Arizona Gets Green Religion

Although there is no Interfaith Power and Light chapter in Arizona (at least not yet), faith communities in that state have been getting into the environmental movement in a big way, according to this article from the online version of the Arizona Daily Star (see excerpt below):

"A river has a right not to be drained dry. The Earth has rights, and to care for the Earth we can't do it in the abstract," said the Rev. Stuart Taylor of St. Mark's Presbyterian Church in Midtown, who is rereading the Old and New Testaments from an environmental perspective.
Taylor will give a series of sermons this fall, which he is calling "The Green Bible," based on what he believes the Bible says about protecting the environment. Some environmentalists, for example, interpret the Bible as saying the Earth is God's body and that as humans we are assaulting our deity.
"We're looking at the Bible anew. The old interpretations have not served the Earth well," said Sylvia Thorson-Smith, a St. Mark's elder and a retired professor of sociology and religious studies. "Jesus was deeply rooted in the Earth."
Of a more practical nature, St. Mark's plans each week to give its 400 members "climate-change solutions" that they can do themselves. Those tips include replacing older heating and cooling systems with new, efficient models; cleaning the condenser coil on the refrigerator; turning off computers at night and putting them in a power-save mode; washing clothes in warm or cold water; and buying in bulk, which reduces packaging.
Other groups, including the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson, sell compact fluorescent light bulbs as a way of encouraging worshippers to replace their incandescent bulbs with ones that last longer and use less energy.
The church also is considering banning non-vegetarian food from its premises.
"Eating beef is a huge pollutant of the Earth," said the church's minister, Susan Manker-Seale, who posts the menu of the local vegan restaurant Lovin' Spoonfuls on her church's walls and has the restaurant cater events. "We're not trying to force people to do anything, but we do want to inspire them to learn."
Manker-Seale's congregation recently voted to become a Green Sanctuary, part of a program within the Unitarian Universalist denomination that requires congregations to complete steps, including a community "green" project.
Vegetarianism is one of the less popular ways of going green, but Manker-Seale believes more people should be paying attention to damaging effects of the meat industry. Animal-welfare groups have recently begun promoting a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report that says the livestock business generates more greenhouse-gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.
Other congregations have held electric-car demonstrations, switched to china and silverware instead of disposable plates and utensils, sponsored alternative gift fairs that included sales of reusable water bottles, and adopted villages harmed by global warming.
St. Philip's in the Hills, Tucson's largest Episcopal church, recently put together a "green team" of people aiming to infuse the congregation with more awareness of environmental stewardship. The church is performing an audit of its own energy consumption, and this month will begin a series of events focused on being green.
"We'd consider the Earth as the ground of all our being. It supports and sustains us and is one binding need we all have. It feeds us and it fuels us," said Greg Foraker, director of adult formation at St. Philip's. "The Earth is really central to Christian tradition, but the news we've been hearing lately reminds us that we can't let go of that core faith."
One of the upcoming speakers at the St. Philip's events will be Susan Kaplan of Tucson's Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.
Kaplan publicly lectures anyone she sees drinking bottled water, explaining that most of the bottles end up in the landfill. Though she doesn't give faith-based reasons for her admonitions, she says the principles of her faith were a key motivator for her newfound passion.
She considers her environmentalism an extension of "tikkun olam" — a Jewish directive meaning "repair the world" — and has even written a rap song about her views that she performs to various Jewish groups.
"Remember those bad plagues we read about at Seder? Well today there are more, and they got greater and greater," the lyrics say. "Trash and rubbish, dirty air and dirty water. Waste and too much driving, The Earth is under slaughter."
Road cleanups, film screenings and education sessions about recycling are among activities that Kaplan's group sponsors.
Recently, the group helped the Tucson Hebrew Academy acquire a grant from Tucson Electric Power Co. to install solar panels on the school to generate electricity. Kaplan hopes to do more interfaith environmental projects in the future.

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

Go Veggie to Fight Warming?

Animal rights groups and others are taking up the cause of vegetarianism as a way to fight climate change, according to the New York Times article excerpted below:

The biggest animal rights groups do not always overlap in their missions, but now they have coalesced around a message that eating meat is worse for the environment than driving. They and smaller groups have started advertising campaigns that try to equate vegetarianism with curbing greenhouse gases.
Some backlash against this position is inevitable, the groups acknowledge, but they do have scientific ammunition. In late November, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report stating that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.
When that report came out, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other groups expected their environmental counterparts to immediately hop on the “Go Veggie!” bandwagon, but that did not happen. “Environmentalists are still pointing their fingers at Hummers and S.U.V.’s when they should be pointing at the dinner plate,” said Matt A. Prescott, manager of vegan campaigns for PETA.
So the animal rights groups are mobilizing on their own. PETA is outfitting a Hummer with a driver in a chicken suit and a vinyl banner proclaiming meat as the top cause of global warming. It will send the vehicle to the start of the climate forum the White House is sponsoring in Washington on Sept. 27, “and to headquarters of environmental groups, if they don’t start shaping up,” Mr. Prescott warned.
He said that PETA had written to more than 700 environmental groups, asking them to promote vegetarianism, and that it would soon distribute leaflets that highlight the impact of eating meat on global warming.
“You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist,” said Mr. Prescott, whose group also plans to send billboard-toting trucks to the Colorado Convention Center in Denver when Mr. Gore lectures there on Oct. 2. The billboards will feature a cartoon image of Mr. Gore eating a drumstick next to the tagline: “Too Chicken to Go Vegetarian? Meat Is the No. 1 Cause of Global Warming.”
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The Humane Society of the United States has taken up the issue as well, running ads in environmental magazines that show a car key and a fork. “Which one of these contributes more to global warming?” the ads ask. They answer the question with “It’s not the one that starts a car,” and go on to cite the United Nations report as proof.
On its Web page and in its literature, the Humane Society has also been highlighting other scientific studies — notably, one that recently came out of the University of Chicago — that, in essence, show that “switching to a plant-based diet does more to curb global warming than switching from an S.U.V. to a Camry,” said Paul Shapiro, senior director of the factory farming campaign for the Humane Society.
The society, Mr. Shapiro said, is not only concerned with what happens to domesticated animals, but also with preventing the carnage that global warming could cause to polar bears, seals and other wildlife. “Our mission is to protect animals, and global warming has become an animal welfare issue,” he said.

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

Vegetarians are Doin' It for the Earth

In the Huffington Post, blogger Kathy Freston called Vegetarianism the "New Prius." Here is a taste of what she has to say:

Last month, the United Nations published a report on livestock and the environment with a stunning conclusion: "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." It turns out that raising animals for food is a primary cause of land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and not least of all, global warming.

That's right, global warming. You've probably heard the story: emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are changing our climate, and scientists warn of more extreme weather, coastal flooding, spreading disease, and mass extinctions. It seems that when you step outside and wonder what happened to winter, you might want to think about what you had for dinner last night.


N.B. Except for the occasional fish dish, this blogger has mostly avoided eating flesh since 1980. Check out this link to one of my favorite vegan recipes: chocolate cupcakes. I substitute 1 cup brown sugar for the white sugar.


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