research and Development Agency energy audit, maybe add a solar panel. But scientists say to preserve a habitable climate, we must restrict global average temperature rise to one degree Celsius, which means reducing U.S. carbon emissions 60 percent to 80 percent by mid-century.

...Density is also a key to reducing energy consumption and mitigating climate change. Between driving around and running the household, the average surburban single family house dweller uses 240 million BTUs of energy a year. Change her light bulbs, build her house with green design and materials, and exchange her SUV for a hybrid, and usage can drop to around 164 million BTUs per year. But urban dwellers are down to an average 143 million BTUs per year already, without any greening measures, just by virtue of density. Green their housing, and their usage drops to 89 million BTUs per year - 62 million if the housing is multi-family, or about one quarter of what the typical suburban single family house dweller uses now. So if we in the Hudson Valley are serious about mitigating climate change and making big reductions in energy use, it's clear we will have little choice but to build denser communities, and soon.
What role can congregations and faith-based organizations play in this transition? For one thing, they can prompt the necessary discussion of values and how we express them in what we build.
For ourselves and our children, what do we really want our communities to be? Today, even as our population grows, we have the opportunity to implement planning that makes the most of the most desirable features of villages, our mass transit, and our open space, building highly liveable communities that are environmentally responsible. Saying "yes" to that opportunity and implementing it is an expression of spiritual and moral values, a connection which faith groups can help articulate.
For another, they can become advocates and direct participants in the planning process. One respondent to Rose's talk, a clergyman from Westchester, spoke from first-hand experience when he said, "just volunteer for anything in the local government, and sooner or later, they will ask you to be on the planning board."

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

Climate Change Event at Mercy Center

Faith Communities Engage with Global Warmning

Wednesday May 9, 7-9 pm

Free program

Mercy Center* in Madison, Connecticut
Contact 203.245.0401 or betty@mercybythesea.org. to register [see http://www.mercybythesea.org/ for directions]*

[unfortunately for some with mobility challenges, the only space avialablethat evening is upstairs]

Join us to share resources and to learn what various faith communitiesand organizations are doing to learn about and take action on globalwarming. Following shared reflection and viewing of the interfaith video, "God's Creation and Global Warming", participants will share experiences and resources. We will explore ways to help congregations engage with issues ina faith context, and seek ways to move beyond resistance and obstacles toidentify significant actions they can take right now that can lead to a moresustainable future for the whole community of life. Please bring handouts and resources to share. Refreshments will be served.

Jeanie Graustein, the Environmental Justice Ministry Coordinator for theOffice of Urban Affairs of the Archdiocese of Hartford, will facilitate thediscussion. There will also be input and resources from Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener, of Congregation Pnai Or, Director of the Interreligious Eco-JusticeNetwork of CT, who is unable to attend, but who has worked with numerous congregations taking action on energy efficiency. Mercy Center is a spiritual retreat and conference center for human development.

Mercy Center offers a hospitality that reveres the valueand uniqueness of each person, and hosts and develops programs thatenhance the quality of life in a changing world. For more information,contact Mercy Center Guest Services at 203.245.0401

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

Florida Faithful Fight Climate Change

An infamous graphic in the Climate Change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" illustrates how rising global temperatures could put much of Florida under water. According to this article in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, a number of Florida religious communities are trying to prevent that from happening.

Evangelical Christians, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Unitarians: All are committing time and effort to transforming their buildings and their congregants' mindsets.

David Clark, president of Palm Beach Atlantic University, a Christian college in West Palm Beach, describes himself as a political conservative who believes God created the Earth. But he has become so convinced that the Earth is being destroyed, a year ago he joined 84 other Christian leaders in signing the Evangelical Climate Initiative, which called for federal legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions."I didn't want to identify with a group that's way out there," said Clark, who has begun installing energy-efficient lighting and air-conditioning regulators throughout the campus. "I'm not a tree-hugger. But the evidence is overwhelming."

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

Green Enlightenment?

Lynn McDonald, University Professor Emerita at the University of Guelph calls for a "Green Enlightenment on the Worldchanging Canada blog. She writes,

...change of the scope needed will require a major "paradigm shift," for which we will have to re-examine our values, beliefs and expectations for lifestyle. And so far, governments have failed to give leadership. Several provincial and more municipal governments have at least acknowledged the need for concerted action on climate change, short of coming up with concrete plans, which cannot go far enough without federal involvement.

All this will require careful work. Citizens can help start the process by setting out a framework for a climate change plan. The fine tuning can only be done in concert with government departments and technical experts, but citizens can and should lead. Just as the initiative for change in the 18th century Enlightenment came from outside government, so also might this.

Town hall meetings and "think-ins" at universities, colleges and community meetings could help to spark ideas and promote citizen involvement. Professional associations, faith communities, First Nations, unions, all kinds of voluntary organizations, should be asked to draw on their particular experience and expertise. We have a long way to go to, but there is now a growing consensus that fundamental change is needed.
Visit us at www.irejn.org.