EJC Voices

Now, more than ever, we need you to put your faith into action.

On January 20th, we inaugurate a new president and begin four years of a new administration. The incoming administration has nominated climate deniers and fossil fuel advocates to the cabinet and to the EPA. They have indicated their intention to abandon critical climate solutions like the Clean Power Plan and the historic Paris agreement.

In order to show that faith communities are committed to protecting Creation, Interfaith Power & Light is working with the People’s Climate Movement, Franciscan Action Network, GreenFaith, and others to organize 100 vigils in the first 100 hours of the new administration.

During the first 100 days of the new administration, we want to show overwhelming support for climate action that will create jobs, cleaner air, and a safer future.

On April 29, under the banner of the People’s Climate Movement, people of faith will join partners from environmental, environmental justice and student groups, labor unions, and many others for a major climate mobilization in Washington DC.

Stay in touch to learn how you can get involved – whether you can be in Washington on April 29, or in your own community.

Our hard-won gains on climate change are under attack. The new administration and Congress are threatening, proudly, to undo all our progress and set us back years — years we can’t afford. We need to stand up and take action to protect everything and everyone we love. We need to stand strong in the first 100 hours of the new administration, in the first 100 days, and beyond.

Please join a first 100 days vigil and mark your calendars for April 29th!

Solar Smiles,

Susannah Tuttle, M.Div
Director, NC Interfaith Power & Light

P.S.  Please make a contribution to support NCIPL’s work.

Dear NCIPL Leaders, Supporters, & Friends,

I wanted to personally reach out to each and every one of you today, to let you know that I am grateful for our faithful network and all that we do to make North Carolina a safe, healthy, and wonderous place for all.

My colleague Joelle Novey has offered us these words:

Our prayer right now is to find a rootedness deep in what is good; that we will be like trees planted by the water, fed by Spirit and the ever-present promise of redemption. We pray that we will have the clarity to be fierce warriors for the truth: that every human being is a child of God, not an object, not less than, sacred and beloved and deserving of — requiring our — regard and protection.

As we continue to move forward towards building an inclusive climate adaptation & resilience building movement, we are truly stronger together. We must explain to ourselves and our children that although we do not always understand how the Universe works, we still trust in a love beyond our imaginations. Although we might not always know how to address our challenges & challengers, we must continue to believe in our hope-filled positive visions for the future.

Thank you, for who you are and what you stand for – yesterday, today, and forever more.

Power to the Peaceful,

Susannah Tuttle, M.Div
Director, NC Interfaith Power & Light

“This is the end of nothing. This is the beginning of something new and solemn and so important. You must be part of what comes next.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson

The young man who sat next to me during a workshop on equity at the Carolinas Climate Resiliency Conference which took place in Charlotte earlier this month was a meteorologist who had been working at Duke Energy for just a couple of years.

Jumping at the too-rare opportunity to have a frank conversation with someone who works for the corporation to which I often find myself in opposition, I asked him his opinion on climate change.

“We talk about 500-year events, 1,000-year events,” he said. “But there have been three of those events this year. I’m finding I’m having to go back and review the projections.”

The workshop began before I had a chance to follow up with a question about energy options, and then I lost him in the scrum at the end of the session. But the fact that he and I had sat at the same table for a time said a lot about how this biennial event, hosted by Carolinas Integrated Sciences and Assessments and co-sponsored by Clean Air Carolina, brings together researchers, industrialists, local government workers, and community advocates in North and South Carolina to prepare for, and put the brakes on, climate change.

Conference speakers ranged from Congressman Bob Inglis, a Republican who lost his job after declaiming the veracity of climate change following a scientific expedition to the Antarctic, to Jacqui Patterson, leader of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program, who shocked her audience into recalling how, during Hurricane Katrina, prisoners in New Orleans were abandoned in their cells as the water rose up to their chests.

Communicating Shared Goals

We all were working toward the same goal, of course. Rep. Inglis encouraged attendees to invite their Republican family members to visit his website (republicEn.org) and explore a free-enterprise solution to addressing carbon emissions. Reverend Leo Woodberry of South Carolina’s Kingdom Living Temple recounted how, although South Carolina is suing the EPA over the Clean Power Plan, it has a legislative mandate to move forward with a plan anyway, and has been bringing together community members, civic leaders, and industrialists in a series of meetings in the evenings. Susan Joy Hassol of Climate Communications worked on finding an alternative to the phrase “Carbon T—“, an obscenity in conservative circles. WRAL meteorologist Greg Fishel (co-creator of the documentary “Exploring Climate Change“) confessed the moment he realized his ideology was preventing him from evaluating the science around climate change.

East Carolina University’s Christine Avenarius discussed strategies for communicating about storm surge risk to people living in its path (hint, call it a drainage problem, not sea-level rise), and Todd Olinsky-Paul of Clean Energy States Alliance pointed out that, despite all the warnings regarding the unreliability of solar and wind power, the aging US grid breaks down more often than that of any other country, and the breakages are due to severe weather events. The Medical Advocates for Healthy Air presentation advised health care systems to build up resiliency in both infrastructure and staff in order to be able to serve their communities properly, while Nina Hall and Caroline Dougherty of UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center demonstrated the re-designed U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit.

Speakers unveiled dozens of tools, websites and strategic programs, such as Clean Air Carolina’scitizen science air monitoring program and the outdoor art exhibit, Particle Falls. With up to six breakout sessions at a time over nearly three days, it was impossible to catch it all. Fortunately, most presentations will be online for further review. But nothing beats the opportunity to sit for a few minutes and chat about climate change with a scientist from Duke Energy.

This post was written by Laura Wenzel, Clean Air Carolina’s Medical Advocates for Healthy Air Manager and was originally posted here.

Here in the US, more than 30% of all food is wasted. In a world with so many hungry people, that’s a terrible shame.

Sadly, it gets worse. Wasted food rots and creates greenhouse gas emissions. A lot of them. If you compare the emissions from food waste globally to the world’s nations, it comes in third place – following China and the US. Check out NCIPL’s Greenhouse Gases and Food – Things You Should Know resource.

Fortunately, we can all make a difference. Take part in Food Waste Weekend.

On the weekend of September 23-25, faith communities across the country will celebrate the first Food Waste Weekend, or will commit to do so later this year. Food Waste Weekend is a partnership between GreenFaith and Ampleharvest.org, a nonprofit that reduces food waste and hunger by empowering growers to donate excess produce to food pantries.

70% of America’s food pantries are located in a house of worship. Faith communities are key partners in helping to ensure that excess food gets to hungry families.

We invite you to take part in Food Waste Weekend. Sign up now to take part on Sept. 23-25 or to schedule your Food Waste Weekend later this year.

Sample sermons and background information on food waste are available on the Food Waste Weekend website for Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Unitarian and Secular communities. You can also download the Food Waste Weekend Gameshow lesson plan for children in faith communities, and other free resources.

Spread the word by using #foodwasteweekend on social media.

The goal is to have 7,500 congregations signed on to Food Waste Weekend and sharing this pressing message in their communities on September 23-25 or later this year. We look forward to congregations speaking out about this vital issue.

Beginning September 1 people around the world are coming together to pray for God’s creation, and to observe the Season of Creation between that day and October 4 – the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.

NC Interfaith Power & Light is joining with the Global Catholic Climate Movement, the World Council of Churches, GreenFaith, and others to encourage people of faith worldwide to celebrate our love and care for all creation.

The Season of Creation, running yearly between September 1 and October 4, is that time of the year when 2.2 billion Christians are invited to pray and care for creation. September 1 was proclaimed as a day of prayer for creation (World Day of Prayer for Creation, or Creation Day) by Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I for the Orthodox in 1989, and was embraced by the other major Christian European churches in 2001 and by Pope Francis for the Roman Catholic Church in 2015.

And it has happened that in recent years many Christian churches have started celebrating the “Season of Creation” (also known as Creation Time) between that date and October 4, which is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi (author of the Canticle of the Creatures in the 13th century) that some Western traditions observe.

It is meant to give flexibility to celebrate prayer services for creation in alternative dates throughout the month, while engaging in different actions to care for creation throughout the season. Several statements from the past few years have called to observe this month-long Season of Creation, such as those of the Catholic Bishops of the Philippines in 2003, the Third European Ecumenical Assembly in Sibiu in 2007 and the World Council of Churches in 2008.

It’s a time to offer thanks for the awesome gift of creation.

To acknowledge our responsibility for caring for the earth, and to protect life.

To ask for the Godly strength to put our beliefs into action.

Click here for a wonderful collection of prayers and resources. Churches around the world will be taking part. I hope you’ll join us in prayer.

The earth needs our faith and it’s also important that we stand together with people all around the world who are already suffering from climate change.

This is why the Season of Creation is about action as well as prayer. Throughout the month we will be calling on governments to commit to sign and ratify the Paris Climate Agreement as soon as possible.

We need your prayers, your faith and your voice.  Join us!