Here are some news notes, announcements, advances, seminars, summaries of developments, and other green items of interest.
Global warming data confirmed
The New York Times (Oct. 20, 2011) has reported that scientists from the University of California Berkeley have confirmed the controversial data concerning global warming. For a video charting the rise in the earth's temperature since 1950 by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit and other data, visit the university's website.
This announcement would seem to add relevancy to "A Pastoral Teaching from the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church," issued from Quito, Ecuador in Sept. 2011. In part, the Episcopal Bishops wrote:
"Christians cannot be indifferent to global warming, pollution, and natural resource depletion, species extinctions, and habitat destruction, all of which threaten life on our planet. Because so many of these threats are driven by greed, we must also actively seek to create more compassionate and sustainable economies that support the well-being of all God's creation."
Some of the material in this letter is credited to the Episcopal Bishops of New England letter of 2003, "To Serve Christ in All Creation." This letter was published and extracts have been cited frequently in St. Andrew's "Messenger," and the book has been available to our parishioners.
The online "Forum on Religion and Ecology" carried the news clip, and provided a web site for the complete Bishops' pastoral letter. --John Fuller
Adopt sustainable standards for your
next St. Andrew's event
To help us to host more environmentally-friendly events, the Green Church team has drafted a set of guidelines (PDF document) for anyone in the church to follow for any event.
Based on Yale University's Sustainable Event guidelines, event planners commit to a range of activities such as recycling, serving local and/or organic foods, reducing waste by eliminating single-serving packaging, and using durable goods. They also may elect to eliminate unnecessary paper with electronic communications and suggesting parishioners bring their own reusable mugs.
In April, St. Andrew's youth hosted a pancake breakfast using these new guidelines. As the Sunday closest to Earth Day, they thought this would be a great way to show their commitment to the environment and follow up on what they learned in January's Trash Audit. Watch for announcements and look for signage on how we can all help to achieve sustainable event goals!
CT Home Energy Program
In E. W. Hornung's long forgotten suspense novel, The Camera Fiend, 1911, the sinister Dr. Baumgartner's photographic darkroom has a door-size ruby glass window which casts an ominous red glow throughout the lab.
I was reminded of this image when a CT Home Energy contractor framed our front entrance with a red translucent covering to measure air infiltration into the house. There was, however, nothing fictional or suspenseful about this worthwhile project which is subsidized by the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund.
The testing, costing the homeowner only $75, provides not only information about energy efficiency, but includes valuable services and materials.
For example, the technician insulated nine feet of hot water pipe, caulked a number of air leaks, and weather-stripped several doors. The package also included two of the improved shower-heads and replacement of most incandescent bulbs with the new warm compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs).
A Wall Street Journal article of June 1, 2011, indicates that CFLs are an interim solution, saving 75% energy over incandescent bulbs. The future is probably with Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs, but their present cost is a deterrent.
For information on this home energy program, phone: 1-877-WISE USE or online.
--John Fuller
Plans for our greening our church
Download this PowerPoint presentation to get an overall look at St. Andrew's goals for greening the church, the community, and our homes as well as the concept and application of eco-spirituality in our lives. Don't have the PowerPoint Viewer? Download it free from Microsoft for your PC. the viewer is not readily available for Mac users.
Three major goals of the St. Andrew's environmental steering committee include:
♦ Based on our faith principles, we will expand our understanding of how to respond to urgent environmental issues.
♦ We will create an environmental stewardship model that will distinguish St. Andrew's in the community and potentially draw new members.
♦ Through this ministry, we will reach out to the community beyond our walls and demonstrate environmental leadership.
Preschool Connections
We will encourage the Preschool to adopt best practices of St. Andrew's and seek to support their green activities already in place.
Green fashions available
From organic fibers to hemp fabrics, eco-friendly fashions are all the rage. One easy way to go green with your clothes is to patronize a source for lightly-worn clothing. At our own Serendipity Consignment Shop you can find great fashions at reasonable prices and no new resources are being used. Visit 200 Boston Post Road, Madison CT 06443, telephone 203 245-0000. You can get more information including hours and directions on the store's website.
LINKS
This annotated list of green links will take you to websites featuring stories, videos, tips, tools, spirituality, and more. Check these out.
1. The National Geographic Society's "Green Guide" is an outstanding website with articles, tips, and especially videos on topics such as "Environmental Churches," explaining fuel cells, solar power, etc.
2. The Nature Conservancy notes the following: "…In 2004, the United States emitted 7074-million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent green house gases." You can calculate your own "carbon footprint," by going to The Nature Conservancy web page and searching for: "Carbon Calculator."
4. The Rev. Canon Sally Bingham, Episcopal Cathedral, San Francisco, is a leader of The Regeneration Project and Interfaith Power and Light, an interfaith ecology movement. There is a chapter in Connecticut. The website features "Renewal," a video which has been previewed at a St. Andrew's coffee hour. This is another "must visit" website.
For more information about this page contact John Fuller, Brenda Naegel, or Terry Sinclair through St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 232 Durham Road, Madison CT 06443,
Telephone: 203 245-2584, or send us an e-mail.
Green Sabbath—Brenda Naegel
“Green Lady” “Tree Hugger” “Environmental Expert” To my surprise and mild amusement, these are all names that I’ve been called lately. The reality is that I struggle with being “green” as much as the next person. But, what really helped me to get started making changes was the act of taking an online pledge at Yale last spring along with hundreds of students, faculty and staff. The pledge asked questions about one’s current lifestyle and then asked for a commitment to live more sustainably.
While I have pledged to live more lightly on the planet in some very specific ways, the changes that I’ve managed to pull off have actually been relatively easy and comparatively inexpensive. Initially, some required thought and research, but mostly they were about making little switches and then remembering to follow through. (You know, like changing from one light bulb to another or from one type of bag that I carry my groceries home in to another.) I have to admit though, I have come to a crossroad and now I’m not finding it as easy or inexpensive to do more. So, what’s it going to take to get moving again and start working on the harder stuff. I’m hoping that a strong faith community called “St. Andrew’s” is willing to step out in faith and take the journey with me!
There are wonderful resources available to us in the Episcopal Church
St. Andrew's involvement with Uganda, often turns my attention to sub-Saharan Africa. So, after hearing Wangari Maathai of Kenya describe her book, Replenishing the Earth, on Tavis Smiley's public radio show last November, I decided to read it. The author, a Nobel Peace Laureate, founded the Green Belt Movement (GBM) in 1977 to promote reforestation and to empower women of Africa.
Trained in biology and veterinary medicine, Maathai combines pragmatic, scientific knowledge of the environment with spiritual values which embrace her own Roman Catholicism as well other belief systems. Today, the GBM has thousands of networks, and she serves as a United Nations Messenger of Peace.
Uses of a Felled Tree
In Chapter Two, "The Wounds," Dr. Maathai shows the complexity of environmental problems as ancient traditions and forests give way to progress. She travels in the Congo Basin where she is greeted by natives and a representative of a timber company that strives for good forestry management. She watches as a 70-foot tree is felled and learns that it is economically feasible to use only 35% of the tree for lumber; the remainder is relegated to a brick making kiln or else burned for charcoal.
Scientists have called the Congo the "world's second lung," next to the Amazon, for these forests absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen in huge, life sustaining quantities. The Congo natives, for whom the forest is home, actively pursue charcoal production to provide fuel and basic sustenance. This burning causes massive pollution, soil erosion from loss of trees, and creeping desertification.
View from Space
This snapshot view from ground level is augmented with an account of Commander Eileen Collins returning from outer space in August 2005, when she viewed "massive burning" and deforestation in Central Africa. Her puzzled response--"I'm not sure why they do that?"--becomes a recurring question throughout the book. Maathai poetically describes the scene as "one great mantle of sorrow hanging over the African continent."
Both perspectives, ground and aerial views, involve days and minutes, but then the author switches to an infinite perspective involving eons and concisely summarizes the big bang and the subsequent millions of years to the early human presence on earth. Thousands of years later, the writers of ancient sacred scriptures speak of "majesty and awe," a response shared by some cosmonauts and astronomers.
The sub-title of this book is "Spiritual Values for healing Ourselves and the World," and to achieve this goal the Green Belt Movement (GBM), founded by Wangari Maathai, holds four core values, the first two of which are: "Love for the Environment" and "Gratitude and respect for Earth's resources."
Given the exploitation of sub-Saharan Africa's resources, the author, a native of Kenya, could be excused if this book were simply a rant delivered with clenched fist, but the core values just mentioned preclude an angry diatribe, and this refreshing approach gives the book its charm and power. By enlisting thousands of women to help plant trees, and thus combat soil erosion, the GBM aims for its third core value: "Self-empowerment and self-betterment."
Need for Balance
To mend the massive wounds inflicted on the earth since the Industrial Revolution, Maathai feels there must be a balance between the technological/scientific view and the older "forms of wisdom and experience" which have largely been sidetracked by the momentum of progress. As she recalls how her Kikuya people once practiced a form of agroforestry, she also notes how Christian architecture often expresses the idea of trees as shelter.
GBM and the Kenyan Army
Maathai is not trying to return to some imaginary past, and she expresses gratitude for scientific advancements in curbing disease. She anchors idealism with concrete examples such as the economically advantageous approach of planting trees along a river bank rather than clearing mangoes for a shrimp farm. Both the GBM and the Kenyan Army work together to educate people about trees preventing soil erosion, as they both realize that desertification is as dangerous as any enemy. No sentimental tree hugging here.
Part I
Natty Bumppo, hero of James Fenimore Cooper's five "Leatherstocking Tales," has an unforgettable name, but he was also called Hawkeye, Leatherstocking, and Deerslayer. A scout in the French and Indian War (1754-64), Natty was an adopted son of the Delaware tribe
and learned wilderness survival and sustainability from these Native Americans. While illiterate, he was a Christian of the Moravian denomination. (In 2010, the Moravians and the Episcopalians came into communion.)
In The Pioneers: Or The Sources of the Susquehanna (1823), Natty is old and living in a hut on some 200,000 acres belonging to Judge Marmeduke Temple, founder of Templeton on Otsego Lake some 80 miles west of Albany. Temple is a fictional William Cooper, founder of Cooperstown and the author's father. According to Temple's daughter Louisa, the Judge is involved in "taming the very forests!"
As a hunter-trapper living on this vast estate, Natty, however, believes there should be neither game laws nor farmers' fences to impede his livelihood. It was an era where trees were cut with abandon to clear land for farms, construct buildings, and to provide fuel. The woodcutter Billy Kirby declares that stumps are more beautiful than trees. Natty, however, proclaims he would "set out six trees afore I would cut down one."
Judge Temple is concerned about the rapid decline of forests and seeks an alternate fuel, hopefully coal in the nearby mountains. Today, the quest is for an alternative to coal, and in this region many are challenging the safety of tapping the large natural gas deposits using hydraulic fracturing technology (fracking).
As spring arrives in Templeton, less wood is burned, however, and the villagers eagerly await the spectacular annual return of vast flocks of pigeons. The response to this migration is to use a small cannon with duck shot to bring down thousands of the birds, most of which are wasted. Natty Bumppo refuses to aim his famous long rifle at even one bird and says, "Itís wicked to be shooting into flocks in this wasty manner." (The passenger pigeon was hunted to extinction by 1914.)
Vatican Issues Major Report on Science of Climate Change
Yesterday, a working group of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, one of the oldest scientific institutes in the world, issued a sobering report on the impacts for humankind as a result of the global retreat of mountain glaciers as a result of human activity leading to climate change. In their declaration, the working group calls, "on all people and nations to recognize the serious and potentially irreversible impacts of global warming caused by the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, and by changes in forests, wetlands, grasslands, and other land uses." They echoed Pope Benedict XVIís 2010 World Day of Peace Message saying, "...if we want justice and peace, we must protect the habitat that sustains us." For full story.
Uganda Religious Leaders Act on Deforestation
KAMPALA, Uganda (AlertNet)--When Anglican bishop Nathan Kyamanywa was appointed to his job in 2002, he decided that climate change should be a matter of concern for Christians. Kyamanywa bought 55 tree seedlings and gave one to each of the parishes in his diocese of Bunyoro-Kitara in western Uganda. For full story.
Spot Orchids in the Churchyard
Churchyard wildlife watch for UN International Biodiversity Day. "Shrinking the Footprint," the Church of England's national environmental campaign, is encouraging churchgoers to follow in the footsteps of the Rev. Gilbert White and other naturalists to take a closer look at wild plants, including those with faith links, in their churchyards. For full story,
