Sustainable Living

 

by Susan Emery

St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA is an Earth Care Congregation committed to climate-friendly practices both on the church campus and in the lifestyles of the congregation. The Session has committed the campus to becoming carbon neutral, and the first step in reducing our carbon footprint was installing solar panels on the church buildings in early 2024.

As part of the church’s commitment to environmentally friendly policies and education, a Carbon Neutral Task Force was created to explore ways to engage the congregation and the Newport Beach community. We reached out to Live Oak United Church of Christ in Brea, a congregation demonstrating environmental leadership in Orange County, for mutual support and sharing of ideas.

Live Oak UCC, formerly Brea UCC, hosted sustainable living fairs in past years and suggested that St. Mark do the same on our campus. Live Oak had relationships with eco-vendors and organizations that could be participants at a St. Mark event. In a spirit of generosity, Live Oak offered to aid with logistics, staffing, and marketing.

Thus, the first Sustainable Living Fair was hosted by St. Mark on October

12, 2024. Held outdoors on the church patio, the fair included fifteen organizations providing informational literature, hands-on table demonstrations, and friendly volunteers to help answer visitor questions. Children’s activities were provided by the church’s children’s ministry program. St. Mark also hosted a welcome table and offered each guest a gift bag (made from recycled paper) that included a pencil with the church name, information about the church’s earth-friendly activities, and a snack.

We organized the fair based on the goals of advocating for climate-friendly policies, supporting local natural resources, and providing information about sustainable lifestyles. We are a coastal congregation and wanted organizations that protected ocean and wetland habitats, including Coastkeeper, Amigos de Bolsa Chica, Crystal Cove Conservancy, and Laguna Greenbelt.

Organizations representing climate advocacy included Citizen’s Climate

Lobby, Planet Protectors, and The Climate Reality Project. We also included a local author, Terry La Page, whose book Eye of the Storm: Facing Climate and Social Chaos with Calm and Courage was available for purchase.

Our lifestyle vendors included Hapa Honey (a popular exhibit complete with a beehive and delicious honey), Cool OC, Interfaith Power and Light, Live2Free, Orange County Power Authority, CR&R (local waste management with sustainable practices), and Elemental Design (a regenerative landscape company).

We were fortunate to have an excellent community engagement expert who prepared event flyers, an event banner, and a vigorous social media outreach campaign.

Over the next few months, we’ll be reviewing what we can do to improve the fair next year and recognizing what we did that worked well. So far, there is much agreement that we were able to attract excellent and enthusiastic organizations.

Several organizations commented that they were heartened by a faith organization taking the lead on a climate education event. We hope to continue our conversations and partnerships with them in the future.

Susan Emery is a member of St. Mark Presbyterian Church, active with Angeles Chapter of Sierra Club, busy watching her toddler grandchildren, retired Community Development Director in Orange County, and enjoys hiking with her Australian Shepherd. 

Healthy Buildings, Healthy Planet

 

by Eric Diekhans

Working to stop climate change can feel like a Sisyphean task. A bold initiative like the Paris Climate Accords is enacted, only to see countries fall short of their promises or withdraw completely, as President Trump did in 2017 and 2025.

However, smaller, local steps can yield significant results, reducing greenhouse gases while serving as models for other communities. The proposed Healthy Buildings Ordinance in Evanston, Illinois is an excellent example of this “start local” strategy. The ordinance requires buildings over 20,000 square feet to be energy-efficient, free of on-site emissions, and powered entirely by renewable energy sources by 2050. The ordinance will likely reduce citywide energy use by 45%. Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss called it “The single most important step the city must take on climate change.”

Data shows that buildings account for 80% of Evanston's emissions. The largest buildings are responsible for a significant portion of those emissions, making a targeted approach essential. Most properties affected by the proposed ordinance are large office buildings and structures on the Northwestern University campus. Condos and co-ops up to 50,000 square feet are exempt. Initially, only new buildings and those undergoing major renovation would be required to switch from natural gas to renewable energy sources. But by 2050, all fossil gas combustion would have to be phased out from these buildings to meet the ordinance’s requirements.

Currently, most buildings in the city are heated by natural gas. While natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide as coal and 30 percent less than oil, it is still a significant contributor to global warming. If all the targeted buildings switched to renewable energy, emissions would likely drop 45 percent between now and 2050.

Jack Jordan, Executive Director of Climate Action Evanston, said the ordinance “can model a successful approach for other cities and accelerate climate action at scale. Evanston would be the first community in Illinois and the second community in the Midwest with a Building Performance Standard, and this example can serve as the catalyst for others, including our big neighbor to the south, Chicago.”

Evanston is a politically progressive city of 75,000 people and is home to Northwestern University. Still, passing an ambitious ordinance that will affect thousands of people requires careful planning and consensus building. Climate Action Evanston is the local environmental advocacy organization that spearheaded this effort. They have spent months lobbying city council members and gaining the support of community members, building owners, businesses, schools, and churches.

Churches and other houses of worship have been involved in reducing building emissions since 2019, when Citizens for a Greener Evanston (which became Climate Action Evanston) launched the Celebrate Sanctuary program to help faith communities comply with an earlier city ordinance that requires certain buildings to track and disclose energy and water consumption.

Michael Drennan, who helped organize Celebrate Sanctuary, sees several advantages to churches switching to renewable energy. “They no longer suffer the vicissitudes of the gas market; electric appliances are far more efficient than gas; and they can source energy from a community solar market or panels installed to their roof.  Contracts for community solar electricity usually provide a 15 to 20% discount over the contract's life. Solar panels, while expensive to install, generate savings of over 80% annually over the life of the panels.”

While many residents support the Healthy Buildings Ordinance, some property owners worry about the cost. Switching from gas to renewable energy will likely result in lower energy costs, but it might take years to recoup the initial investment in technology.

 

Cambridge, Massachusetts faced similar challenges when green building requirements were introduced before the city council in 2013. A benchmarking ordinance was passed in 2014 for existing buildings, but performance requirements were not added until 2023. Run On Climate’s Policy Director Quinton Zondervan, who served on Cambridge’s City Council after helping to create the city’s Net Zero Action Plan, said, “Large commercial property owners, led by MIT & Harvard, and residential condo owners, were the primary opponents of the emission reduction amendments adopted in 2023.”

But, Zondervan continued, “Through long and difficult negotiations, we got the commercial building owners to accept the requirement of net zero emissions by 2035 for the largest commercial buildings (greater than 100,000 square feet), and net zero by 2050 for commercial buildings greater than 25,000 square feet, in exchange for greater flexibility in how to achieve the required emissions reductions. To me, being flexible is a no-brainer because, ultimately, we want them actually to do it, and so this creates both buy-in to the how and allows them to achieve the result, instead of just being punished for failing.”

Eric Diekhans’ fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and the 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)

We Are All Plastic People Now: A Documentary of Global Concern

 

by Nancy Corson Carter

In the fall of 2024, my local earth care group showed “We Are All Plastic People Now,” a fifty-six-minute documentary available on PBS for free, “for community events as well as university screenings.” As we watched four generations of a family be tested for plastics in their bodies, we were confronted with the unsettling reality of danger to human health and the environment.

What to do? First, we wrote a letter for us and others to send:

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

When the group urged others to join us in sending the letter, there were high hopes that the UN’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee-5 held in Busan, Republic of Korea, from November 25 to December l, 2024, would develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution. 

However, the thousands of meeting participants representing member states, civil society, industry, academia, indigenous peoples, local governments, and others, like ourselves, were disappointed. No agreement was reached, so an extra session to continue negotiations is planned for sometime in 2025.

The issues of production caps, program funding and chemical phaseout lists continue to be hurdles. Unfortunately, countries such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China, with large oil and petrochemical industries that form the basis of plastics, were major obstacles to a successful plastics treaty. 

At home, the US had some hope for the “Accelerating a Circular Economy for Plastics and Recycling Innovation Act of 2024,” the first comprehensive bipartisan effort by Congress in years to tackle plastic pollution in the United States. Now, in 2025, this is highly unlikely under the Trump administration.  

Though the US has not banned single-use plastics at the federal level, states and cities have taken on this responsibility. As of 2024, 12 states have banned single-use plastic bags: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. California has also passed legislation to ban all plastic bags from grocery stores by 2026.  A notable finding: In 2022, New Jersey banned single-use carryout grocery bags. A study by Freedonia Custom Research found that the use of these bags decreased by over 60%. 

How can we continue to ignore the terrible poisonings and devastations of plastics in our world? Remember the now-famous photo of a baby albatross dead from eating colorful plastics its mother mistook for food? One study estimates that by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans. 

We keep alert for encouraging signs in individual nations until global agreements can be reached. Based on the European Union (EU) Single-Use Plastics Directive regulations, Germany will implement a Single-Use Plastics levy for single-use plastics released on the market from 2024, with first payments expected to be due in 2025. The measure aims to reduce waste and stimulate better use of plastic as a resource and is also aligned to broader circular-economy objectives. As a result, producers of single-use plastic items will be responsible for waste management, cleaning, and awareness building. 

Also: Kenya is considered one of the leading countries in banning plastic, particularly plastic bags, with a strict ban implemented in 2017, making it a model for other nations like Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan who have also introduced plastic bag bans in recent years; some other countries with notable plastic bans include France, Taiwan, Canada (certain regions), and, as already mentioned, parts of the United States like California and New York. These countries give us hope for global action. 

In these uncertain times, I try to remember this important quote by a great, courageous American, Martin Luther King:

"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."

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

Life After Doom: Wisdom & Courage for a World Falling Apart (Book Review)

 

Reviewed by Rev. Mary Beene

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

by Richard Randolph

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.

Rick Randolph is a retired family physician based in Leawood, Kansas, and is a ruling elder at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church. He retired as a U.S. Army Colonel and the Chief Medical Officer of the disaster/disease response organization Heart to Heart International. He is active with many environmental groups and has served as the Chairman of the Environmental Sustainability Rotarian Action Group.