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ECO-JUSTICE NEWS November 2024 The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) has committed to a yearly-meeting-wide witness on climate change. The Eco-Justice Collaborative (EJC) of PYM issues this monthly bulletin to provide Friends with timely information and resources to help in their ongoing work witnessing for social and climate justice. Please share as you think appropriate. If you have stories, events, or resources to share, please send them to Ruth Darlington. |
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Cross stitch at Westfield Friends Meeting, NJ “We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government, nor are we for this party or against the other…but we are for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom, that these may be exalted in our nation, and that goodness, righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity with God, and with one another, that these things may abound.” — Edward Burrough, 1659 |
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Friends Take Steps to Address the Climate Crisis. We know that many Friends throughout the yearly meeting and around the world are following their leadings to work on climate change, environmental justice, and habitat and biodiversity protection. Their stories can inspire all of us to make our lives speak, too. We would like to tell your story here. If you have a story to share, please contact Ruth Darlington at rdarlington49@gmail.com. |
UPCOMING EVENTSNov. 12th, 6:30-8:30 ET, EQAT November General Meeting. Nov. 12th, 6:30 PM ET, New Jersey’s Changing Estuaries. Nov. 14th, 7PM ET, 4PM PT: Health, Relinquishment, and Planetary Care. Nov. 18th, 7 PM ET, 4 PM PT: QEW Book Group online. Nov. 19th at 7 PM ET: Worhship Sharing with Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) Nov. 19th at 7 PM ET, Watersheds and Their Problems. Nov. 20th from 2 to 4 PM ET, EQAT action at Vanguard’s Malvern headquarters. Dec. 4th from 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM, Home Energy Efficiency Tax Credits and Rebates. |
TAKE ACTION! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!Are you looking for something you can do this month to fight climate change, protect vital habitat, or address climate injustice? Here we have listed possible actions you can take organized by the five categories of action in the Climate Change Sprint Report: Advocacy, Education, Finance, Lowering Carbon Footprint, and Mourning Loss and Instilling Hope. We hope you will find something that speaks to you. If you have actions you want to share, please contact us. |
ADVOCACYWithout policy changes at all levels of society, we cannot do enough to stop the worst impacts of climate change. Quakers have historically been advocates for truth and justice. We have spoken truth to power, often without guarantee of safety or success. As the window to act on climate change narrows, we need such courageous activism more than ever. Add your face and voice to the #WeAreWatching eye. #WeAreWatching is a monumental flag, showing an eye made up of thousands of portraits contributed from around the world. It will fly above Busan on a crane the height of a 10-storey building to hold leaders accountable as they meet in South Korea to agree on a Global Plastics Treaty. At the website, you can scroll down to ADD YOUR FACE and also use their toolkit to tell world leaders why you want them to urgently address the crisis of plastic pollution. YOUTH Take meaningful action in just 3 minutes with Soapbox Project’s Changeletter.. Each month’s topic is broken into four modules: Read, Watch, Act, and Reflect. The topic in October was climate refugees. Tell big tech companies to keep fossil fuels in the ground! Big data centers and high-tech manufacturing are causing a huge increase in demand for power. Join Sierra Club in telling these big corporate purchasers of energy to do their part to demand clean energy. Sign up for Quaker Action Mid-Atlantic Region (QAMAR) Alerts. To work more effectively on the most important issues of our time, Quakers in the Mid-Atlantic region have formed a new organization, Quaker Action Mid-Atlantic Region (QAMAR), as a nonprofit 501 c-4 that can engage directly in policy and legislative work at the state and local level. QAMAR’s Board of Directors has decided that initially they will focus on two pressing issues: the Climate Crisis and Gun Violence. Steve Loughin, QAMAR Clerk, wrote, “Friends have a unique voice and history in our region. Our fundamental values of Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality and Sustainability can help solve some of our thorniest problems and build a safe, secure, sustainable future for all.” There is no fee to sign up on the QAMAR Action Network. You’ll receive notification of their upcoming webinars, presentations, workshops, and actions relevant to your area code. Sign up for FCNL Action Alerts. Sign up to get weekly advocacy alerts and updates from Friends Committee on National Legislation in your Inbox. |
EDUCATIONFor our actions to be effective, they need to be informed. WATCH Wandering Watersheds Webinar Series, Nov. 19th, Dec. 20th, and Jan. 14th at 7 PM ET. The Eco Justice Collaborative is a co-sponsor of this Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light (PA IPL) webinar series addressing the importance of watersheds and how congregations and civic groups can be a part of watersheds solutions in their communities. The first webinar took place at the end of October; the three remaining webinars cover Watersheds and Their Problems, Watersheds and Their Protection, and Watersheds and Their People. READ We Don’t Have Time’s COP29 “explainer article.” Find out what they think is at stake at the 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29), why it’s called the Finance COP, and why you should follow it on We Don’t Have Time. WATCH Climate and Peace: Stories from around the world. Speakers in this joint program of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), the Church of the Brethren, and Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) speakers include Sibonokuhle Ncube, Mennonite Mission Network’s regional co-director for Africa and Europe; Lemmy Thomas Aniah, gender-based violence coordinator for the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria; and Victor Odinda, climate solutions partner advisor for MCC Cambodia. LEARN How climate change is affecting New Jersey’s environment. Rutgers University’s Earth Day Every Day fall webinar series Winds of Change: Environmental Impacts from a Changing Climate addressed many of the impacts of climate change from invasive species to sea level rise. The last webinar, “New Jersey’s Changing Estuaries,” will be on Nov. 14th; see Upcoming Events listing to learn more and register. Links to recordings of previous webinars can be found at the Rutgers Environmental Stewards webpage. READ “New Report Shows How Human-Caused Warming Intensified the 10 Deadliest Climate Disasters Since 2004.” As reported in Inside Climate News, “…since 2004…three tropical cyclones, four heat waves, two floods, and a drought killed 570,000 people,” and a new study shows how all of them were intensified by human-caused global warming. |
FINANCEHow can we make our financial decisions climate solutions? Money drives climate change. Without loans from banks, investments from money management funds, and insurance premiums, fossil fuel projects could not continue. Equally, it takes bank loans, investments, and insurance for clean energy and other climate solutions to go forward. How can we turn our own financial decisions into climate solutions? And how can we address the financial systems that currently drive climate destruction? Sacred Earth, Stained Profits. Every dollar that you or your congregation deposits is given out in loans that contribute more or less to climate change depending on who your bank lends the money to. The recording is of a Faith and Finance Roundtable that GreenFaith held in October where faith leaders, frontline leaders, and financial experts explored how congregations working together could magnify their pressure on financial institutions to stop financing the climate crisis. Resources they shared included Topo Finance’s banking footprint calculator |
LOWERING CARBON FOOTPRINTWhile individual actions to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are not enough to solve the climate crisis, they are important. Whether you have already taken steps to lower your carbon footprint or that of your Meeting or your Friends School or you are just starting down that path, we hope you will find ideas here to support your carbon footprint reduction efforts. Visit Environment America’s Clean Energy Home Toolkit. The toolkit helps homeowners learn about tax credits and rebates from the Inflation Reduction Act that can help them improve their home’s energy efficiency and switch to clean energy. They state that with continued commitment to building on the past decade’s progress, we can have an America completely powered by clean, renewable energy. Fill out EJC’s Electrification Survey! The Eco-Justice Collaborative has invited all Quakers in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to help us develop a baseline of information and a community of support to help all of us reduce carbon emissions by electrifying our lives. Please complete the linked survey and be sure to respond to each question. We will publish the results in an upcoming edition of the EJC newsletter in the aggregate. Individual results will not be shared in any form. Your responses to this survey will also help inform our planning for a winter EJC Workshop on the Climate Crisis. EJC has reviewed the responses to date to its Electrification Survey and is very encouraged to learn that almost all respondents have taken one or more steps to reduce energy use and electrify their lives. Almost half of respondents asked for help taking next steps. Most of these asked for more information about the financial incentives that are now available. We heard you, and we are responding. We will host a free workshop on Wednesday, December 4th at 7:00 pm. Please join us as our experts walk you through all these incentives that are available. See the December 4th listing in Upcoming Events above.
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MOURNING LOSS AND INSTILLING HOPEIf we don’t face the grief we experience when faced with the loss of beloved environments or species and the threat that climate change poses to us and future generations, we can find ourselves paralyzed. Succumbing to despair is not an option, but we need one another’s support to hold onto hope. Join the Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) Fall Book Group online. Join QEW in reading Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. The book group will meet online every other week on Monday, beginning Nov. 18th. “The series will delve into discussions of how we can face the challenges of our time with integrity and reimagine how we learn, unlearn, and respond to crisis.” YOUTH Overwhelmed by climate change? Check out the Soapbox Project. Soapbox Project works to create joyful spaces to “transform climate anxiety into connection, learning and action.” Attend a Climate Witness Stewards Climate Café. The PYM Climate Witness Stewards have been hosting these virtual cafes to provide a supportive, spiritually nurturing, and community-building way to share climate action information and hope. We will publish the date of the next online café (early 2025) as soon as the information is available. Attend Earthcare-Centered Worship Sharing and Fellowship with QEW. Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) hosts two recurring events each month on the fourth Tuesday at 7 pm ET (worship sharing) and the fourth Friday at 7 pm ET (Fellowship Hour). See Upcoming Events for details about the Nov. 19th online Worship Sharing. |
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GOOD NEWS! Nationally: America produces more than 3 times the power from renewables as we did in 2014. Environment America’s Research and Policy Center reports this growth in renewables is happening in all 50 states. Their Renewables on the Rise dashboard allows you to track growth in your state and across the country. Regionally: NYC’s new solar-powered school buses will support the grid, too. As reported in The Progress Playbook newsletter, four electric school buses fitted with rooftop solar panels are already in the fleet, and eight more will be added in the months ahead in a joint venture with the utility Con Edison. They will be able to use bidirectional chargers to feed electricity back into the grid during peak demand. Globally: As reported in the Guardian, carbon emissions in the EU fell by 8% in 2023! That is close to the drop in GHGs recorded when the COVID 19 pandemic shut down airplane travel and closed factories. Globally: Onsite solar power generation at electric bus depots could produce more energy than needed to power the buses, sending excess energy to the grid. As reported by WDC News 6, a study published by Professor Xiaoyue Cathy Liu in the journal Nature Energy is based on a computer model of Beijing’s bus network, with 90% of its 27,000 buses being low- or no-emission vehicles. |
RESOURCESGuide to Local Climate Change Planning (New Jersey) Working with the NJ DEP, Sustainable Jersey (SJ), and partners, New Jersey Future (NJF) led development of this guide as a foundation for ongoing climate adaptation and resilience. Based on a systems approach, the guide supports municipalities in evaluating their vulnerability across five systems: Built System, Natural System, Social System, Economic System, and Governance System. Banking on Climate Chaos 2024 Report. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), “Citi Bank is the second largest financier of fossil fuels and the largest financier of fossil fuel expansion since the Paris Agreement.” Their report shows just how much banks and other financial institutions continue to undermine efforts to reduce global emissions. (Also see the UCS Sept. 25th webinar, “Ending Fossil Fuel Finance” I Upcoming Events below.) “Guide to Quaker Lobbying.” This guide from Indiana Friends’ Committee on Legislation gives practical advice for lobbying at the state level for issues Friends care about. “Creating a Playbook for Climate Action” This Yearly Meeting guide is intended to help Meetings develop a playbook to support individuals, households and meetings address climate change. Solar Toolkit for All. Developed by the Philadelphia Solar Energy Association (PSEA), Solar Schools for All is available for free through the PA DEP. The toolkit “details the process in ten steps, provides access to all the new federal tax credits, grants and loans available, provides a sample Request for Proposal (RFP), and two powerful proformas. One proforma is for a Power Purchase Agreement and the other is for Direct Ownership, to help schools run the numbers in a range of scenarios to decide how to optimize the benefits of solar for any school.” Climate Witness Stewards on the PYM website. The Climate Witness Stewards (CWS) were established to support the Yearly Meeting and hold it accountable to its climate change witness. You can read their full charge and find bios of the individual stewards at the CWS page of the PYM website. YOUTH: Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book about “Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants” has been a source of inspiration and information for many people concerned about taking care of the planet. It has been adapted for young adult readers by Monique Gray Smith and illustrated by Nicole Neidhardt. Published by Lerner Publishing Group, the book is available through online booksellers, including independent booksellers. Watch the YouTube video for an audio preview of the book. Energy Stewardship for Friends Institutions. This EJC series consists of four workshops designed to help stakeholders at Friends meetings, schools, retirement communities, and other institutions make their facilities more sustainable. The link will take you to the PYM YouTube channel, where you can select individual videos (Saving Money on Your Commercial Electric Account, Solar Schools and Nonprofit Toolkit, Options and Funding for Electrifying Your HVAC Systems), or you can select, “Play All.” Rewiring America’s Personal Electrification Planner By electrifying your home, you can save thousands of dollars and eliminate the majority of your GHG emissions. This personal planning tool from Rewiring America makes it easier. Greening Sacred Spaces Webinar Recordings. Here are the recordings from the three Greening Sacred Spaces webinars that EJC and the Climate Action Working Group (CAWG) of Concord QM hosted in the past year to inspire and assist Friends Meetings and institutions to make their property management policies more supportive of all of Creation. Clean Energy 4 PA: 30 X 30 and Community Solar. On Sept. 18th, Quaker Action Mid-Atlantic Region (QAMAR) hosted an action workshop concerning how much of Pennsylvania’s energy comes from renewable sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal. Nearly 70 people participated in the virtual workshop. At this link, you can see a video of the presentation by Liz Robinson (CPMM) and Bruce Birchard (CPMM) as well as view the slide deck and find additional background information. Climate and Money: A Guide to Fossil Fuel Divestment and Reinvestment. This guide was prepared by Friend Jennie Ratcliffe and fellow members of Durham (NC) Meeting’s Earthcare Witness Committee. It provides information about the what and the why of divestment, which banks, or funds to divest from, and how to divest and reinvest in a more livable world. The guide is available at the website of Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW). BeFriending Creation Here is the latest edition of the Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) quarterly newsletter. Read online or download the pdf and be inspired by how Friends in North America are building community to address the climate and biodiversity crises. Inside the Greenhouse. Inside the Greenhouse is Friends Committee on National Legislation’s monthly newsletter on energy and the environment. Read the October 2024 issue and previous issues at the FCNL website. PYM Funds for Suffering. This PYM granting group provides help to PYM members who experience financial hardship occasioned by obedience to the leadings of God’s spirit, or to conscience, consistent with Quaker testimonies. Download the Fund for Sufferings Fact Sheet [PDF] for application details. Grants can go to individuals only, not organizations, but requests for assistance can come from the individual concerned, from a Monthly Meeting on behalf of an individual, or in special cases from some person or group close to the person in need of assistance. If time allows, the request should be in writing. If urgent, and unable to reach the Clerk at the number listed, email Grants@pym.org. Applications are considered on a rolling basis; there are no deadlines for applications. The group email is FundForSufferings@pym.org. Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) Mini-Grants. Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) is a network of Quakers seeking to live in right relationship with Earth and in unity with nature. The QEW Mini-Grants Committee provides small matching grants to help fund Friends’ projects that put this principle into practice. We are looking for projects to support, especially those that help with providing food, involve youth, or help with challenging racial/ethnic barriers. If your Quaker organization is doing a project that meets our criteria, we invite you to apply. If you are an individual Quaker, involved with a project that meets our criteria, perhaps your Meeting could adopt the project. This would enable us to fund you. We can only fund through Quaker Meetings, Churches, Camps, Schools, etc. Matching grants are now available in amounts up to $1,500. More details are on the Mini-Grant application form. |
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