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Closing in on Paris

Anglicans and Environment
prepared by Canon Ken Gray, Anglican Church of Canada, for the Anglican Communion Environmental Network

Join in on the Pilgrimage2Paris

At the end of November, world leaders will meet at the UN climate talks in Paris. It’s a crucial moment, as negotiators from more than 190 nations will gather to discuss a new global agreement on climate change aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions from 2020 when current commitments run out.

Inspired by their faith, pilgrims from across the UK will come together to call on world leaders to agree a fair, ambitious and binding climate change deal in Paris.

The Church of England, Christian Aid, CAFOD and Tearfund have come together to organise a Pilgrimage2Paris ahead of the UN talks. The pilgrimage will start in London on 13 November and arrive in Paris on 27 November.

Check out the website at http://pilgrimage2paris.org.uk/

Anglicans join interfaith group in pushing for action on climate change

NS] As representatives from almost 200 countries conclude their final round of negotiations in Bonn, Germany, this week, ahead of December’s UN-led international conference on climate change in Paris; a number of leading Anglicans and Episcopalians have put their name to a statement calling for an ambitious climate agreement.

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, Primate of Southern Africa; Presiding Bishop Francisco De Assis Da Silva from the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil (Anglican Church in Brazil); the Rt Revd Juan David Alvarado Melgar and the Most Revd Armando Guerra Soria, Bishops of El Salvador and Guatemala in the Iglesia Anglicana de la Region Central de America (Anglican Church in the Central America region); the Rt Revd Nick Holtham and the Rt Revd Graham Usher, Bishops of Salisbury and Dudley in the Church of England; and Dr Agnes Abuom, from the Anglican Church of Kenya and moderator of the central committee of the World Council of Churches, are amongst a number of Anglicans and 154 religious leaders who signed the statement that was handed to negotiators this week.

In addition to calling for an ambitious climate agreement, the statement urges all governments to commit to emission cuts and climate risk reduction. They also pledge important contributions from their own faith communities, including divestment from fossil energy.

To read the full story on the actalliance website and to download the full statement with signatories goto
http://actalliance.org/act-news/154-religious-leaders-from-all-world-regions-call-for-a-zero-carbon-climate-resilient-and-equitable-future/

The Future of Life in the Arctic

From the conference "Future of Life in the Arctic - The Impact of Climate Change, Indigenous and Religious Perspectives". Storforsen, Sweden 5-8 October 2015 comes this short video presentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJdBvqKaDKg&feature=youtu.be

See also an article describing the conference with a link to the document as a PDF.
https://www.councilofchurches.ca/arctic-future/

Meeting on Sami Territory in Sweden, October 5-8 2015, we–participants attending the conference on the Future of Life in the Arctic: The Impact of Climate Change. Indigenous and Religious Perspectives–appeal to the leaders and representatives of Indigenous Peoples and faith communities to call on your fellow citizens; your public representatives; your delegates to the Paris Climate Conference; Mary Robinson, United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change; and Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to take brave action and make bold decisions on promoting climate justice.

Yet another Anglican Bishop speaks up for creation and market restraint

ACNS] The Bishop of Saldanha Bay in South Africa has used a speech to his diocesan synod to challenge the exploitation of the world’s resources.

The Right Revd Raphael Hess said that the “ideology of the false-self” could be seen in the “rampant and callous exploitation of the world and her resources.”

“Environmental degradation is but a symptom of this callous exploitation. It is this ideology that sees climate justice as an inconvenience truth and so denies its reality.”

Bishop Hess continued: “For decades . . . the mining sector has lived by this false ideology, proclaiming that the earth and its contents belongs to those powerful enough to control the land.

“For years and years in our own country, that ownership has resided in the hands of a few, usually internationally connected corporate players, largely enriching European interests. In the ideology of the false-self, the earth becomes an object to be owned, controlled and dominated, its wealth to be exported and serve the interests of an elite.

“This ideology has no conception of the earth as ‘our common home’ (our oikos) as Pope Francis has described it in his searching and prophetic encyclical on the environment. Listen to how the encyclical Laudato Si puts it. Describing our attitude towards the earth, [the Pope] says: ‘We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will’.

“Confirming climate change as a major issue, the Holy Father continues: ‘Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, and political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day. If present trends continue, this century may well witness extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequences for all of us.’”

Bishop Hess continued: “The flagrant disregard of the consequences of our actions; the unwillingness to put people before profit; the mad rush to extract all of the earth’s contents all of this behaviour flows from an ideology void of moral principles, lacking in an understanding of community and unwilling to work for the common good.”

The ACNS article is posted at
http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2015/10/bishop-challenges-rampant-and-callous-exploitation-of-the-worlds-resources.aspx

A Harvest of Hope

Kentucky Interfaith Power & Light runs a program call Harvesting Hands which works to provide food to people in need.

Every year in the United States between 40% and 50% of all food that is produced and ready for harvest is wasted. That means that for every square mile of corn that is grown, every gallon of milk that is produced or animal that is raised an identical one ends up in the landfill. Not only is this wasteful but it places an heavy and unnecessary burden on the planet.

Food production has one of the largest harmful impacts on the environment through fertilizer and pesticide run off, soil erosion and emission of green house gases. A recent U.N. study found that livestock alone accounts for more green house gas emissions than the entire global transportation sector combined. In the mean time many of our neighbors who are dependent on food shelters for their meals struggle to find fresh, whole and healthy food on their plates.

Harvesting Hands is a volunteer based program that works to address both of these issues in Kentucky’s local food system by gathering (or gleaning) fresh excess produce and turning it into a valuable resource for our neighbors in need. They glean from both farmer’s markets and local farms.

Through this action they not only help to provide healthy food to those in need but they also honor the fossil fuel resources that are used in producing the food.

Often farmers or vegetable sellers overestimate the amount of food they need to grow or sell. Traditionally that food is trashed and then contributes to higher carbon emissions. The Harvesting Hands program helps to harvest that unused food by going to farms and picking the excess or collecting it from farmers markets.

Run by volunteers, Harvesting Hands reduces waste and is building a more sustainable food future.

For more information and updates visit http://www.coolharvest.org/

Sabbath and the Common Good: Prospects for a new humanity

Bishop George Browning, retired bishop of the Diocese of Canberra/Goulburn in Australia will shortly publish his recent doctoral thesis Sabbath and the Common Good: Prospects for a new humanity.

Just as there are laws of physics by which the physical universe can be defined and understood, so the natural order has principles of relating which can be ignored, but cannot be abrogated by humanity. Science and religion testify to the truth that the earth is a single house with an underlying interdependence. When this interdependence is ignored, when humanity acts as if it is somehow apart from the created order rather than part of it, when contemporary appetite is satisfied through unregulated exploitation with no reference to, or responsibility for, the future; the consequences are potentially calamitous.

Bishop Browning argues that care of creation is a non-negotiable responsibility for a person of faith, especially of the Christian faith, and that the Christian narrative offers a way forward, in support of science. Further, to argue that the environmental crisis is essentially a crisis of the human vocation, that cooperation is a more essential mode of being human than competition; that rampant individualism is at the heart of the environmental crisis and that this individualism drives an economic culture which worships individual profit rather than the well being of human and nonhuman life.

Browning has written the thesis as a witness to hope, that a different way, a path with appropriate limits, that builds equity and community, is more not less; indeed that common life equates to common and abundant wealth.

Register Interest in 'Sabbath and the Common Good' at
http://www.echobooks.com.au/sabbath_and_the_common_good

Resources for Anglicans and COP21 Paris 2015

Visit the link below for daily updates regarding faith engagement with the 21^st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 21), Paris, 30 November to 11 December

http://acen.anglicancommunion.org/resources/anglicans-and-cop21-paris-2015.aspx

Please visit http://acen.anglicancommunion.org/ for current news items.

Please forward this DIGEST to others in your province and diocese and secular community.