Category: Faith_MN VIRGINIA_MN

When the choir at Rock Spring Congregational United Church of Christ complained about overheating while harmonizing under incandescent lights more than 15 years ago, congregant John Overholt didn’t just empathize.

The Vatican is once again trying to make climate action a key issue for Catholics, as it launches a program called the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, named after the Pope’s 2015 letter that framed protecting the environmental as a spiritual mandate. The new website calls on Catholics to eat less meat, take public transit and drive less, avoid single-use plastics and other wasteful habits, and take part in a “cultural revolution” to change how they interact with the natural environment and financial systems.

Catholic sisters living in a convent in northeast Washington, D.C., used to look out their windows at a big, empty field. Now they gaze out at a solar farm that, in spring, will have flowers blooming between the panels.

A Long Island couple say that fighting climate change and protecting biodiversity starts at home. Or rather, right outside your home in the suburbs.

Mitchell Lands couldn’t make the trip south from Canada, where he lives on the traditional lands of the Migisi Sahgaigan, or Eagle Lake First Nation, in the province of Ontario. But Lands’ voice echoed in early October outside the concrete and glass headquarters of Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest consumer goods company, as he described seeing trees chopped down all the way to the shores of Eagle Lake.

In June, 90% of Utah was in “extreme drought.” Gov. Spencer Cox asked Utahns to cut back their water use — and to pray for rain. That drew ire on social media. Some said the government should focus on a scientific approach. Cox said he was afraid that wouldn’t be enough. This debate isn’t new — whether faith and science are incompatible when it comes to dealing with climate change.

As world leaders meet in Glasgow, Scotland, I am depressed by the inability of nations to deal with the coming climate catastrophe. The fault is not entirely on the heads of world leaders. They are only responding to citizens who are more worried about today than tomorrow. People are not convinced of the need to sacrifice their present comfort to keep their grandchildren from living in a wasteland.

There’s a word for climate disaster fatigue: It’s called “eco-grief.” As the United Nations Climate Conference (known as COP26) gathers world leaders in Glasgow, Scotland, over the next two weeks to discuss climate change, and even Democrats in the United States try to cobble together a reed-slim coalition to pass significant climate change mitigation measures, people of faith long active in environmental advocacy haven’t succumbed to pessimism.

On a boat ride along a bayou that shares the name of his Native American tribe, Donald Dardar points to a cross marking his ancestors’ south Louisiana burial ground — a place he fears will disappear.

Dozens gathered around the Wisconsin Capitol Building today for one mission: improving global climate health. The event, called Prayers for the Planet, was coordinated through Greenfaith — a worldwide, multi-faith coalition that seeks a better future for the health of our planet.