Where to start? The Cool Congregations group will be working with the Vestry to determine how far we can go in recommending specific Internet resources. In the meantime, you can do your own searches in such areas as:
1. Measuring your carbon footprint: Search for “Carbon Footprint Calculators” on the Internet and find quick, simplified calculators, as well as advanced versions that take into account how you heat your home, what kind of windows you have, whether they are double or single pane, aluminum, wood or vinyl, etc. You do a very quick “average” calculation for your area, or you can go into extensive detail to calculate your annual production of CO2.
2. Reducing your consumption: Reduce what is most likely your largest carbon footprint activity - driving - by combining trips, maintaining your car, shopping for the week instead of running to the store every other day. You can radically reduce your junk mail (there are services that help you do this), buy locally produced food and goods, reduce your wardrobe and clothes buying, use your dishwasher and washing machine more efficiently, etc. A search on “How to reduce my carbon footprint”
3. Purchasing carbon-offsets to reduce the impact of your worst consumption: You can buy carbon offsets from many different organizations. Buying carbon offsets is not a substitute for reducing your CO2 footprint, but it can be a way to help projects throughout the world that are reducing CO2 impacts from cooking, heating, forestry/agricultural practices, etc. Many of these projects also have significant social justice components. Several organizations verify that the projects they recommend meet certifications that assure the CO2 reductions are real and sustainable. The Carbon Fund offers “baskets” of projects to support with donations. Another organization - Green-e - provides lists of individual projects to support.
4. Praying for the world’s healing and the strength to be a part of that healing:
The U.N. Environmental Sabbath - Earth Prayer
We join with the earth and with each other.
To bring new life to the land
To restore the waters
To refresh the air
We join with the earth and with each other.
To renew the forests
To care for the plants
To protect the creatures
We join with the earth and with each other.
To celebrate the seas
To rejoice in the sunlight
To sing the song of the stars
We join with the earth and with each other.
To recreate the human community
To promote justice and peace
To remember our children
We join with the earth and with each other.
We join together as many and diverse expressions
of one loving mystery:
for the healing of the earth and renewal of all life.
(E.Roberts & Elias Amidon, 1991, p.94)
