Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Sustainable Living
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Healthy Buildings, Healthy Planet
We Are All Plastic People Now: A Documentary of Global Concern
Dear Senators and Representatives,We have just seen the documentary “We Are All Plastic People Now.” We are deeply concerned with what is shown in it for human beings as well as for wildlife. That’s why we’re seeking your support for the Plastic Pellet Free Waters Act (S. 2337, H.R. 7634), reintroduced by Representative Mike Levin (D-CA-49) in 03/12/2024, which would stop the dumping of plastic nurdles into our waterways and their spread into more expansive environments of life on Earth.Nurdles are tiny plastic pellets that form the raw material for plastic manufacturing—these little bits, like 99% of all plastics, come from fossil fuels. Because nurdles are small, cheap, and easily contaminated, they’re often dumped by plastics manufacturers or spilled during transport. In the United States, clean water organizations and volunteers have documented pellet dumping and spills in Texas, S. Carolina, Pennsylvania, and beyond. A study of 66 beaches in the Great Lakes region found 60 percent contained nurdles.Once plastic enters our waterways, it is easy for animals to mistake it for food. Eighty kinds of seabirds and every sea turtle species have ingested plastic, and concentrations of microplastics have significantly increased in freshwater fish in the Chicago region. Animals who eat plastic can starve to death, and plastic pellets can also absorb toxic chemicals, including DDT, PCBs, and mercury. It’s easy to see that easy pathways are open to include human beings.Plastic pellets are extremely difficult to clean up once they reach our waterways, and often, polluters are not held accountable. One example: In Louisiana, 743 million pellets were spilled from a container ship in the Port of New Orleans. It took weeks to begin clean-up while agencies and companies debated who was responsible, by which point a local expert estimated as many as 75 percent of the pellets had already swept downstream.We need to protect clean water and put wildlife and human beings over waste. The Plastic Pellet Free Waters Act would do just that by banning the dumping of plastic pellets into our waterways.Congress must act before the problem gets any worse. Pellets dumped into our waterways are contaminating the streams and rivers Americans enjoy for fishing, swimming, and recreation, and an estimated 10 trillion plastic pellets flow into the ocean each year.We urge you to support the Plastic Pellet Free Waters Act to protect, in short, our lives!Signed by our group
Life After Doom: Wisdom & Courage for a World Falling Apart (Book Review)
Bryan McLaren relates a scary story, not ripped from the headlines of any Trump presidency, but years before in 2004. He was invited to a presentation to evangelical leaders on climate change. One speaker, Sir John Houghton, was a brilliant climate scientist and an evangelical Christian. McLaren describes his presentation as majestic with irrefutable evidence. And still, the leading Southern Baptist at the conference said he could not accept that evidence, not because of theology, but because it required big government and economic solutions to which his denomination was opposed.
McLaren writes further: “Watching how religious institutions have behaved in the years since, I’ve come to see the degree to which the religious industrial complex is a wholly owned subsidiary of the global capitalist economy. I now believe our spiritual or religious identities take shape within an even deeper frame, our economic identity.”
McLaren’s book Life After Doom could be described as pessimistic as it explores the many areas of environmental and social destruction human beings are choosing to wreak upon our world. But perhaps the most pessimistic aspect of the book is not his collection of scientific and social evidence of “doom,” but his relevant and sadly open-eyed assessment of how Christians (and other spiritual and religious bodies, yes, but primarily Christians) are at the heart of the problem and are absolutely determined to drag the whole world down with them rather than admit they are wrong. His paraphrase of fundamentalist doctrine states, “At all costs, as a matter of identity, belonging, and survival, we must be right. If it takes the destruction of everything and everyone everywhere to prove us right, then bring it on!”
These early chapters are purposely meant to plunge us into the depths so that we can be truly awake to the “doom” that faces us in a world where we let this corrupted form of fundamentalist Christianity define reality. The rest of the book brings us back up, first by letting us rest at the bottom and then by encouraging us to take action.
For me, chapter 6 on hope was most inspirational, as McLaren addressed the pitfalls of hope. We can allow hope to paralyze us from action. This apathetic view of hope – it can be both good and bad – brings us back around to a focus on love, not hope, as the key value to bring us to a place where we can live through the doom-filled scenarios, even If we cannot stop them.
Chapters 8 and 9 do a remarkable job of reclaiming scripture as “the collective diary of an indigenous people who saw what the colonizer mindset was doing to humanity, to the Earth, and to her creatures.” The redefinition of money as the dominating currency to God’s emphasis through Jesus on love as the ultimate currency may not save us from the “doom” that earlier chapters outline, but it does offer a way to both live through the dark days and, if at all possible, reshape the future: “a new arrangement, a post-colonial and ecological society, a new beloved community that learns what the old arrangement wouldn’t or couldn’t escape.”
As McLaren continues through wise ways to live in current times without falling into irresponsible hope or despair, he maintains a beautiful storytelling style that is present in all of his books. As we read, we find that we get to know him better.
In this book, like so many others, he is talking directly with readers. But also in this book, he makes it explicit with a “dear reader” section in each chapter designed to help readers journal or discuss the feelings that come up as they read. This would make it an excellent book for a group study, as both the comfort of others and the call to action as a group are part of Life After Doom.
Rev. Mary Beene is a pastor at Windsor Presbyterian Church in Windsor, CA and Spiritual Director with Openings: Let the Spirit In.
The Environmental Impact of Russia’s War in Ukraine
On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. The ensuing hostilities have led to hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, Ukrainian and Russian economic damage, and regional environmental devastation. I am a 26-year US Army veteran and a Presbyterian elder, and I am involved in an ongoing medical ministry to civilians in formerly occupied areas of Ukraine. I have been in conflict zones and participated in medical disaster response for 13 years. This conflict has so much harm to address, but I want to illuminate an overlooked tragedy: the effect of this war on the environment.
Ukraine gained its independence in 1991 during the breakup of the Soviet Union. The new country prioritized manufacturing before the environment, resulting in a significant baseline load of environmental compromise and contamination. Before the war, Ukraine provided one-sixth of the Soviet Union’s manufacturing. After Ukraine’s independence, this emphasis on heavy manufacturing still applied as oligarchs acquired and consolidated industrial assets. This was especially true in the eastern Ukrainian region of the Donbas. Over 600 facilities processed more than 219,000 tons of chemicals each year. As a major agricultural center, Ukraine consumed around 100,000 tons of pesticides yearly. Mining was significant in Donbas, and toxic waste disposal was haphazard. The invasion and the current war have markedly compounded these problems.
When the Russians invaded, the war spread widely over the Ukrainian countryside. Russian and Ukrainian militaries advanced and retreated across almost one-third of Ukraine in the north, east, and south. The movement of heavy vehicles across the countryside and the construction of barriers have disrupted water systems and compacted the soil, impairing soil fertility. Artillery shelling, wildfires, and chemical pollution have affected 30% of Ukraine’s protected nature areas, causing loss of protected animal and plant life through starvation, noise, wildfires, and direct weapons effects.
Chemical contamination from the war will affect the environment and human health for generations. Many industrial sites were directly targeted or suffered collateral damage during ground combat, releasing toxic industrial chemicals, including benzene, toluene, naphthalene, hydrogen sulfide mercaptan, ammonia, and hydrochloric acid. These chemicals have carcinogenic and direct cytotoxic effects. Fuel spills from destroyed vehicles have contaminated the water. Ukraine and several Western European countries have accused Russia of ecocide for these industrial attacks.
Expended ammunition contains a significant amount of heavy metals that contaminate the environment. These metals are directly injected into the soil or the water or are aerosolized and have long-term health effects, especially on children. Currently, one-third of Ukrainian land contains unexploded ordinance. Depleted uranium rounds, which are used by both sides, have cancer-causing potential. This contamination will persist for generations. Elemental metals from artillery shells are still present in the soils of World War I battlefields at levels 50% higher than baseline.
Landmines have been used ubiquitously by both sides for defense. While anti-vehicular mines were mostly placed on or near roads, antipersonnel mines are present anywhere that infantry soldiers may venture. Ukraine is currently the most heavily mined country in the world, with an area the size of North Carolina affected. Last year, the World Bank estimated the cost of mine clearance at $37 billion. Once the fighting has passed from a mined area, the people most at risk are civilians and children.
On June 6, 2023, the Russian army explosively breached the Kharkova Dam near Kherson. The Kharkova Reservoir, built in 1956, contains five trillion gallons of water. The breach flooded downstream areas to a depth of 18 feet, killing hundreds and releasing sediment with toxic chemicals onto fertile farmlands. The floodwater swept away many landmines, which are often laid on top of the ground, and displaced people for many miles. The UN estimated that the dam breach caused $14 billion in damage.
The cumulative environmental disruption will continue to have significant effects on human health. Toxins will contribute to various human diseases such as heavy metal poisoning; direct chemical injury will trigger lung and kidney disease. Many toxins are also carcinogenic and will plague those affected over the coming decades. Like other wars, victims will continue to be tallied for many decades.
The war has also set back Ukraine’s efforts towards a carbon-neutral future. Military vehicles are carbon-intensive, both in their production and use. Seventy-five percent of Ukraine’s wind generation and 50% of its solar generation were decommissioned within the first six months of the war, forcing the country to reopen coal-fired power plants that had been shuttered. Europe’s curtailment of their use of Russian natural gas also encouraged the switch back to coal-fired power plants, increasing the country’s greenhouse gas production. One year ago, it was estimated that the war had generated 175 million tons of CO2, with additional amounts to be generated during reconstruction.
There is no ongoing tabulation of environmental harm caused by the war. Certain areas are inaccessible, and monitoring systems have been damaged or destroyed. Although catastrophic events such as damage to a nuclear reactor have not occurred, the possibility must be considered. The environmental harm is immense, and the consequences will last for generations.
While in Ukraine, I have seen the landscape disrupted, the results of artillery attacks on the land and buildings, and the health effects of a disrupted public health system. It is too early to see the impact of many of the toxic exposures, but those effects will surely come.
What can we do? We can pray for a just end to the conflict. We can support the mitigation of the harms of war and the remediation of damage. We can support a robust reconstruction of Ukraine in an environmentally responsible manner. We can pray for the people of Ukraine and Russia.
Friday, November 22, 2024
COP29: Mitigation means survival
(original post: https://actalliance.org/act-news/cop29-mitigation-means-survival/)
By Fred Milligan
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the phrase “We are all in the same storm, but we are not all in the same boat” was often heard. This saying aptly reflects the global disparity in how different nations experience the impacts of climate change, largely driven by greenhouse gas-induced global warming.
For historically high-emitting nations, whose current economic power is closely tied to their contributions to the climate crisis, it is imperative to acknowledge their responsibility and explore its implications. Conversely, for many developing nations, particularly small island developing states (SIDS), mitigation—halting and reversing climate change—is not just important but existential. For them, the rallying cry is clear: “1.5 to stay alive!”
At COP28, nations committed to “transitioning away from fossil fuels.” However, at COP29, substantive discussions on how to advance this commitment have been lacking. We propose that this COP take a decisive step forward by initiating negotiations for a global agreement on the fossil fuel transition. Such an agreement should set specific, measurable targets for both fossil fuel production and consumption, grounded in scientific projections of sea-level rise and ecosystem collapse, rather than driven by political, economic, or bureaucratic considerations.
As all parties to the climate accord and convention are currently in the process of revising their national climate plans (NDCs), they should take this opportunity to ensure these plans are aligned with the 1.5 target. Moreover, greater attention must be directed toward other significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions, including agriculture, transportation, construction, and military activities. Comprehensive mitigation efforts in these sectors are essential to complement reductions in fossil fuel emissions. But most importantly they should follow up on the Global Stocktake from last year where parties agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, to triple renewable energy, and double energy efficiency.
While we commend the various declarations and initiatives announced under the COP Presidency, they are often disconnected from the broader commitment to phase out fossil fuels and fail to explicitly advance specific provisions of the Paris Agreement. Ensuring alignment between these initiatives and overarching climate goals is critical.
Leaving COP29 without tangible progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions would represent a grave failure to uphold the spirit of the climate convention and an abdication of responsibility toward the world’s most vulnerable populations.
Fred Milligan is a member of Presbyterians for Earth Care and the ACT Climate Justice Group.
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
The People of Dark Waters
by Eric Diekhans
The heartland of the Lumbee Tribe lies amid the pines and swamps of southeastern North Carolina. The Lumbee call themselves The People of Dark Waters. For millennia, their lives revolved around hunting, fishing, and farming along the Lumbee River and amidst lowlands and swamps that Europeans considered almost impenetrable.
When Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina in late September, Robeson County, where many Lumbee live, was mostly spared. But six years prior, Hurricane Florence struck the Lumbee hard. The hurricane’s aftermath brought environmental racism and the shortsightedness of colonialist exploitation of the land into sharp relief.
In his new book, On the Swamp,
Ryan E. Emanuel, a tribal member and an associate professor of hydrology at
Duke University, writes about how environmental injustice worsened Hurricane
Lawrence's effects. Emanuel describes the hurricane’s aftermath:
“In the days that follow the deluge,
rivers and streams swelled far beyond their banks and spilled across the flat,
low-lying Coastal Plain. Typical quiet, stagnant swamps became roiling,
frothing torrents. Sluggish rivers expanded into liquid superhighways that
inundated—indiscriminately—pine forests, crop fields, industrialized livestock
facilities, and neighborhoods. Streets and highways became eerily angular
lakes. Occasionally, automobile roofs or antennas broke the dark surface. In
the days after Hurricane Florence, water nearly swallowed the Coastal Plain
whole.”
During the 18th and 19th centuries, as Europeans killed or displaced North Carolina’s indigenous people, settlers arrived and sought to subjugate nature. They built canals and dams to tame the Lumber River and drain wetlands. The projects opened up the area to more settlement and agriculture but destroyed indigenous hunting grounds and made the land more susceptible to flooding during catastrophic weather events.
Today, large commercial enterprises, many of them situated near low-income communities, cause irreparable damage to Lumbee lands. The county is home to enormous livestock operations, slaughterhouses, and meatpacking plants. When Hurricane Lawrence hit, the waste runoff from these operations poisoned waterways.
As concern about climate change has risen, North Carolina has turned from coal to natural gas. But Robeson County has shouldered the burden for this changeover. Natural gas pipelines now cross Lumbee County, scarring the countryside and taking land from tribal members through eminent domain.
Global warming has caused other changes to Lumbee County. Emanuel writes, “Climate change has turned the Coastal Plain into a place of extremes. It is becoming hotter and drier, and yet the risk of another catastrophic flood looms on the horizon. Decision-makers simultaneously face the challenges of planning for droughts and foods—frustrating and unenviable situation.”
For decades, the Lumbee Tribe has fought for environmental justice and respect for its culture and traditions. But they have often been stymied by the Lumbee Bill passed by Congress in 1956, when the government's focus was on avoiding the burden of responsibility to Native Americans. The bill recognized the Lumbee but forbade the government from entering into formal relationships with the tribe. Government agencies still cite the law as a reason not to consult with the tribe before approving harmful or polluting projects.
Great challenges remain in Robeson County. More hurricanes will come. Emmanuel writes, "Our homelands feel a little
less like home, in some ways, with each passing year. Lumbee communities are
shrinking safe havens. Flooding from human-caused climate change threatens
communities from one side and industrialization from the other. The last vestiges
of our formerly expansive homelands are caught in the squeeze of extraction and
sacrifice. It is a perilous place to be, but we remain. We belong.”
Eric Diekhans’ fiction has appeared in numerous
magazines and the forthcoming anthology Uncensored Ink. He is the recipient of
a local Emmy for Children’s Television and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in
screenwriting. He is a member of Lake View Presbyterian Church in Chicago. (www.ericdiekhans.com)
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Appreciation for Native Wisdom
It is good to live on and near lands where First Nation persons have lived; to walk on those lands and by those waters which were once considered sacred; these lands and waters which indigenous persons today continue to hold sacred as they work to stay in ‘right relation’ with Mother Earth.
Land back!
Why, where….to whom, for what?
Returned? Restored? Received? Reimagined?
Revered…Honored.
Land back!
Just politics, left of center,
Right of center, front and center
No, Just Centered
Land back!
Where we began, a specific place, a deep
space,
A song, a prayer, embodied mindfulness full
of grace
A grounded soaring spirit found in place
Land back!
Our situation brought full circle
Through prayer, song, ceremony, and direct
action
A gift entailing gratitude and generosity we
must share.
Land back!
Let’s
talk, let’s pray, let’s
play
Let’s
forget just us and find a way to justice
In the national eco-kinship system too many
have forgotten.
Land back!
A community restoration activity
The embodiment of right relations.
Land,
air, and water — life-centered justice.
Land back!
—DRW
Aho.
Diane Waddell is a leader in
the JOY New Worshiping Community, Ecumenical Eco-Justice and the St. Joseph
Sustainable Environment Advisory Committee.
Land Acknowledgements Can Act as Bridges
by Nancy Corson Carter
“The recent trend in performing land acknowledgments indicates there is interest among the wider public to understand and learn how to honor Indigenous Peoples. Land acknowledgments can be one step towards standing up and standing with Indigenous Peoples. Love Richardson [Tribal leader and enrolled member of the Nipmuc Nation and of Narragansett descent] recalls a time she witnessed a land acknowledgment in Massachusetts so powerful that onlookers shed tears, having been previously unaware of the close relationship Indigenous Peoples have with the land, ignorant to the atrocities performed by colonial settlers. At that moment, allies were created and existing allies fortified their fight. Land acknowledgments have the power to center the interconnectedness of land and people, to pay tribute to the original stewards of the land.”1
This statement by tribal people helps us begin to understand the power of Land Acknowledgments. When our church, The Church of Reconciliation in Chapel Hill, NC, studied the Doctrine of Discovery in 2018, such an acknowledgment emerged. This process was led by PEC members who had participated in the national PEC conference, “Blessing the Waters of Life: Justice and Healing for Our Watersheds,” in September 2017 at Menucha Retreat and Conference Center near Portland, Oregon. While there we had the honor of visiting with and learning from tribal peoples in the Colombia River watershed.
We now have, as a reminder of what we learned there, this statement, which is posted permanently in our narthex, signed by our minister and by the facilitator of Earth Care:
HONORING FIRST PEOPLE AND THE LAND
The Church of Reconciliation Earth
Care Committee’s
2018 study of the Doctrine of Discovery prompts us to recognize the Indigenous
People who came before us on the lands we now inhabit in North Carolina.
The Doctrine of Discovery is a
philosophical and legal framework dating to 15th-century European papal
decrees. This framework gave Christian governments a false moral rationale
for invading and seizing indigenous land and people around the world. Its
effects, including intergenerational trauma, still linger in our legal and
social systems.
We confess our complicity in this
sinful doctrine, and we are grateful that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), by
official apologies to Indigenous People harmed by colonization, has led the way
to listening and to repentance. With the whole church, we intend further
reconciliation through mutual relationships of loving care and respect.
We acknowledge that we live on land
traditionally belonging to and cared for by
Indigenous People now formally recognized as:
Occaneechi
Band of the Saponi Nation
Lumbee
Tribe
Sappony
Eastern
Band of Cherokee
Cohaire
Intra-Tribal Council, Inc.
Haliwa-Saponi
Indian Tribe
Meherrin Nation
Waccamaw-Siouan
Tribe
They are our neighbors, those we are
commanded to love as ourselves as we heed Christ’s call to the healing of people, of
land, and all Creation.
We have found that such an acknowledgment must be validated over and over by listening and learning from our Indigenous brothers and sisters. The finest example I’ve learned of lately is being carried out by Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. In the Fall of 2024, in their quarterly, the Abbey Banner, Abbot Douglas Mullin, O.S.B. writes of Saint John’s participating in a Native Nations Task Force. Their intention is “to demonstrate a genuine commitment to rectifying past wrongs and supporting the flourishing of Indigenous communities and people. We recognize that true reconciliation and healing require more than good intentions and nice words—they demand concrete actions, ongoing commitment, and a willingness to listen and learn from those who have been harmed.”2
We must hope that individually and collectively the Holy Spirit will help this truth to bloom for us all!
1 from CULTURAL SURVIVAL, “Land Acknowledgments Can Act as Bridges”
2”When Good Intentions Go Awry,” by Abbot Douglas Mullin, O.S.B., Saint John’s Abbey’s quarterly, Abbey Banner, Fall 2024 , p.5.
An extra Note : October
11, 2021 was the first time a U.S. president, Joe Biden, officially recognized
Indigenous Peoples’
Day.
Nancy Corson Carter,
professor emerita of humanities at Eckerd College, has published THREE poetry
books, Dragon Poems The Sourdough Dream Kit, and A Green Bough: Poems for Renewal (most recent) and three
poetry chapbooks. Some of her poems, drawings, and photos appear in her
nonfiction book, Martha, Mary, and Jesus: Weaving Action and Contemplation
in Daily Life, and in her memoir, The Never-Quite-Ending War: a WWII GI
Daughter's Stories. Website: nancycorsoncarter.com
A Visit to Kenya - Traditional Food Practices in Harmony with Earth Stewardship
by Mindy Hidenfelter
Crispy chapati,
fragrant mukimo, savory sauteed cabbage, grilled maize by the roadside – all of
these wonderful traditional Kenyan dishes and more, created from plants
cultivated in harmony with the earth. As
a vegetarian by choice for earth care reasons, I was all set to participate in
a “friendship visit” to Kenya, with Presbyterians for Earth Care friends and others, and did
not know how I would fare nutritionally avoiding meat during my stay. Upon arrival, I quickly discovered that my
concerns were unfounded.
Depending on the
region, Kenyans have long relied upon the earth for most of their
sustenance. As stewards and managers of
the land, these indigenous people have created nutritious meals from crops that
dated back to before the European colonization of the African continent, as
well as crops that were introduced and promoted by Europeans during times of
settlement in the East African region that is now the Republic of Kenya.
Two of the native Kenyan dishes that I thoroughly enjoyed and ate just about daily during those two weeks were sakuma wiki and ugali.
Sakuma wiki is a
green known as collards in English. As a
dish, it is typically cut into thin strips and cooked with onions and
tomatoes. “Sakuma
wiki” means “to stretch the week” in Swahili,
named as such because the greens are readily available and affordable, helping
to stretch any meal further. (Hassan, 2024) Greens are a staple in Kenyan
cooking and are part of a traditional vegan meal, along with rice or
ugali.
Ugali is a stiff
cornmeal porridge. Originally made of
traditional grains such as sorghum and millet, ugali is now most commonly made
of maize. British colonization promoted
the cultivation of maize instead of other Kenyan grains, since maize requires
less labor than sorghum or millet to grow, care for, and harvest. While under British colonial rule
(1895-1963), Kenyan workers were often paid in maize, promoting its dominance
as a cooking staple. Ugali is now most frequently made with white maize (or maize
flour) and water. Pieces are rolled into balls with a small thumb
depression. It is used to scoop stew
instead of silverware or other eating utensils.
Many other Kenyan
dishes, especially the plant-based ones, are examples of indigenous food
cultivation in harmony with the earth. For indigenous people around the world,
the food grown and integrated into their daily meals helps maintain an
important connection with the natural environment in which they live.
Hawa, Hassan. In Bibi’s Kitchen: The Recipes and Stories of Grandmothers from the
Eight African Countries that Touch the Indian Ocean [A Cookbook]. 2024. Ten Speed Press.
282pp.
Mindy Hidenfelter serves as the Coordinator for
Presbyterians for Earth Care. She holds
degrees in forestry/wildlife science and natural resource management and has
experience in urban forestry as an ISA Certified Arborist in both state
government and the non-profit world.
Mindy currently serves as an elder at Wake Forest Presbyterian Church in
North Carolina, and enjoys running and exploring national parks with her
family.