Thursday, November 26, 2009

You'll be doin' all right, with your Advent of Blue, But I'll have a 'green', 'green' Advent

The Church of England has an online Advent Calendar, this year with an environmental theme, "Ready, Steady, SLOW" - sorry, but there are no chocolates behind any flaps...

The site encourages you to take time out this Advent to slow down and consider your lifestyle with daily challenges and thoughts. The calendar contains a range of reflections, actions and video clips. Advent Resources from the Church of England.

"We hope for a world in which we have learned to live with the grain of things, to live patiently, to live respectfully, to live in a way that takes our environment seriously..." Dr. Rowan Williams

Ready, Steady Slow

Monday, November 23, 2009

Prayers of the People December 13, 2009

On Sunday December 13 the Diocese of Huron and the Enviroaction Committee ask you to include an intention in your ‘Prayers of the People’ on behalf of climate change talks in Copenhagen. Today we join churches around the world by ringing church bells or beating drums 350 times* to show our solidarity with those most affected.

"We pray for our brothers and sisters around the world suffering the impact of climate injustice. We pray that the leaders of the nations may work together at the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, so that a just, binding and science-based climate treaty may be achieved."

*Kairos says that “350 parts per million (ppm) is the upper limit for carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in our atmosphere. Until about 200 years ago, our atmosphere contained 275 ppm of CO2, but now the concentration stands at 390 ppm. Unless we are able to rapidly reduce, we risk irreversible impacts on all of Creation”

Contact us: Diocese of Huron EnviroAction Committee

Email: enviroactionhuron@gmail.com

Thursday, November 19, 2009

KAIROS: Copenhagen 2009

Sunday December 13 is a day of action for churches around the world. A global bell ringing action is timed to coincide with an ecumenical service that the World Council of Churches is coordinating at the height of the talks in Copenhagen. When it ends at 3:00 pm, churches all over Denmark will ring their bells. KAIROS is asking every church in the country to ring its church bells 350 times for climate justice on Sunday December 13, 2009 at 3:00pm (your local timezone).
If churches around the world ring their bells at 3:00 pm local time, we’ll have a 24 hour chain of bells!
KAIROS: Copenhagen 2009

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Call to Anglicans in Canada for Vision and Action on the Climate Crisis

Call to Anglicans in Canada for Vision and Action on the Climate Crisis

We, the undersigned, as Canadian Anglicans, call on our primate, bishops, clergy, and laity to address climate change as stewards of God’s good creation, required to act justly towards our fellow creatures and to Earth itself.

We are deeply concerned at:
* Increasingly urgent warnings on the need for substantial, swift greenhouse gas emission reductions, warnings issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1990 and widely ignored;
* Canada’s being the world’s worst per capita emitter, with increasing emissions flouting its Kyoto Protocol commitment to a 6% reduction from 1990 levels;
* The federal government’s failure to establish targets or a plan of emissions reductions, as the scientific consensus indicates, of 25-40% from 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050, in order to avoid an average global temperature increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius, after which runaway crises can be expected;
* The inadequacy of provincial targets and reduction plans -- despite responsible policies in some provinces -- given that the harmful impacts of global heating are occurring faster than anticipated, making deeper, faster reductions necessary;
* Promotion by Canadian tax subsidies of tar sands extraction, the major cause for rising emissions and of massive pollution and water depletion, water itself being a critical environmental issue;
* Failure to recognize that fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource fast being depleted;
* The lack of requirement in our Constitution and other statutes for responsible use and conservation of these valuable one-time riches for future generations;
* Failure to include military operations, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, in reduction planning;
* The substantial carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions from Canadian agricultural practices and other industries;
* Failure to take adequate advantage of well developed knowledge and technology for alternative fuels and for more efficient planning of cities and transportation systems, industrial European countries being more advanced in curbing emissions and committing to serious further reductions;
* Climate-change induced harm to developing countries and the far north in Canada, and the devastation of First Nations’ lands by the tar sands extraction.

We call on Anglicans to work for solutions to the climate crisis. In our liturgy, we confess that “we have sinned against God by what we have done and by what we have left undone,” yet, with blind eye and hardened heart, we do not “love our neighbours as ourselves.” Climate change is the slavery issue of our day: we in the developed world are the oppressors in a system that victimizes the Earth, our neighbours in the global South, and future generations. We fail to act as partners in the Covenant with God to care for this planet, and to live out the transformative love of our resurrection hope.

It’s time for new vision and commitment to a new kind of life, to renewed care of the land on which we live as tenants, to deeper respect for all the creatures within the Covenant, for the mountains and hills that sing, the trees and rivers that clap their hands.

Time is urgent. At the December 2009 Copenhagen Convention on post-Kyoto reduction targets, we need Canada to be a voice for the serious cuts deemed necessary by the best science.

We call on the Anglican Church to join with environmental organizations and other faith communities in urging the Government of Canada to make the effective, timely commitments needed. We call on church leaders to take these concerns to all levels of government.

We ask Anglicans to support a national call for climate change action by signing the KyotoPlus petition. Sign it on line at http://www.kairoscanada.org/en/get-involved/campaign/kyotoplus-petition, and download it at http://www.kyotoplus.ca/en/index.html.

We call on all levels of the church to set an example by making cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in our own operations. We urge routine incorporation of the care of creation and the responsibility for environmental justice in prayers, readings, and sermons.

Who is my neighbour? The command to “love one another” embraces people far away and future generations. The command to stewardship embraces the whole Earth, our
island home, and all life dependent on it.

Phyllis Creighton, MA, adjunct faculty, Divinity, Trinity College; Honorary Canon
Joy Kogawa, CM, OBC, LLD (hon), DLitt (hon), DD (hon), author
Diane Marshall, MEd, RMFT, Director, Institute of Family Living, Toronto
Lynn McDonald, PhD, LID (hon), university professor emerita, University of Guelph

Fellow Anglicans! Sign this Manifesto electronically at
Or print it out, sign it indicating parish and diocese, and mail it to
PO Box 92513, 152 Carlton Street
Toronto ON, M5A 2K1.

We will report both printed and electronic support of the Manifesto to the Primate and Bishops. Pass the Manifesto on to other Anglicans.