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ECO-JUSTICE NEWS October 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 “What if we had systems that loved us and, by extension, the planet?”— Ayana Elizabeth Johnson |
Climate Witness Stewards Climate Café
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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. |
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. |
| ADVOCACY
Without 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. Tell Citi Bank consumer dollars shouldn’t go toward funding the climate crisis. Hip Hop Caucus says, “No amount of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ can stop the climate crisis when major companies like Citi are bankrolling liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals that are destroying the U.S. Gulf South.” Learn more about the environmental justice issues of LNG export terminals and find the action request at the Hip Hop Caucus website. Find out where the candidates on your ballot stand on climate change, habitat protection, and other earthcare-related issues! QUESTIONS FOR CANDIDATES 2024, for EJC Sept. newsletter.docx The FCNL Working Group of Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) has compiled a set of questions you can use to determine your local, state and federal candidates’ positions on climate change while also letting them know how much these issues matter to you. There are also tips for how to present your questions to candidates and even a suggested script.
VOTE! For Our Sacred Earth! GreenFaith USA’s Vote! For Our Sacred Earth campaign is a non-partisan voter turnout campaign that is organizing people of all faiths to encourage voters to vote their values this November and prioritize “ambitious climate action to protect our future.” There is still time to write postcards (scheduled to be mailed on Oct. 26th) or make phone calls to “low propensity voters” who care about the environment. 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.
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EDUCATION
For our actions to be effective, they need to be informed.
Listed below are several resources to help expand our understanding of the issues and guide our actions. Watch Looming Deadlines for Coastal Resilience. Research led by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) shows that “between now and 2050, climate change-driven sea level rise will expose more than 1600 critical buildings and services to disruptive flooding twice a year.” Watch the recording of the UCS September 9th webinar to learn more about how countries’ choices about heat trapping emissions now can threaten critical infrastructure in the future.
Watch Toxic Funding of Philadelphia Public Schools. How has toxic financing failed public school buildings and other infrastructure in Philadelphia? Learn about the problem and proposed solutions in this webinar from Philadelphia Public Banking Coalition’s web series “Financing Philadelphia’s Future.” Watch Mining, Faith, and the Future of Green Technology. At the fall steering committee meeting of Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) in Albuquerque, Clara Sims from New Mexico and El Paso Interfaith Power and Light spoke about IPL’s work to protect vulnerable communities and habitats. She shared the link to this recording in a follow-up email. Watch The Story Behind Climate Security and What It Means for U.S. Foreign Policy. Understanding the interconnection between climate change, conflict, and peace has become a priority of countries and multinational institutions. Learn more in this recording of a webinar from the Wilson Center. |
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FINANCE How 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? Tool Where You Bank Matters! Generally, local banks that serve the community don’t invest in global fossil fuel extraction and production. But how to identify banks in our communities? Better Banking Options ranks more than 10 thousand local banks and credit unions and lets you sort by your location. Green America’s Get a Better Bank tool also helps consumers find and switch to a “community development financial institution or credit union.” Register Faith and Finance Roundtable All summer the global interfaith organization GreenFaith has been urging big banks to stop funding “life-destroying” fossil fuels. Now they have scheduled Sacred Earth, Stained Profits: Faith and Finance Roundtable, where you can hear from frontline leaders, financial experts, and faith leaders about how you can use your congregation’s power to pressure your financial institution to stop financing the climate crisis. Use the zoom link to learn more and register. Watch Funding Global Climate Finance The 2024 UN Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP29) is called the “finance COP.” At its website, Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) states, The United States and other wealthy nations have committed to spending billions annually to help [developing countries] transition to clean energy and adapt to the ravages of climate change.” You can watch the FCNL video to learn more about how “federal investments in global climate assistance can help mitigate the worst impacts of climate change and advance us toward a greener future.” In this September “Finding” on climate finance, the World Resources Institute (WRI) asks where the money will come from for the trillions of dollars needed annually to combat climate change and introduces their new climate finance calculator. See also Upcoming Events for the Oct. 15th program “The Race to Mobilize International Climate Finance” at World Perry House. |
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LOWERING CARBON FOOTPRINT
While 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. Learn about the Planetary Health Diet The planetary health diet from the EAT-Lancet Commission provides a guide to a range of food groups that “together constitute an optimal diet for human health and environmental sustainability.” Find out how your food choices can contribute to the “Great Food Transformation.” Fill out EJC’s Climate Strike! In collaboration with Fridays for Futures’ Global Climate Strike in September, the Eco-Justice Collaborative 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 the EJC newsletter in the aggregate. We will not publish any individual results in any form. Your responses to this survey will also help inform our planning for a winter Thread Gathering on the Climate Crisis. You can learn more about the Global Climate Strike here. |
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MOURNING LOSS AND INSTILLING HOPE
If 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. Watch What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures. The tragic devastation of recent hurricanes in the U.S. has many of us reeling from the loss of people and places we love. Some of us may even feel as if we are living in a dystopian future novel. For her new book, scientist, author, and climate activist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson interviewed 20 experts in fields from agriculture to investment to find out what “getting it right on climate” would look like in their world. Goodreads says her book “offers a hopeful vision of the future created by our struggles against climate change.” Recently Johnson was interviewed about the book on NPR. Attend a Climate Witness Stewards Climate Café. The PYM Climate Witness Stewards host these virtual cafes to provide a supportive, spiritually nurturing, and community-building way to share climate action information and hope. The next Climate Café is scheduled for October 24th at 7pm online. See the Upcoming Events section for details and registration link. 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). |
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UPCOMING EVENTS
Oct. 15th, 4-5 pm ET, hybrid Oct. 16th, 6:30-7:30 pm ET, Oct. 21st at 7 pm ET, in Philadelphia, Oct. 22nd, 12-2 pm ET, Oct. 24th at 7pm ET, on Zoom Oct. 24-27 Oct. 29th, 7-8:15 pm ET on Zoom, Nov. 2nd, 9:30-1 pm, Nov. 8th at 8 am ET to Nov. 10th at 2 pm ET, |
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GOOD NEWS!
Globally: Green Roofs and Solar Chimneys are Here! This article from Guardian says, “Builders already have the tools to build cooler homes for an increasingly hotter world.” Globally: Ocean waves now have legal personhood in Linhares, Brazil. Learn how this city in Brazil is paving “a new path to marine protection.” |
| RESOURCES
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 | YouTube. 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. Watch 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 August 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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