Green Living Tips 02.15.10
“Help Push Climate Change Up Religion’s Agenda"
A little over a year ago, an Interfaith Climate Summit in Uppsala Sweden took place. At the meeting, leaders from most of the world’s major faiths - though some, such as Hindus, with less than proportional representation leveled claims of exclusion at the organizers - got together and signed a manifesto urging “rapid and large emissions cuts in the rich world,” at least 40% by 2020. On the personal level, Planet Green has lots of green tips on how you can measure and reduce your personal carbon emissions - through changing your diet, how you travel, buying more energy efficient appliances, just as examples.
But as the Anglican Bishop of London points out, regarding climate change, “Here is a major human emergency. Do the faiths of humankind have anything to say about this challenge? Many of our constituencies regard this still as a peripheral second –order issue– it has to be moved up the agenda.”
Make climate change a spiritual (as well as green) issue. If you go to church, temple, mosque, Gurdwara, or Mandir - however you gather to worship - make it a point to bring up the importance of personal steps to reduce our individual carbon and eco-footprints. Do this with others in attendance after the service, or whenever it would be appropriate to do so in your tradition. Do this with the person or persons officiating the service. And if you do not participate in organized religion, still make it a point to bring up climate change with your peers who are religious.
Sometimes religion is overlooked by the green movement, seen as something ‘other’, if we all engage on this it could be a powerful force for positive action on climate change. But, it won’t be unless individuals make it happen. So, do it this week, next week and the weeks and months after that until climate change is a first-order issue in your faith.
Visit: www.planetgreen.discovery.com for more information.
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