This week’s green-living tip is to offset your holiday travel, and our quote is the Rev. Ragan Sutterfield on taking climate action during Advent.
Think having a green corner in your parish newsletter or bulletin is a great idea, but don’t have time to research or write one? Episcopal Climate News is here to help! Every Monday, ECN offers a free green-living tip and a theological quote that your parish can use. Just copy/paste the text below into your parish communications, and feel free to edit/shorten as your space requires. Share this week’s column on Facebook.
Living on God’s Earth
By Episcopal Climate News, facebook.com/EpiscopalClimateNews
This week’s earth-friendly living tip: Offset your holiday travel
For many of us, travel is the biggest piece of our carbon footprints, especially if we’re flying somewhere for the holidays. A round-trip flight from Los Angeles to Chicago uses more fossil fuels than the average driver burns in a month! Even short flights have an impact on the climate, since most fuel is used in takeoff.
In a perfect world, we would use trains instead of planes, or even simply just live closer to our loved ones. But don’t worry: This doesn’t mean you can’t ever visit your family or see the world again! This Christmas, consider buying “carbon offsets” for your travel. These programs will use your funds to plant trees, invest in energy efficiency, or advance other green initiatives.
Carbon Footprint is a program that lets you select what project you’d like to use your offsets for. NativeEnergy and Cool Effect are other services you can use. You’ll be in good company: Thanks to a resolution passed by General Convention this year, Episcopal Church HQ staff now use offsets for their own official travel, too. These programs aren’t a “get-out-of-jail-free card” to ignore our carbon footprints, but when combined with other eco-measures, every little bit helps!
Episcopal Climate News quote of the week: The Rev. Ragan Sutterfield on Advent
“Advent is a time to prepare—to form our common life so that the coming of God’s kingdom is less of a culture shock to lives too comfortable in the world that is passing away. This means, on the whole, living on a smaller scale within a smaller radius. It also means that we should be ready to challenge the systems that refuse to change course in the face of this ecological unraveling, this judgment of our own making. A lack [of climate action from governments] this Advent will require faithful communities to discern their response. …As the rising seas confuse the nations, stay alert to God’s working.”
– The Rev. Ragan Sutterfield is an Episcopal priest and the author of the books “Wendell Berry and the Given Life” with a forward by Bill McKibben, “Farming As A Spiritual Discipline,” and “Cultivating Reality: How the Soil Might Save Us.” This is an excerpt from his 2015 article “The prophet’s candle,” published in the Christian Century.
(Note that as an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases you make from the book links above.)
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