Weekly newsletter or bulletin insert: Use the church’s new Carbon Tracker, and an Easter message from ECN

This week’s tip is to use the Episcopal Church’s new carbon tracker, and our quote is an Easter message from Episcopal Climate News. (With apologies for the day’s delay!)

Think having a green corner in your church newsletter or bulletin is a great idea, but don’t have time to write one? Episcopal Climate News is here to help! Feel free to copy and paste this weekly column, editing as your space requires. You can also share on your Facebook page!

Living on God’s Earth
By Episcopal Climate News, facebook.com/EpiscopalClimateNews

This week’s earth-friendly living tip: Use the Episcopal Church’s new carbon tracker!

The Diocese of California has developed a new web tool called “Sustaining Earth, Our Island Home.” This is a carbon tracker that can help us all “make more life-giving choices about how we inhabit the earth.”

Starting on Earth Day — Monday, April 22, 2019 — in mid-May, Episcopalians can sign up as individuals, parishes, or dioceses. The website (and soon to be an app) will allow us to measure our carbon footprints, take individual actions, aggregate impacts church-wide, and advocate for climate protection.

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says, “I am personally exploring how to use it as part of my own spiritual practice… If we follow Jesus and his way of love, then we strive to love as God loves, to give as God gives, to care as God cares. And that means caring for God’s Creation, all of it, and all of us.”

Learn more and sign up at www.sustainislandhome.org!

(Episcopalians in California, Connecticut, Kansas, North Carolina, Olympia, and Western Massachusetts don’t have to wait until Earth Day. Your diocese is part of a pilot program, and you can use the tool now.)

UPDATE 4/22: Though it is Earth Day, the carbon tracker is not quite yet ready for use by the full public. But it will be soon! According to contacts in the Diocese of California, “We anticipate a mid-May completion for this goal, and in the meantime, people should continue to go to diocal.org/climate to begin an enrollment process and learn about training/introduction opportunities. For example, we are offering a webinar this Thursday at noon Pacific, and we’ll be offering 2 webinars a month through the fall.”

Quote of the week: An Easter message from Episcopal Climate News

Scientists say we have just 12 years left to cut our fossil-fuel use in half if we want to avoid the worst catastrophes. Let’s reframe that: We don’t “just” have 12 years; we *still* have 12 years, and that is a gift. There is still time to act for earth justice, and if our actions are guided by God, then we will always have hope.

Thanks to Jesus Christ, we know that death does not get the last word: not for us, and not for the earth. Resurrection can carry the day once more, and this time it will be not just for one individual, but for the whole created order. In the name of loving both God and our neighbor, it is time to set our old ways aside and seek a new, healthier relationship with the rest of God’s creation, one rooted in resurrection and renewal.

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