Well.
Now it makes sense... ;)
Posted on 06/01/2004 5:17:14 PM PDT by NewHampshireDuo
Long before he had ever heard of global warming, Loren Downey caulked windows, installed insulation and took care of all the other energy-saving tasks that come with owning a 130-year-old home.
Now the same tasks he performed as a responsible homeowner have become a responsibility of his faith.
Downey is a founder of the EarthCare team at the First Parish Congregational Church in Saco, where church members are replacing windows, conserving hot water and taking other steps to save energy and combat global warming, both at church and at home.
The EarthCare team is one of three dozen around the state that have been formed by congregations interested in preserving the environment - not because it is politically correct, but because they believe their faith calls them to do so.
"Looking at it from a church perspective," Downey said, "we've always claimed a part of our mission is to be stewards of God's creation. What a great gift we've been given, and to let it erode and in time disappear around us, our stewardship motives come to bear on this. We've got to do something about it."
The concept of EarthCare teams was developed by the Maine Council of Churches and Maine Interfaith Power and Light as a way to help churches focus on environmental issues, particularly global warming. While some churches have been trying to do this for several years, says Anne D. Burt of the Maine Council of Churches, many of them have struggled to get the attention of their congregations.
"There would be one, maybe two if you were lucky, people in a congregation for whom this is really a passion," Burt said. "They see this as really central to their faith. They were feeling isolated and alone."
So last September, Burt and Christine James, congregational outreach coordinator at Maine Interfaith Power and Light, brought together 25 congregations at a planning meeting. Each church made a commitment to try two to three new activities over the next eight months that would shrink their environmental footprints in Maine.
They considered everything from undergoing energy audits and switching to energy-saving lightbulbs to simply swapping Styrofoam cups for nondisposable ones at the fellowships held after Sunday services.
The churches, now numbering three dozen, will meet again Sunday at Morris Farm in Wiscasset to share their successes and failures, and recruit other churches into the fold.
The summer meeting will be followed by another planning session in October at the Living Waters Spiritual Center in Winslow.
So far, a trio of southern Maine EarthCare teams that includes Downey's church, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Saco and Biddeford, and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Saco have proved to be the most successful.
Working together, the teams have kept 888,771 pounds of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from being released into the atmosphere. That's the equivalent of taking 96 cars, or 55 trucks, off the roads.
They did it by making changes not only in church but also at home. Every time a church member chose energy-efficient lighting, replaced a window, installed a low-flow shower head or took some other energy-saving step, they tied a leaf, an apple or a flower to a tree displayed in their sanctuaries. A leaf represented 500 pounds of carbon dioxide saved, an apple 1,000 pounds and a flower 5,000 pounds.
"It was bright," said Caryl Everett, a member of the EarthCare team at the Unitarian Universalist Church, which has 100 members. "On the coldest days in the winter, it was so nice to see it in the sanctuary."
Everett got involved through the coaxing of her minister, the Rev. Karen Brammer. She says she saw the project as "something where individuals could really make a difference."
The 29 households that ended up participating at the Unitarian Church saved 322,300 pounds, or 161 tons, of carbon dioxide.
In January, the church hosted an energy efficiency fair that included displays on topics such as recycling, composting and how to save energy with appliances. Only local foods were served at the fair in order to highlight the energy costs associated with transportation. So, on one of the coldest days in January, they ate Maine-made ice cream and drank apple cider.
"I've always tried to eat healthy foods, and I didn't care whether my broccoli came from Maine or California," Everett said. "This has been a real eye-opener for me. I've learned that it really does make a difference. The average meal travels 1,200 miles before it reaches your plate."
Everett buys energy-efficient light bulbs wholesale and makes them available at no extra cost to the congregation. So far, church members have purchased four cases of compact fluorescent light bulbs, which use less than a quarter of the energy put out by a regular 100-watt bulb.
At the First Parish Congregational Church, Downey organized an April transportation fair that featured hybrid cars, bicycles, free bus rides, and other alternative forms of transportation.
His EarthCare team also made sure that the church's new building - its historic home was destroyed in a fire four years ago - will be certified green, with lots of insulation, airtight windows and other features to make it energy-efficient.
First Parish, which has 400 members, started off with a goal of reducing its carbon dioxide contribution by 1,500 pounds. With 20 households participating, the church ended up cutting its emissions by 308,576 pounds.
"We all agree that there's more work to be done," Downey said, "and we have to get more people involved."
Not all EarthCare teams find that they are preaching to the choir.
Downey says it can be difficult to get people interested, in part because the concept of global warming seems so overwhelming, especially in these times when people are worrying about Iraq and potential terrorist attacks.
Marilyn Voorhies can relate. She's a one-woman EarthCare team at St. Saviour's Episcopal Church in Bar Harbor, where she has been doing a lot of environmental evangelizing over the past few years.
She's had some successes. St. Saviour's signed up for one of Efficiency Maine's free energy audits, and recently bought energy-efficient appliances during a renovation of the rectory. The church has now begun replacing regular bulbs with energy-efficient ones, she says.
The biggest environmental milestone so far for the church has been signing up for green power. Voorhies, who drives a hybrid car, is still trying to convince her fellow churchgoers to do the same at home.
"I'm still perplexed that more people haven't gotten on board with this because the cost is minimal," Voorhies said. "If you use 500 kilowatt hours, you're only going to pay $7.50 more a month. For most people, I don't think that's really all that significant. You go out and buy a couple of lattes at Dunkin' Donuts and you're going to be close to that figure."
Christine James of Maine Interfaith Power and Light says some EarthCare teams have found it difficult to convince their congregations to make even a simple change, such as giving up Styrofoam cups at church coffees or weaning themselves from paper napkins.
"In some congregations, people really face resistance to that," she said.
Immanuel Baptist Church in Portland is in the middle of a transition to cloth napkins and china cups, and now serves fair trade coffee at all its church receptions, says Wendy Harding de Rham, a member of the church's EarthCare team.
The 250-member church already recycles, and is considering the purchase of outdoor photovoltaic lighting. An energy audit was completed in February, and the property committee is deliberating over which of its recommendations the church can afford.
Immanuel Baptist has also purchased "green tags," certificates that support the development of renewable energy, but has not yet decided whether to sign onto a green energy plan.
"I think the hard thing is to just really not get discouraged," Wendy Harding de Rham said. "If you don't make a lot of tangible progress all at once, it doesn't mean you should give up."
I'll start buying boutique power when all-nuke is one of the available flavors. For now, specialty power seems to be leftie or nothing.
From saving souls to saving carbon dioxide emissions. From the way of the cross to the ways of composting. From resisting evil to resisting Styrofoam cups. God save us all.
It was my discovery, a couple decades back, of the massive degree of infestation of such types in the Episcopal church that eventually resulted in my departure. Now my conservative APCK church does some of the same (setback thermostats, efficient lighting, etc.) -- but the purpose is to free up more money for outreach.
Bump on more UCC crap.
I hear they now have pills that will stop those "voices" in their heads.
The Reds like the Rosebergs also felt a higher calling. They betrayed us for their god, Godless Communism, just like the Greens would have us worshiping dirt.
There's a chance that Nader will go Green this season.. There may be hope yet.
These morons are hypocrits in more ways than one: If they really "cared" they would go the whole route - living in teepees, crapping in a hole in the ground, no running (indoor) water, no flush toilets, no cars -at all- no electricity for their "sound systems" (usually the 2500 watt speaker systems), no water heaters (gas fired), no heating in winter. Lying scum, the whole lot of 'em.
Environmentalism As A Religion
A synopsis of a speech by novelist Michael Crichton, weighing in on climate change and environmentalism in a speech in September at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.
Depicting environmentalism as a religion, Crichton said:
Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It ís about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
He goes on to say:
There are two reasons why I think we all need to get rid of the religion of environmentalism.
First, we need an environmental movement, and such a movement is not very effective if it is conducted as a religion... Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to be apolitical. To mix environmental concerns with the frantic fantasies that people have about one political party or another is to miss the cold truth that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in pandering rhetoric. The effort to promote effective legislation for the environment is not helped by thinking that the Democrats will save us and the Republicans won't.
Political history is more complicated than that. Never forget which president started the EPA: Richard Nixon.
And never forget which president sold federal oil leases, allowing oil drilling in Santa Barbara: Lyndon Johnson.
The second reason to abandon environmental religion is more pressing.
Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge. Our record in the past, for example managing national parks, is humiliating. Our fifty-year effort at forest-fire suppression is a well-intentioned disaster from which our forests will never recover.
We need to be humble, deeply humble, in the face of what we are trying to accomplish.
We need to be trying various methods of accomplishing things.
We need to be open-minded about assessing results of our efforts,
and we need to be flexible about balancing needs.
Religions are good at none of these things.
Chesterton said that when you cease to believe in God, you don't believe in nothing - you believe in anything. Having abandoned actual religion, these people make a replacement religion out of home improvement.
According to this "green" quiz, I use up the resources of 7.5 planets.
I've got barfing fatigue over stuff like this!!!
Yep, I hear ya.
Well.
Now it makes sense... ;)
What an ecological b@stard I am.
It's like hearing the greenie whitewater rafters opposing Auburn Dam yelling that their's is a "spiritual experience" and waving their arms in the air like at a Jimmy Swaggert revival!!!
For every gallon of gasoline burned 17 pounds of CO2 are released into the air; these peole (400 church members) are to have us believe they saved 18,151 gallons of gasoline by carpooling and praying in the candlelight?
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